It's time for the Democrats to face reality: They are the party of urban
America. If the cities elected our president, if urban voters determined the
outcome, John F. Kerry would have won by a landslide. Urban voters are the
Democratic base.
THE URBAN ARCHIPELAGO
It's time to state something that we've felt for a long time but have been
too polite to say out loud: Liberals, progressives, and Democrats do not live in
a country that stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada to
Mexico. We live on a chain of islands. We are citizens of the Urban Archipelago,
the United Cities of America. We live on islands of sanity, liberalism, and
compassion--New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle, St. Louis,
Minneapolis, San Francisco, and on and on. And we live on islands in red states
too--a fact obscured by that state-by-state map. Denver and Boulder are our
islands in Colorado; Austin is our island in Texas; Las Vegas is our island in
Nevada; Miami and Fort Lauderdale are our islands in Florida. Citizens of the
Urban Archipelago reject heartland "values" like xenophobia, sexism, racism, and
homophobia, as well as the more intolerant strains of Christianity that have
taken root in this country. And we are the real Americans. They--rural,
red-state voters, the denizens of the exurbs--are not real Americans. They are
rubes, fools, and hate-mongers. Red Virginia prohibits any contract between
same-sex couples. Compassionate? Texas allows the death penalty to be applied to
teenaged criminals and has historically executed the mentally retarded. (When
the Supreme Court ruled executions of the mentally retarded unconstitutional in
2002, Texas officials, including Governor Rick Perry, responded by claiming that
the state had no mentally retarded inmates on death row--a claim the state was
able to make because it does not test inmates for mental retardation.) Dumb? The
Sierra Club has reported that Arkansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Alabama, and
Tennessee squander over half of their federal transportation money on building
new roads rather than public transit.
If Democrats and urban residents want to combat the rising tide of red that
threatens to swamp and ruin this country, we need a new identity politics, an
urban identity politics, one that argues for the cities, uses a rhetoric of
urban values, and creates a tribal identity for liberals that's as powerful and
attractive as the tribal identity Republicans have created for their
constituents. John Kerry won among the highly educated, Jews, young people, gays
and lesbians, and non-whites. What do all these groups have in common? They
choose to live in cities. An overwhelming majority of the American popuation
chooses to live in cities. And John Kerry won every city with a population above
500,000. He took half the cities with populations between 50,000 and 500,000.
The future success of liberalism is tied to winning the cities. An urbanist
agenda may not be a recipe for winning the next presidential election--but it
may win the Democrats the presidential election in 2012 and create a new
Democratic majority.
For Democrats, it's the cities, stupid--not the rural areas, not the prickly,
hateful "heartland," but the sane, sensible cities--including the cities trapped
in the heartland. Pandering to rural voters is a waste of time. Again, look at
the second map. Look at the urban blue spots in red states like Iowa, Colorado,
and New Mexico--there's almost as much blue in those states as there is in
Washington, Oregon, and California. And the challenge for the Democrats is not
just to organize in the blue areas but to grow them. And to do that, Democrats
need to pursue policies that encourage urban growth (mass transit, affordable
housing, city services), and Democrats need to openly and aggressively champion
urban values. By focusing on the cities the Dems can create a tribal identity to
combat the white, Christian, rural, and suburban identity that the Republicans
have cornered. And it's sitting right there, on every electoral map, staring
them in the face: The cities.
The urbanites. Howard Dean had it wrong when he tried to woo the "Pickup
Truck with Confederate Flag" vote. In fact, while Kerry won urban areas by a
whopping 60 percent--that actually represents a 15 percent drop in urban support
from 2000 when Gore won the election. The lesson? Democrats have got to tend to
their urban base and grow it.
In cities all over America, distressed liberals are talking about fleeing to
Canada or, better yet, seceding from the Union. We can't literally secede and,
let's admit it, we don't really want to live in Canada. It's too cold up there
and in our heart-of-hearts we hate hockey. We can secede emotionally, however,
by turning our backs on the heartland. We can focus on our issues, our urban
issues, and promote our shared urban values. We can create a new identity
politics, one that transcends class, race, sexual orientation, and religion, one
that unites people living in cities with each other and with other urbanites in
other cities. The Republicans have the federal government--for now. But we've
got Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego, New York
City (Bloomberg is a Republican in name only), and every college town in the
country. We're everywhere any sane person wants to be. Let them have the
shitholes, the Oklahomas, Wyomings, and Alabamas. We'll take Manhattan.
EMBRACING URBAN SELF-INTEREST
To all those who live in cities--to all those depressed Kerry supporters out
there--we say take heart. Clearly we can't control national politics right
now--we can barely get a hearing. We can, however, stay engaged in our cities,
and make our voices heard in the urban areas we dominate, and make each and
every one, to quote Ronald Reagan (and John Winthrop, the 17th-century Puritan
Reagan was parroting), "a city on a hill." This is not a retreat; it is a
long-term strategy for the Democratic Party to cater to and build on its base.
To red-state voters, to the rural voters, residents of small, dying towns,
and soulless sprawling exburbs, we say this: Fuck off. Your issues are no longer
our issues. We're going to battle our bleeding-heart instincts and ignore pangs
of misplaced empathy. We will no longer concern ourselves with a health care
crisis that disproportionately impacts rural areas. Instead we will work toward
winning health care one blue state at a time.
When it comes to the environment, our new policy is this: Let the heartland
live with the consequences of handing the national government to the
rape-and-pillage party. The only time urbanists should concern themselves with
the environment is when we are impacted--directly, not spiritually (the
depressing awareness that there is no unspoiled wilderness out there doesn't
count). Air pollution, for instance: We should be aggressive. If coal is to be
burned, it has to be burned as cleanly as possible so as not to foul the air we
all have to breathe. But if West Virginia wants to elect politicians who allow
mining companies to lop off the tops off mountains and dump the waste into
valleys and streams, thus causing floods that destroy the homes of the yokels
who vote for those politicians, it no longer matters to us. Fuck the mountains
in West Virginia--send us the power generated by cleanly burned coal, you rubes,
and be sure to wear lifejackets to bed.
Wal-Mart is a rapacious corporation that pays sub-poverty-level wages, offers
health benefits to its employees that are so expensive few can afford them, and
destroys small towns and rural jobs. Liberals in big cities who have never seen
the inside of a Wal-Mart spend a lot of time worrying about the impact Wal-Mart
is having on the heartland. No more. We will do what we can to keep Wal-Mart out
of our cities and, if at all possible, out of our states. We will pass laws
mandating a living wage for full-time work, upping the minimum wage for
part-time work, and requiring large corporations to either offer health benefits
or pay into state- or city-run funds to provide health care for uninsured
workers. That will reform Wal-Mart in our blue cities and states or, better yet,
keep Wal-Mart out entirely. And when we see something on the front page of the
national section of the New York Times about the damage Wal-Mart is doing
to the heartland, we will turn the page. Wal-Mart is not an urban issue.
Neither is gun control. Our new position: We'll fight to keep guns off the
streets of our cities, but the more guns lying around out there in the
heartland, the better. Most cities have strong gun-control laws--laws that are,
of course, undermined by the fact that our cities aren't walled. Yet. But why
should liberals in cities fund organizations that attempt, to take one example,
to get trigger locks onto the handguns of NRA members out there in red states?
If red-state dads aren't concerned enough about their own children to put
trigger locks on their own guns, it's not our problem. If a kid in a red state
finds his daddy's handgun and blows his head off, we'll feel terrible (we're
like that), but we'll try to look on the bright side: At least he won't grow up
to vote like his dad.
We won't demand that the federal government impose reasonable fuel-efficiency
standards on all cars sold in the United States. We will, however, strive to
pass state laws, as California has done, imposing fuel-efficiency standards on
cars sold in our states.
We officially no longer give a shit when family farms fail. Fewer family
farms equal fewer rural voters. We will, however, continue to support small
faggy organic farms, as we are willing to pay more for free-range chicken and
beef from non-cannibal cows.
We won't concern ourselves if red states restrict choice. We'll just make
sure that abortion remains safe and legal in the cities where we live, and the
states we control, and when your daughter or sister or mother dies in a botched
abortion, we'll try not to feel too awful about it.
In short, we're through with you people. We're going to demand that the
Democrats focus on building their party in the cities while at the same time
advancing a smart urban-growth agenda that builds the cities themselves. The
more attractive we make the cities--politically, aesthetically, socially--the
more residents and voters cities will attract, gradually increasing the
electoral clout of liberals and progressives. For Democrats, party building and
city building is the same thing. We will strive to turn red states blue one city
at a time.
From here on out, we're glad red-state rubes live in areas where guns are
more powerful and more plentiful, cars are larger and faster, and people are
fatter and slower and dumber. This is not a recipe for repopulating the Great
Plains. And when you look for ways to revive your failing towns and dying rural
counties, don't even think about tourism. Who wants to go to small-town America
now? You people scare us. We'll island-hop from now on, thank you, spending our
time and our money in blue cities. If an urbanite is dying to have a country
experience, rural Vermont is lovely. Maple syrup, rolling hills,
fly-fishing--everything you could want. Country bumpkins in red rural areas who
depend on tourists from urban areas but vote Republican can forget our money.
You've made your choice, red America, and we urban Americans are going to
make a different choice. We are going to make Seattle--and New York, Chicago,
and the rest--a great place to live, a progressive place. Again, we'll quote
Ronald Reagan: We will make each of our cities--each and every one--a shining
city on a hill. You can have your shitholes.
I did it and I did it better than him - so, his management kicked up a stink
