Different kind of party time? Dems moved "to the center more"; vulnerable pay for that the most
Post-not enough of a blue wave
I just wrote something here after revisiting a piece I did on a mockumentary pilot done by humorist Dan McNamara; in that feature on McNamara, formerly a decade-long Jersey City resident, lamented that new housing units in the city represented a lifestyle primarily out of reach for everyday regular people with roots in the city. But this piece is about the other thing that McNamara that lamented — the state of politics in New Jersey.
Whoever would have won the presidential election, some version of this piece was incoming anyway.
My favorite line in McNamara’s mockumentary is when host Nate Starkey stands across the street from a local mural, saying, “Few people know that most of the Jersey City budget goes toward public works of art like these …”
This was filmed roughly during the early years of this “Make It Yours” era of Jersey City, and the idea that Jersey City’s budget was going to something so cosmetic as opposed to what one might hope most of a city’s budget would go to, like addressing the lack of infrastructure in its most disinvested sections, was funny to me in that tragically comedic way.
“The Republicans have gone so right in such a specific direction that it’s kind of given the Democrats an opportunity to go the center more or go to the right more and still be forgiven for it. And so there’s really no left in American politics.” - Dan McNamara
In the last mayoral election in 2021, (then two-term incumbent) Mayor Steve Fulop won the most votes in every ward except for the city ward with arguably the worst quality of life fixtures: Ward F — arguments about the boundaries of which may be heard soon the state Supreme Court, in the latest development that stems from a 2022 lawsuit challenging the redrawing of Ward F’s lines post-that election and that year’s census count.
The working-class isn’t a monolith. The one thing that probably unites people who can be loosely grouped with the label is a heightened sense of need to become firmly entrenched in the middle-class. But there’s no common view of what that entails except a reliable level of security; the thing that is supposed to help instill a “common sense” about that, public education, exists in a world where the saying “you get what you pay for” is applicable to almost every quality of life facet.
In my Dec. 2022 interview with McNamara, he said he’s been critical of all politicians when he lived in Jersey City and still is now that he doesn’t:
“I’m critical of the Democratic Party and the Democratic Party in New Jersey because in Jersey City they have a monopoly over politics, and there’s a lot that can happen when there’s no challengers. I mean, I hate the Republican Party but the Democratic Party needs to be challenged, especially when it’s won so many elections over and over. I don’t think that’s the best situation.
“The Republicans have gone so right in such a specific direction that it’s kind of given the Democrats an opportunity to go the center more or go to the right more and still be forgiven for it. And so there’s really no left in American politics.”
With Reagan as a particular torchbearer for the modern age, the right has been dismantling the kind of social programs that let a middle-class exist in the first place … even as one of its pillars, the G.I. bill that fueled so much middle-class homeownership excluded Black Americans.
Some populations have been used to a particular sense of “two steps forward, three steps back” in this country; this should not be a controversial statement. If it is, it’s in some part because Democrats have let the priorities of the best of its past iterations (from the New Deal onward), flawed and exclusionary aspects of them withstanding, fall by the wayside as it negotiated with a party that’s been trying to deregulate everything as if social programs, government-supported infrastructure and acknowledging lopsided histories are the boogeymen curtailing upward mobility — and not profiteering.
Are we lucky to live somewhere “blue”? In some ways, but “blue” is far from synonymous with equality or progressive policies in action, and as is with neighboring blue pillar NYC, which sports one of the poorest congressional district in the country in the South Bronx, there’s a level of vulnerability among areas in NJ that is left to stew with placating and band-aids.
But this isn’t an either/or; losses that take away personal autonomy around the country reverberate throughout it and around the world — as an example, the decades-long struggle for decent affordable housing on the “Gold Coast” “trickled up” over the last decade; losses of personal autonomy around the world also reverberate here; placating people with empty words and wanting press releases to be unchallenged narrative is not limited to one party or organization.
In our interview, McNamara talked about how a health condition that made him vulnerable helped him realize what a mess things are in this country.
There’s a lot that’s challenging, and even more that needs to be challenged than what’s so obvious for the vulnerable who aren’t satisfied with scraps of negotiated autonomy.