Post by Old Badger on Feb 21, 2020 0:06:01 GMT -5
Howard Fineman has a great take on the current presidential election:
"The presidential campaign at this strange moment is a bonfire of the boroughs: a nasty, hate-throuple of white, male, septuagenarian New York politicians who have little use for traditional parties and regard themselves as creators and leaders of their own outsider movements. All three have the go-the-distance wallets — either their own or their online supporters’ — that other contenders cannot match. There is something inevitable about the New Yorking of the race — besides the fact that the president used to call Fifth Avenue at 57th Street home. The “I’m-walking-here” talk dominates our discourse. Trump didn’t create the corrosion, but he has amplified it and made the belittling, street-corner style of the New York tabloids the official language of politics. Many voters are going to love this stuff. They want one nasty New Yorker to take on another...
"Bloomberg might still have a puncher’s chance to get to Trump. Hollywood couldn’t write a more vivid New York social confrontation. The two men landed in Manhattan (Bloomberg by way of Boston and Harvard Business School) at roughly the same time. But once in town, their paths diverged. As Bloomberg began to make serious money in finance and information, he worked his way into what passes for Manhattan “society,” by using his wealth and sense of serious intellectual purpose to become a member of the most admired charitable boards in the city — the university, museum and hospital trustees who are the meritocratic update of the old Dutch hierarchy. Trump, the needy Queens guy by way of military school and Fordham University (he didn’t make it to the University of Pennsylvania until his junior year), remains the avatar of end-of-the-subway line, outer-borough resentment of Manhattan even though he has lived there since the 1970s until he moved into the White House. His dislike of elites is complete; his instinct (the one that got him elected, anyway) is to say, in effect, the country is better off without the Upper East Side.
"The civil way to settle this is to put Trump, Sanders and Bloomberg on a Broadway park bench and let them argue politics while they feed the pigeons. It would be a New York tableau to remember. But we aren’t going to get that lucky."
LOL! Who'da thought this would wind up with three old white guys from New York battling it out like...three old white guys from New York? And I say this as an old white guy who grew up in sight of Midtown. I like Fineman's proposed solution, but alas agree it's not gonna happen.
"The presidential campaign at this strange moment is a bonfire of the boroughs: a nasty, hate-throuple of white, male, septuagenarian New York politicians who have little use for traditional parties and regard themselves as creators and leaders of their own outsider movements. All three have the go-the-distance wallets — either their own or their online supporters’ — that other contenders cannot match. There is something inevitable about the New Yorking of the race — besides the fact that the president used to call Fifth Avenue at 57th Street home. The “I’m-walking-here” talk dominates our discourse. Trump didn’t create the corrosion, but he has amplified it and made the belittling, street-corner style of the New York tabloids the official language of politics. Many voters are going to love this stuff. They want one nasty New Yorker to take on another...
"Bloomberg might still have a puncher’s chance to get to Trump. Hollywood couldn’t write a more vivid New York social confrontation. The two men landed in Manhattan (Bloomberg by way of Boston and Harvard Business School) at roughly the same time. But once in town, their paths diverged. As Bloomberg began to make serious money in finance and information, he worked his way into what passes for Manhattan “society,” by using his wealth and sense of serious intellectual purpose to become a member of the most admired charitable boards in the city — the university, museum and hospital trustees who are the meritocratic update of the old Dutch hierarchy. Trump, the needy Queens guy by way of military school and Fordham University (he didn’t make it to the University of Pennsylvania until his junior year), remains the avatar of end-of-the-subway line, outer-borough resentment of Manhattan even though he has lived there since the 1970s until he moved into the White House. His dislike of elites is complete; his instinct (the one that got him elected, anyway) is to say, in effect, the country is better off without the Upper East Side.
"The civil way to settle this is to put Trump, Sanders and Bloomberg on a Broadway park bench and let them argue politics while they feed the pigeons. It would be a New York tableau to remember. But we aren’t going to get that lucky."
LOL! Who'da thought this would wind up with three old white guys from New York battling it out like...three old white guys from New York? And I say this as an old white guy who grew up in sight of Midtown. I like Fineman's proposed solution, but alas agree it's not gonna happen.