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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   29421 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 31, 2023

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You know another benefit of the suburbs, or even the exurbs, over the city?

Political stability.

I currently live in a relatively sparsely populated county that virtually forbids development. It has a very stable population of people with 30 year mortgages and very few apartments or rentals. Entryist cannot just rent here en mass, and start voting for policies to the ruin of the rest of the community.

Having lived in a denser, more politically volatile region my entire adult life, I did not realize what a psychological burden this was until it was lifted off of me. I sincerely hope it stays this way. It probably won't. The joke in my region, is that the region I left is coming. I mean, they aren't wrong. I came from there after all. I was talking to another dad while our kids played at a park in a similar situation. We of course had to jokingly add that we don't count. He bought a tractor and I have backyard chickens. We aren't like those other transplants who just want to turn our new home into the shithole our last home was.

During the last midterm, I think my county voted something like 80%+ Republican. However, we got gerrymandered such that just enough of the densely populated hellhole I left has been added to our county's electoral map to consistently swing things D. So maybe it just won't matter anymore who lives here or what we want. We've been permanently denied representation.

Where's the agency here? Why don't you and the other dad and other people in your neighborhood form coalitions in local politics?

Really, local politics in the US is typically dominated by a small cabal of 20-50 people that are way too invested. If you spend a few years growing a coalition it's not hard to take over an area.

If there's one thing cities have, it's political stability. You know who is going to get elected, because it's whoever the machine designates.

Until your local Democratic machine decides that incarceration and law enforcement are actually bad things. It gets gross fast then.

But I live in the suburbs where the cops have a different attitude.

There may be stability in the machine that runs a city, but there is little stability in the whimsical dictates it subjects you to as seemingly random hysterias grip it.

A lot of this is more Trump than transplants. Ten years ago Pittsburgh's wealthier suburbs were all Republican strongholds. Now Mt. Lebanon and Fox Chapel (old money) are as blue as anywhere and Upper Saint Clair (new money) is about 50/50. A decade ago this would have been unthinkable. Even wealthier places that still lean R aren't leaning as much as they used to; even exurbs like Peters and Cranberry saw a pretty big swing towards Democrats. The only places that are actually moving right are the poorer white areas where people have a bunch of crap in their yards and smack their kids in supermarket checkout lines. It's almost become a joke around here that if you see a dumpy, unkempt house in an otherwise nice area there's probably a Trump sign in front of it. It's sort of replaced having a dog tied up in the front yard.

Trump didn't lose the suburbs, the demographics of suburbs changed as older generations died off and were replaced with younger, less white ones. This effect swamps anything Trump may have accelerated. This is a continuing failure mode of GOP electoral politics for over 10 years and Trump is just a convenient excuse for their failure, the PA GOP being in a special class of inept, incompetent, malicious, or all the above.

This is Pittsburgh. There are no "less white" suburbs except for Penn Hills, unless you count old mill towns that always voted Democratic anyway, and you shouldn't because they're nobody's idea of a suburb. The areas I listed are all > 90% white.

Pittsburg is roughly 5% less white now than 10 years ago and 8-9% less white than 20 years ago. Would you have suspected that? Have you looked at the demo surveys of the areas you listed or is this just based on your perception?

Yeah, I looked at them. The areas in question are about 5% less white than they were 20 years ago, but this is largely due to an influx of South Asians, many of whom are immigrants and can't vote. It should be noted that the most prominent of these is D. Raja, Mt. Lebanon councilman best known for a couple unsuccessful bids for higher office, who served as chair of the Allegheny County Republican party. In any event, I don't think a five point increase in Asians is what's driving a 25-40 point increase in Democratic vote share.

Mitt Romney lost to Barack Obama in Mt. Lebanon (38 districts)(pdf warning) by ~8 points in 2012. How much did Clinton and Biden beat Trump by in 2016 and 2020?

edit: I would find out, but the Allegheny county website Error 403s me when I try to look it up.

I don't know about 2016 but in 2020 it was 20 to 40 points in most precincts.

How does a pre-Trump "Republican stronghold" vote for Barack Obama in 2012 by 8 points? Does this not surprise you ?

Entryist cannot just rent here en mass, and start voting for policies to the ruin of the rest of the community.

Don't say it too loudly, the HUD will force your community to start Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing, which might entail some "affordable housing" and the People of Affordability that come with it.

I recall the Obama administration pushing for more mixed income housing. I don't know if they actually made any, but I recall the horrified response from conservatives.

Naturally there is a federal program to destroy stable communities.

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