An excerpt from another must read Tom Edsall election post-Mortem in the inherent instability in the Democratic coalition.
Tufts Professor Eitan Hersh has some harsh and accurate words for our own state:
Eitan Hersh, a political scientist at Tufts and the author of the book “Politics is for Power,” is not persuaded of the good faith and ultimate commitment of the affluent left. In addition to arguing that “moderate Democrats don’t want their brand tied to progressive policy priorities,” Hersh questioned the depth of conviction of the so-called progressive elite:
Many of the supporters who say they want big liberal policies at the national level don’t really mean it. For example, well-to-do liberals in fancy suburbs who say they prioritize racial equality but do not want to actually level the playing field in educational opportunities between their districts and majority-minority districts.
He cited his own state, Massachusetts:
Here there’s tons of liberal energy and money to support taking big progressive fights to Washington. Meanwhile, our schools are segregated, our transit system is broken, our housing is unaffordable, our police force is a mess of corruption and there’s little pressure being put on the state legislature and governor to fix any of it.
Our biggest divide is between an affluent left that is far more rhetorically woke than the general electorate on major social and cultural issues (inventing gender neutral terms for minorities like Latinx for example, supporting defunding police which actual communities of color facing real violence don’t want, etc.) while being as Phil Ochs once charged several degrees to the right of center if it effects them personally. Like with increased taxes or changing their own communities zoning laws to be more permissible for affordable dense housing. Actually paying for transit and actually integrating schools and communities. This is the hard work. It will be forcing the affluent left to get out of their comfort zones and figure out what the working class people of color who voted for Trump this time in Lowell, Lawrence, Fall River, and New Bedford want. And putting their substantial money where their equally substantial mouths are.
Well said.
An interesting micro-example is to look at where public housing built under the “Open Housing” ordinance of the 1980s actually happened. The premise of the ordinance (I don’t know if it is still in effect) is that for towns whose racial imbalance exceeds limits set by law, local zoning ordinances are superseded by the state. This was supposed to make it easier to build affordable housing in wealthy segregated towns.
What actually happened is that the wealthy segregated towns had the wealth, power, and influence to ensure that the provisions of the law were never applied to them. Working-class towns like Billerica had no such luck.
The result is that those wealthy white enclaves ended up even more white and even more wealthy. All are solidly blue, of course. I’m talking about towns like Carlisle and Dover.
This account—I won’t call it Hersh’s because I haven’t read his book, and I won’t call it Edsell’s because no link to that (and why not, JC?)—conflates 2 different things:
Neither of these are the same as
So, Massachusetts still funds most education through a regressive property tax the burden of which falls disproportionately on the poor.
Voters reject attempts to remedy that, perhaps fearing (with some justification) that a corrupt legislature would abuse that power.
It is true that there are some genuine elites whose hostility to teachers and public education (I’m thinking of you, Bill Gates) might be called out in this respect. Progressives oppose these efforts.
I do not doubt that there are some of whom, to cite Phil Ochs again, it might fairly be said
but it is not progressives who oppose paying for schools or transit.
A case may be made on zoning, perhaps, but it is early days.
This account—again, I am not sure whose it is—is at least rebuttable.
I thought I put the link in, but I hadn’t. That’s been fixed. The wider piece is Edsall’s Op-Ed and he quoted Hersh in the bracketed parts. You’ll find no shortage of resistance meetups or hate has no home here signs in affluent towns across the state.
They also voted for Baker twice, vote to hoard their property taxes, and have a paucity of non-white residents. They voted down the gas tax increase to fund transit and will probably vote down the fair tax as similar communities did in IL and CA.
Just look at how controversial extending METCO was in “the village” of Brookline (which should be a neighborhood of Boston sending property taxes to BPS) or how Concord still refuses to build 403b housing. Brookline also just fired a bunch of teachers while Somerville won’t pay its para professionals a living wage.
Our own Tom hit the nail on the head. The Dovers don’t have to deal with the consequences while the Billerica’s do, which is why the former are likelier to vote more conservatively.
I don’t get it, JC. Sure, towns like Dover and Weston are notoriously bourgeois and conservative. Why then attack the progressives who live there? What exactly would you have them do, move?
And thanks for posting the link to Edsall. He calls out “liberals,” not progressives, the difference to my mind being exactly the hypocrisy that you are writing about.
And while Edsall extols the progressives active in the the Democratic Party, you attack them.
I don’t think this breaks down so easily along liberal/conservative/progressive divisions.
I think it’s more constructive to examine wealth distribution and how that correlates to power and influence. The irony of all this is that the very reason we have a problem is that there are so few genuinely wealthy and so many who are not.
I’ve always been an ardent supporter of open meeting laws, transparency, and tough anti-corruption measures. I think that the pervasive culture of corruption in MA government is among our most serious political and cultural issues.
I suspect that the solution is cultural, rather than political. It only took me a few meetings to learn that the real work of the Billerica Board of Selectmen (in the early 1980s) took place at Thackerry’s (the chosen hangout after the formal festivities). It involved handshakes, laughs, and exchanges of Red Sox tickets (or Bruins or Celtics or whatever). None of it was illegal. Pretty much all of it was corrupt, in the sense that real influence was being exerted and it was entirely personal.
An excellent corporate executive once chastised me for not spending enough of my expense account while I was in a sales and marketing role. He explained that product quality, price-performance, all that buzzword stuff would get us onto the short-list of 3-5 competitors. He said “I don’t want to be on the short-list, I want the deal”. So I was instructed to pay attention to what wines my clients liked, what hobbies they were passionate about, and so on, and to use my expense account to accommodate those interests. He said “I want fill-in-the-blank to LOVE hanging out with you. I want him (they were always men at the time) to know that when you call he’s going to enjoy the exchange. I want his BoD and executive team to know that he wants US to have the contract because he likes you. That’s how we win these deals”.
I think it’s instructive to look at the wealthiest cities and towns in MA and ask how long each has been at or near the top of the list. I think you’ll find that our venerable tradition of 351 separate cities and towns is VERY GOOD at ensuring that the same few towns stay at the top of that list, and VERY GOOD and ensuring that those in the middle stay hotly competitive with their peers in eternal (and eternally vain) hopes of climbing over them. I think those on the bottom stay that way for generations.
It’s true that a handful of cities and towns rise and fall dramatically (my own Somerville comes to mind), but the larger picture is remarkably stable.
I think our state political system is very good at perpetuating these divisions. It’s all driven by wealth because it’s all driven by power, influence, and culture.
I continue to believe that the most effective way to change our culture — nationally and locally — is to change our wealth distribution.
You take some really strange shots at Brookline, and I’ve never figured out why.
I’d also add that Brookline did not vote for Baker either election, and has a fewer percentage of white residents than the state average. It’s also the home of Mr. Hersh.
1. Maybe stop laying off teachers? Also there was a heated debate six years ago about whether Brookline should continue to participate in METCO. It would not be a debate in a genuinely anti racist community and would hopefully lead to some soul searching about why black, Brown, and working class whites cannot or can no longer afford to live in such a community.
https://brookline.wickedlocal.com/article/20140514/NEWS/140518381
I love Brookline and if money were no object it’s where my wife and I would choose to live, unfortunately, Brookline and my own hometown of Cambridge and frankly Somerville have priced us out. Frankly it’s unlikely we can stay in Wakefield long term since I won’t be able to afford to buy my brother out, and we just hit a higher tax bracket. Imagine how working families, particularly of color, who live in communities next door in Boston that lack the same privileges of safe high quality schools.
2. All of those communities should be annexed into Boston. The Brookline annexation vote is the first example of how suburbs are essentially modern day enclosures arbitrarily closing off opportunity to cities. Y’all should be paying your property taxes to help BPS and it would be much easier to fund the T in that scenario. Some of the Cambridge and Brookline per pupil expenditures would help Boston, Chelsea, and Revere in that scenario.
I’ll drag on my hometown. 30k per kid is way more than the 12k Revere spends and the 9k Boston spends. No wonder they have more AP classes, better science labs, etc. So if you want to keep your precious town meeting then pool the school money into a statewide pot. There’s an idea you can take to your boss Bobby.
Sorry for the anger in the previous reply, but I think you live in a smug bubble and need to recognize that there are many communities that want what Brookline has and cannot afford to fund it on their own. They need help from the state but many of your colleagues (not you and we thank you for this!) have failed to help people stay in their homes during the worst economic and public health crisis in a generation, reneged on their commitments to fairly fund schools, and refuse to tax the wealthy to fund the T. The T could die on your watch, which I know you would hate to be a legacy of the legislature you serve in. So blame Baker sure, and I’m glad you’re one of the ten communities that voted against him, but that’s not bragging rights. The reason the New Bedfords of the world don’t vote for Democratic governors is because they feel neglected by our Do nothing Supermajority legislature,
Either institute a statewide property tax which is more redistributive or not use it at all for schools and other services. While we’re at it repeal Prop 2 1/2 and the constitutional amendment construed to prohibit a graduated income tax. The floor definitely needs to be higher, but let’s not begrudge communities willing and able to go above and beyond in the process.
I think those are both great ideas and I commend the legislature and governor for taking a tentative first step towards funding equity with Share our Future. I really hope they don’t use Covid as an excuse not to do it, but that looks to be the case. I just find it odd that places like Hingham want to be visibly more welcoming to minorities while never questioning their opposition to more affordable housing or zoning reform in the first place.
So no, it’s not just a Brookline problem and I don’t mean to scapegoat one community. It’s the entire ethos of the professional class suburbs which routinely say the right things on equity and progress but oppose the actions required to make them happen. I really wish Tommy and TrickleUp actually read the quote in context before attacking me for “attacking” then or their community. I mean my hometown of Cambridge is exhibit A for liberal hypocrisy, nearly none of my graduating class other the present Mayor (a friend since kindergarten I am also not attacking) actually can afford to live there anymore. I think it’s a real issue in community building when long time residents are pushed out by the market and communities like Concord and Dover that should be building more dense housing are not. Chicago has problems, deeply embedded ones, but affordable housing really isn’t one of them precisely since their annexations of their neighbors went through and their zoning laws are reasonable. There are genuinely diverse suburbs like Homewood, Oak Park, and Evanston which you just don’t find that often here. A lot of our towns and municipalities enclose opportunity.
For what its worth…
Maybe even call next time before you let your irrational anger toward Brookline lead you to posting falsehoods on BMG.
As for the rest of your post, it’s unfortunate. You’re factually wrong about Brookline, and you’re behaving poorly. I hope you have some time off for Thansgiving and come back to treat your friends better.
I join you in wondering about the misplaced animus towards Brookline. And not just from jconway, by the way.
I appreciate your always calm voice returning to us to real life and facts.
Fair enough, I did not wish you
or your community any ill will and value our friendship and your contributions on and off this site. It’s not about you or even about Brookline, it’s about a collective failure that your neighbor and a political scientist I admire was right to point out. We fight for progressive causes nationally while we govern in a far more conservative way here at home. At least when it comes to economic and racial equality.
Is Brookline better on these fronts than most communities in the state? Yes. Can it do much better? Yes. Ditto the entire state in relation to the rest of the country. Half red Maine is leapfrogging us on electoral reform; Oregon, California, and Washington are leapfrogging us on climate legislation; even Virginia is leapfrogging us on transit funding as our system is on the verge of fiscal insolvency after decades of neglect.
So I am not blaming you personally or blaming Brookline or even blaming anyone here, I am agreeing with Mr. Hersh that our liberal reputation nationally is trumped by our local and parochial conservatism. I sincerely apologize that my apparently
misinformed impressions about Brookline got in the way of that critical argument-one I hope you can take to your colleagues to spur real action this session.
Those impressions came from my union which was agitating about 300 layoffs announced at the start of the year in Brookline and teachers of color I went to BU with who attended METCO communities as high school students, including Brookline and Newton among others, and felt completely unwelcome there. That was an eye opening discovery for a kid from integrated Cambridge schools who was largely unaware of what METCO was and how it operated. Those listening sessions were important for me to attend and I hope leaders from METCO communities listen to the students of color who attend those schools and make appropriate changes.
Again, CRLS isn’t perfect and is undergoing its own racial reckoning along with my own school district and even my own classroom. None of us is perfect and I am not claiming to be. Our job is to listen to criticism and do better. I hope that’s what this dialogue can spur and I am certainly listening to you and your criticism and taking it to heart. This is bigger than Brookline and bigger than all of us here. We have to do better as a country and a commonwealth and I hope the new administration and next session on Capital and Beacon Hill can do just that.
The comments on this thread, like the conclusions advanced from the out-of-context quote, and the quote within that quote, strike me as one of the more random collection of nonsequiters in BMG history.
And that is saying a good deal.
Really? Seems straightforward to me. Nationally we elect fighting liberals to go to Washington and locally we elect Baker and DeLeo style “don’t rock the boat” leadership. Liberal when it doesn’t effect us personally like abortion or gay rights or guns or fighting climate and income inequality in the abstract, conservative when it requires us to change local traditions, habits, or taxes. We could be leading the way with state based progressive solutions and instead elect Republicans and Democrats to local office to block them while blaming the national Republicans for blocking them at the federal level.
“We?”
The goalposts move again.
“We” meaning a majority of Massachusetts voters. There are a good 20-30% of the voters in this state who are Biden/Baker/Mod State House/Mod state Sen/Markey/Warren.
Lynch, Neal, Moulton, and Auchincloss won their races from the center, not the left. They won them despite Markey winning the same places up ballot. Two years ago many of these communities split their ballots between Warren and Baker.
So no the hypocrisy is the suburban parents I judge speech and debate tournaments who are white collar professionals who vote for Biden and Baker precisely since they want socially progressive government nationally while retaining their class advantages locally. High property values funding high quality schools without raising the tax revenue needed to equalize school funding or expand the T, let alone, save it. These folks don’t care about compressors it power plants since they don’t live anywhere near them. They don’t really care about Covid anymore since they work from home and order everything they need to their doorstep. It’s the places like Chelsea and Lawrence that get screwed and it’s those places that rejected Markey in the primary and didn’t vote for Biden as strongly in the general. We can’t win back the corner office or change the legislature without engaging those issues.
Can you say more about the non sequiturs that you see? My impression is that we’re talking about hypocrisy, and it’s very hard to give examples of hypocrisy that aren’t themselves a non sequitur.
For example, we Democrats (I hope you’ll allow that use of “we”) have famously supported school desegregation since the 1960s — at least when the actual impacts of that policy are applied somewhere else.
Here at home, Massachusetts made national headlines for months when forced busing was applied to our lily-white public schools in our neighborhoods — each deeply blue. I heard the same lame excuses and rationalizations here in 1974 that I grew up hearing from the deep south earlier.
Now, fifty years later, MA is still overwhelmingly “Democratic” — at least by declared party affiliation. Our public schools are just as segregated, or more so, than they were in the mid 1970s. The racial barriers that divide our cities and towns are even higher than they were then, but of course we don’t recognize them as “racial barriers”. We instead cling to the rationalizations of white privilege and call them “economic obstacles”.
Our public transportation system, as dysfunctional as it is, still builds fast (in comparison), clean (in comparison), and convenient (in comparison) rail service to our wealthy enclaves like Cambridge, Brookline, and Somerville while offering bus service — slow, dirty, and unreliable at best — to our minority neighborhoods.
I agree with you that while we’re talking about Massachusetts Democrats, starting with a statement of policy or platform and following that with a statement of practice most certainly is a non sequitur. That is the point of the piece and discussion, and that is the essence of “hypocrisy”.
I have the feeling, though, that you’re getting at something different than this hypocrisy. I therefore hope you’ll elaborate your thinking.
I think there’s truth to Hersch’s critique of our state. Thank you for highlighting his uncomfortable truths.
I think it’s better to emphasize how the implicit policy changes that are suggested would also benefit those affluent people, as part the common polity.
Absolutely. The T helps affluent communities too and can help middle of the road places have better access to jobs and opportunities while helping us poor millennials access affordable housing.