Tom Edsall might just be reading BMG. He had a great article illuminating how the old cliches of ‘old boston’ and ‘new boston’ are no longer breaking down along racial but along class lines. And how Walsh, rather than de Blasio, shows how the Obama coalition is fracturing but also how it could expand to include more lower income white voters. The entire article is fascinating, as are the maps he borrowed from WBUR, but I will highly the central corps
For Democrats celebrating the party’s post-racial solidarity, however, the future offers the prospect of new and potentially more divisive conflicts in the struggle to hold together the fragile liberal coalition.
The Democratic Party has two tiers. At one level, there is an elite of well-educated, relatively affluent activists who dominate party proceedings, set the agenda, write much of the platform and decide the make-or-break issues governing the selection of presidential nominees. At another level, there is a much larger segment of the electorate that is poorer, dependent on government programs and ill-organized to force the powerful to pay attention to its priorities.
If, as now appears to be a possibility, the 2016 fight for the Democratic nomination pits Hillary Clinton against Elizabeth Warren, this largely submerged conflict will be forced onto center stage.
cannoneo says
I think if Walsh can get the affluent, socially progressive Connolly voters in the Downtown-Back Bay-South End-JP corridor to buy into a genuinely egalitarian vision for the city, it will go a long way toward showing Democrats nationally that to unite the party you have to first genuinely listen to the concerns of the working-class people whose interests you claim to represent.
Kosta Demos says
What’s so egalitarian about Walsh’s backers buying and bullying a meagre 3 point electoral victory?
Kosta Demos says
Make that almost 4 points.
striker57 says
I guess we know who to blame if a broader coalition doesn’t succeed. Sore loser much.
tudor586 says
and support Mayor-Elect Walsh as he strives to make Boston a better place to live in for all its people. If Marty lives up to expectations, he will build a winning constituency in the downtown neighborhoods like everywhere else in the City. LGBT issues give South Enders and the Mayor-Elect a lot of common ground to come together on.
paulsimmons says
Lost in the give and take, triumphalism and sour grapes, etc. is the fact that we are talking about an extremely low turnout election. With a total turnout of 40.19% it’s way too early to act as if Mayor-elect Walsh can shift Boston’s civic culture all by himself.
Ditto DeBlasio in NYC, which had the record low turnout in a Mayoral election.
Boston will have a labor-populist Mayor, but it’s premature to equate the man with a movement.
There’s still a lot of work to be done.
fenway49 says
the GOP “waves” in 1994 and 2010 came in ~40% turnout elections, and that didn’t stop the chatter. Nor did it change who held the offices in question. There’s ALWAYS a lot of work to be done, but if winning a 40% turnout race counts for the GOP, it counts for the left too.
paulsimmons says
In the Boston race, we had for all intents and purposes a Democratic civil war. Belief systems and neighborhood constituencies were at issue; the election was a contest between two Democrats in a nonpartisan race. My comment was purely in the context of Boston municipal elections and inflated expectations. I cited NYC turnout to reinforce my point.
That said, I’ll attempt to address your comment in the context of national politics.
You are correct that low turnout races can be spun as “mandates. The Chris Christie “landslide” was in the context of a 37.6% turnout, for example. The Virginia turnout was 43%.
My concern – and at a time when the generic pro-Democratic Congressional preference is collapsing – is that serious, locally-based, community-accountable, neighbor-to-neighbor work is imperative.
Furthermore, all partisanship aside, consistently low turnouts are bad for democracy, in and of themselves.
fenway49 says
It will help win both a “Democratic civil war” and elections against Republicans. To boost turnout overall, I think we need:
(1) a state elections system here that makes it easier for people who have odd schedules to vote. And we need to block as much as possible of the GOP efforts to limit voting times in other states.
(2) an increased sense among voters that voting is important and worth it. I’ve always believed this, even when I didn’t love the options, because someone will win and hold the office. Obviously many people don’t see it that way.
I think that may change if candidates/officials can create the sense that good things are coming out of government, and if things get dire enough in our nation to take people away from all the distractions (Kardashians, etc.).
paulsimmons says
petr says
… available, those of voting for, of voting against and not not voting at all, the third choice, not voting at all, is, oddly, the one people think they understand the most. It is oft viewed through the lens of adjectives like ‘apathy’ and ‘indifference’ and those may be the true emotional states of the (non-)participants… There may be other emotions involved also: repulsion and bewilderment, for example, are ones I’ve come across more than any others when I’ve asked.
But whatever the emotional states behind the choice the actual and real effect is ratification. That’s the clear inference of a poll: the study of statistics tell us that in the absence of mitigating factors, the results of 40% of the population are both accurate and precise in understanding the intentions of the entire population. So, maybe it is passive aggressive ratification. Maybe but it’s uniformed ratification. But it is ratification.
But we should be clear and say that it is not nullification. In the choice between two men the absence of votes should not be interpreted as ‘neither one’. We don’t tally abstentions. Maybe we should. But we don’t. So we cannot assume that the answers to the questions are “yes”, “no” or “neither” . The only feasible interpretation is rather “yes”, “no” and “whatever you guys decide”
paulsimmons says
The election decided that. Neither “ratification” nor “nullification” enters into it. The issue is power dynamics in the post-election period.
paulsimmons says
…now it’s up to us to do ours.
petr says
If you say the following…
… which you did… there is the clear implication that the low turnout mitigates against both a clear mandate and frictionless movement. That’s as much as saying that almost 60% of the electorate are opposed and therefore nullification. Perhaps you didn’t mean to say that. But you did say it and the implications are clear.
And what makes you think that power dynamics are different, in any way, from electoral dynamics? If “only” 40% of the electorate voted then why, suddenly, are the 60% who didn’t vote somehow more powerful, or indeed possessed of any force at all, in the ‘civic culture’? The dynamic doesn’t really change. why should it be required to? The 40% who decided to support or oppose Walsh with a specific vote will continue to support or oppose him in more general ways and the 60% who did not make a specific choice very well may continue to not support or oppose in general. It comes down, again, to ‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘whatever you guys decide’.
paulsimmons says
…as President Obama keeps learning. The dynamics of power don’t cease on the first Wednesday in November.
Electoral dynamics lose precedence to institutional power after elections.
Sometimes that power is in the hands of organized neighborhoods; more often it’s in the hands of private interests.
In any system there are nonelected power blocs. In Boston, real estate interests and institutional nonprofits often take precedence over neighborhood concerns. Harvard has more power in Allston, and Northeastern University has more power in Roxbury than those neighborhoods’ respective residents.
Furthermore high-information, high-turnout neighborhoods (West Roxbury comes to mind) always get more attention from municipal government, irrespective of their political preferences.
Election results signify the (potential) beginnings of change. They are seldom change in and of themselves.
petr says
I’ll buy that… with the caveat (for the sake of this argument) that such is completely orthogonal to electoral turnouts: the turnout, or lack thereof, isn’t predictive of the ease of forward movement and/or friction. I understand, now, that this is what we were both trying to say in our violent agreement…