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Analyzing Biden's Boston win
By adamg on Sat, 03/07/2020 - 1:32pm
Mike Freedberg takes a look at the precinct-by-precinct votes for Biden, Sanders and Warren.
He possibly, maybe, just might have gotten a little hyperbolic at the end, where he compares the battle between progressives and old-line Hyde Parkers in the Democratic ward-committee election in Ward 18 to the blockbusting and red lining that forced the Jews out of Mattapan and Dorchester in the 1960s and 1970s.
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Comments
Data
Is there a source for precinct by precinct election data for the state if the town isn't providing it directly?
How nice of Mike...
To use the same tired "buying an election" talking point that Bernie and Liz have directed toward Bloomberg and Biden although here in the context of Marty.
Speaking of Liz ..
I Ignore any political commentary were the author isn't using the candidate's actual name. Saying Don Trump (for the president) or Liz Warren makes it clear you aren't being serious. You don't have to like them to use the names they prefer.
He's Bernie, she's Liz
Lots of her fans call her that, including me. We seem to be on a first-name basis with many candidates, from "I Like Mike" to Mayor Pete.
Using politicians' last names
seems a good way to signal seriousness, rather than recreational trolling.
And when campaigns themselves use candidates' chummy nicknames, they aren't elevating discourse.
She's Elizabeth
The point isn't to avoid first names, but rather to use the candidate's preferred first name. Not Don Trump, not Bern Sanders, Petie Buttigieg, Joey Biden, or Mikey Bloomberg.
Most working urban folk want
Most working urban folk want a return to some semblance of normalcy not a revolution.
Most under /35
Want a revolution
eastie?
Eastie is one of the most working class neighborhoods left in Boston, Bernie won solidly. workers =/= white people.
To quote Howard Zinn
To quote Howard Zinn, "You can't be neutral on a moving train." The "normalcy" you want to return to is what got us Trump in the first place. Returning to that will net somebody even worse (like Tom Cotton).
Do the Massachusetts results
Do the Massachusetts results generally disprove sexism as reason for Warren's loss?
No Jews left in Boston? Really?
The comment that there are “almost no” Jews left in the city of Boston seems very strange. There may not be Jewish neighborhoods, outside of some patches of Brighton, but I’m sure that a lot of younger Jews live in the Back Bay, South End, Seaport, Downtown, etc as part of the general trend of younger, more well-off people staying in big cities after college (vs their parents generation that moved to the suburbs).
Mike's old school
Yes, even West Roxbury has a temple.
But Boston once had a far, far larger Jewish community than it does today - centered mainly on Blue Hill Avenue (yes, with communities elsewhere, such as the West End and Brighton) - and while, like many other white Bostonians, they started moving to the suburbs after World War II, what Freedberg and others remember as Jewish Boston pretty quickly collapsed after downtown bankers and greedy real-estate brokers decided the best way to at least appear to not hate blacks and to comply with demands from City Hall to help blacks escape slums was to begin offering lots of loans to them - but basically only in the areas along Blue Hill Avenue, which they cleared out quickly through whisper campaigns and similar tactics to scare the Jews away.
The Death of an American Jewish Community is a good overview of the events.
So I get why Freedberg would equate the end of that community with the end of Jewish life in Boston.
But for him to compare what happened last week - when the mostly white "townies" of Hyde Park lost control of a ward that is now minority majority with what happened on Blue Hill Avenue? Kind of out there, even for somebody aligned with the previous ward committee (he worked for Maria Essdale Farrell, who lost in the fall council race to Ricardo Arroyo).
Reverse redline
Roxbury, Dorchester and Mattapan are Black and Hatian-speaking Boston. I'd like to see those numbers. Pretty sure Biden rolled it up. Like not even close to the other candidates.
I'm Black again. When did this happen?
Ward 3, Precinct 7 is South End, went for Biden
Sloppy mistake - 3-7 is South End, 8 Streets and Union Park NA over to Albany St. Went for Biden.
3-8 is Chinatown, plus Castle Square and Ink Block in South End (and in between), went for Sanders
Question
What was the impact of usually GOP voters who are never Trumpers pulling D ballots and voting for Biden?
It does seem to be a possibility in MA.
That would be an interesting
That would be an interesting number. It would actually be good for the Biden people because it would show he can bring a brand new demographic into the mix that may have otherwise stayed home. They could at least hold their nose for Biden but to go from actual Republican to Bernie Sanders is a jump.
the blockbusting and red
Well that's a very interesting way of saying it. Across the rest of the country, it was 'white flight' to get away from living near black people. In Mattapan, it was redlining wot made 'em do it.
Jews were moving out of Roxbury long before 'redlining' was claimed to be a thing. They moved to Newton and Brookline while Mattapan was still solidly Jewish. And they did so exactly as blacks moved in. A little history lesson - people like Elma Lewis were furious when they saw the Jews leaving in droves.
Highly recommended: https://www.amazon.com/Urban-Exodus-Boston-Catholics-Stayed/dp/067400558...
It was a classic Boston thing, actually
Yes (as I noted), Jews started moving to the suburbs after the War, just like other whites.
But what accelerated and completed the process was the classic Boston move of the Powers that Be (remember the Vault?) figuring out how to throw two minority groups (in this case, blacks and Jews) against each other when faced with something they really didn't want to deal with (in this case, demands to stop discriminating against blacks in the housing market).
It wasn't that blacks suddenly decided to move into Mattapan, it was that the banks would only write them mortgages there. And it wasn't that the remaining Jews just decided to up and move, but that brokers began a classic blockbusting rumor campaign - so they could buy up property at fire-sale prices for sale to blacks.
The same basic thing happened with school busing (rather than including the suburbs the whites were fleeing to, as was done in other desegregation cases, Judge Garrity limited the busing to just the city of Boston, throwing working-class blacks and whites against each other).
It will obviously be hard to
It will obviously be hard to unseat Marty. This guy is trying to force evidence to confirm his opinion.