SmallTown is, if nothing else, small. So everyone goes to vote at one of our two elementary schools. Yesterday morning when I showed up it was a zoo. Seeing all of my fellow-citizens turning up kindled a faint hope that SmallTown might go for Obama. Not a chance. McCain won by a couple hundred votes. Earl Sholley almost beat out Barney. Republican bastions like Dover, Sherborn, Dedham went for Obama. Not SmallTown.
The Republicans here in SmallTown mirror important aspects of the Republican party nationwide. It’s not so much the culture wars here. But it is what’s been called the politics of resentment. It’s the conviction that elitist Democratic politicians look down their noses at us “regular” Republican folks. This view is often expressed angrily. And us folks have four points in their political compass-all of them called “lower taxes.” They don’t really want “smaller government.” They know that’s just a slogan, and besides, they like their public services just fine. They just don’t want to pay for quality services. My wife calls them the B-minus Republicans. Let’s aim for mediocrity even though we will probably fall short of that mark.
SmallTown Republicans tend to be folks who, although they didn’t excel in school, nonetheless are pretty well off – SmallTown has one of the highest median household incomes in the state. This justifies their world view that concern with ideas doesn’t mean success at least in financial terms. An override for the SmallTown schools? We think they are just fine as is. So, of course, they resonated strongly with George Bush, the C-average student who showed up all those smarty-pants types. At least for a while.
And Obama? His core attributes: coolness, eloquence, focus they find disturbing. He’s just an elitist who looks down on folks like them. More angry feelings ensue.
What I’m pondering today is, going forward, what kind of political party is shaped by such views? We have a party with people who are well off but feel resentful and whose aspirations are fairly limited. It’s not a pretty picture, either here or at the national level.
small town. Is that the same thing as “real” America?
Boston.com has posted town-by-town results and a colored map of the state.
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p>With a description as “one of the highest median household incomes in the state” I thought of Weston, Wellesley, Hamilton, Wenham, Marblehead, Swampscott, Hingham, Cohasset … but these places all went for Obama, some by substantial margins.
2004: 5,835 Kerry – 5,304 Bush
2008: 5,923 McCain – 1,812 Obama
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p>Typo on the Globe’s part? Or did all the Democrats in town forget that it was election day?
as it’s the only town colored bright red on the entire state map. I don’t think it’s that different from its neighbors such as North Reading, Burlington, and Billerica.
Number is Wrong. Globe reporter heard the wrong number. McCain won by 112 votes. There goes my wish to move to Wilmington.
Wicked Local Wilmington gives Obama’s tally as 5,812, so looks like somebody’s finger slipped at the keyboard.
So McCain still won the town, but not by much.
Thank you for finding this error. I sent a comment form to Boston.com, and got back this reply:
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p>”Thank you for writing to Boston.com. Due to a reporting error by the Associated Press, the map at http://www.boston.com/news/pol… misstated the number of votes Barack Obama received in the town of Wilmington. The correct number of votes for Obama, 5812, now appears on this page.”
I say SmallTown is Wrentham. In fact, I’m pretty sure of it. Why?
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p>1) Wrentham has two elementary schools, but only votes at one of them, fitting the description of “So everyone goes to vote at one of our two elementary schools.”
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p>2) Wrenhtam has just over 11,000 residents. Small town-ish if far from the smallest.
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p>3) Wrenhtam has a median houshold income of $97,500 a year. This is far below Weston’s $189,000 a year but well avove the state average of $62,365. It would, with a bit of stretch, qualify as “one of the highest median household incomes in the state.” Not in the top ten but probably in the top 20. (the best list I found shows Lexington at #10 with $111,000 median household income).
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p>Most tellingly, McCain won Wrentham by 169 votes. Pretty close to the description of “McCain won by a couple hundred votes.”
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p>Do I win a prize?
you win an all-expenses paid trip to wrentham.
if “all-expenses” includea a trip to the Wrentham Premium Outlets.
“Earl Sholley almost beat out Barney.”
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p>Wrentham is not in the 4th district.
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p>My guess is Norfolk. All 4 precints vote at the H. Olive Day School (which is one of two elementary schools in the town). McCain won 2720 to 2505 (215 vote margin, or “several hundred votes”), Frank beat Sholley 2521 to 2368 (qualifying as “almost beating”).
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p>Population: 10,460, making it definitely small town-ish. Median household income is $86,153, which is definitely on the high side… but this is perhaps my weak point.
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p>Still, am I right?
According to Boston.com at the timestamp of this post,
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p>Alford: O 261-57
Beckett: O 671-255
Blandford: M 344-339
Charlemont: O 486-175
Chester: O 369-310
Chesterfield: O 444-265
Chilmark: O 593-123
Clarksburg: O 632-236
Colrain: O 651-245
Cummington: O 376-148
Egremont: O 655-170
Erving: O 565-216
Florida: O 266-147
Aquinnah: O 279-26
Gill: O 671-219
Goshen: O 402-185
Gosnold: O 52-26
Granville: M 462-378
Hancock: O 248-132
Hawley: O 101-65
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p>Do I need to continue? Of the first 20 towns in MA listed on the page where O+M<1000, Obama won 18-2.
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p>So, when you claim
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p>did you mean bigotry, xenophobia, homophobia, knownothingness, and so forth? Do SmallTown Republicans share the philosophy of Palin? I know small town Mass doesn’t, but perhaps SmallTown does? I’d bet it doesn’t.
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p>The Republican party nationwide is the problem, not the GOPers in SmallTown. Nationwide Republican bogeyman politics are just nonsense, and blue state Republicans don’t fall for that nonsense by and large.
You have got to be kidding me.
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p>We don’t look down our noses at you, we look down our noses at the policies (social and economic and international) which conservatives constantly espouse despite the evidence that is mounting that it doesn’t fracking work.
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p>To a good liberal, empirical evidence is more important than ideology – including our own. That’s how many of us arrived at our conclusions for a governing philosophy – we studied up a bit, and saw the consequences/outcomes of different sorts of systems, and decided we can’t live with the one that happens when conservatives get their way. And when we are wrong (or wrongish) we shift. Liberals today do NOT think structural deficits are a good thing. They can be OK if necessary for the short term, but should be avoided. You won’t see a Democrat today who isn’t something of a fiscal hawk. (A lesson we learned from last generation’s conservatives, while conservatives seemed to have unlearned it – primarily because the people in charge of the budget are from the corporate hog wing of the Republican party.)
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p>It’s the Republican party which insists on telling you, their base, that we look down our noses at Republicans. They foster a culture of victimhood for you so that poor and middle class Republicans keep voting for their party against their own economic best interest. This is why they make you afeared of teh gays, us taking your guns, and us taking your God. When we really have no such ideas. (Even when we are the Godless Atheist types – just leave it in your church and out of the public space and we’re good.)
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p>It’s liberals who have, to a large extent, victimized by conservatives for a good long while. Raygun made liberal a dirty word. We’ve been called unpatriotic, terrorist sympathizers, and worse. Post 9/11, a liberal questioning Bush was labeled horrendous things. All the while, the conservatives in power were committing torture, warrentless eavesdropping, breaking the Constitution in all sorts of ways. When liberals say that the current Republican party has committed crimes against democracy, that’s because we have empirical evidence of it, not because we like to feel better about ourselves.
Perhaps you missed the part where SmallTownGuy said that he was hoping “that SmallTown might go for Obama”? Perhaps you missed his reported use of the word “they” when referring to the SmallTown Republicans?
addressing, and only addressing, the concept that Republicans feel like Dems are looking down on them. The only answer to that is, there’s nothing WE DEMS can do about this, since it’s a made-up meme perpetrated on the conservative voter in order to keep them from seeing what’s really going on.
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p>In retrospect, I can’t decide after reading whether this poster is actually a conservative who’s saying this is how they feel, or a conservative saying you gotta help them not feel this way, or a liberal saying the same thing.
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p>But the points still stand as written.
They gave more votes to McCain than Obama. I grew up in Lowell, and Lynne and Mr Lynne probably agree that some of Lowell’s surrounding towns are pretty conservative.
LOL, you should have seen the red donut on a blue tablecloth that was Lowell and the surrounding towns on a map after the Patrick/Healey campaign.
I grew up in Hopkinton, a town that sits on the edge of 495 and the Pike. Hopkinton is two towns in one. The old and older areas of town have turned from very liberal to conservative.
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p>My parents were considered middle class when I was in high school. Now they are back to being poor. Their income did not change, the finish line did. They are strangers in their home town.
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p>The separation comes from as your wife says ‘quality services’ Because quality is in the eye of the beholder. A while back Hopkinton built a new school building. Did the school need a computer lab, yes. Did it need a professional quality sound system in the auditorium, no. A swimming pool, maybe.
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p>They find themselves voting for smaller government, and lower taxes because they are being priced out, forced out of the neighborhood they lived in since 1971. My parents do feel as if the new Democrats in town look down their nose at them.
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p>Back when my parents bought their house, a person who did not do well in school was just as valued as some one who did. Not to many people went on to college, not everyone expected to.
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p>So what do you and your wife mean by ‘quality services’?
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p>What do I know, I’m just the daughter of a hard working blue collar family, I put myself through college. I don’t even fit in my home town or state any more.
As A Good Progressive Obama Will…
Posted by Manuel Lora at 09:50 AM
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p>End the wars of military conquest
End the war on drugs
Eliminate the nuclear arsenal
End the Wall Street corporatist machine and its plutocracy
Abolish the PATRIOT Act
Close Guantanamo
End executive privileges and executive orders
Cuddle with baby seals; and last, but not least
Solemnly swear to uphold the constitution (and uphold it)
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p>And all this will happen in his first 100 days. I can’t wait for the rest!
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p>http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/
Ezra:
Since the election is over you can stop reveling in telling us about the things he that he wont do and start explaining why he wont be doing things that one might expect that he should? So what will he do? Why is he even there? It certainly was pretty important to someone that he be put there. So since he proposes nothing besides fluff and rhetoric, why was it so important and to whom?
Like the signs said … 11-4-08: nothing changes but the names and faces