What is the most left-wing city in America?

[austlar1]

Originally Posted by Crawford

The U.S. was building "servants quarters" in the 1950's? That was the era of 91% marginal tax rates on highest earners, and all the Gatsby-era mansions being sold off for museums, colleges, foundations, luxury inns, etc. There was almost no "mansion" type housing built in the U.S. during that era. The wealthy were hardly hurting, but the Gatsby-era lifestyle of giant homes and servants wings was finished (until the 1980's). Probably 90% of the really opulent prewar Gold Coast mansions on Long Island were sold off in the postwar years.

Oh, Crawford, is your view of the world so constipated that it can only imagine the very, very wealthy having live-in domestic help as late as the 1950s? I grew up in a neighborhood that was built out 1920s through early 1950s. I guess it was an upper middle class neighborhood, but it adjoined neighborhoods of somewhat more modest homes built in the same period that quite often had the ubiquitous "servant's quarter" at the rear. Most of the houses in my neighborhood (Park Hill/ Fort Worth- Behold my Gatsbyesque childhood home https://www.google.com/maps/@32.7192...2!8i6656?hl=en or my Cousin Bea's home just a few doors away from my own https://www.google.com/maps/@32.7188...4!8i8192?hl=en) had rear dwellings built over garages or as part of the garage. Garages were separate structures at the rear or the property. Most of these separate dwellings were considered to be "servant's quarters" and were usually referred to as such. Our servant's quarter was used for this purpose until around 1957 or 58. After that it sat empty, and I believe the current owners use it as a room for their teenage son. We did not have a pool back in the time I lived there. This was not a Gatsby-like lifestyle. Domestic labor was cheap and plentiful. A great many middle class and above households in Texas (and in many other parts of the US) during the 1950s had a maid or cook employed on a daily basis. Many of those domestics lived in the "servant's quarters" of these homes.

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by austlar1

Oh, Crawford, is your view of the world so constipated that it can only imagine the very, very wealthy having live-in domestic help as late as the 1950s? I grew up in a neighborhood that was built out 1920s through early 1950s. I guess it was an upper middle class neighborhood, but it adjoined neighborhoods of somewhat more modest homes built in the same period that quite often had the ubiquitous "servant's quarter" at the rear. Most of the houses in my neighborhood (Park Hill/ Fort Worth- behold my Gatsbyesque childhood home https://www.google.com/maps/@32.7192...2!8i6656?hl=en) had rear dwellings built over garages or as part of the garage. Garages were separate structures at the rear or the property. Most of these separate dwellings were considered to be "servant's quarters" and were usually referred to as such. Our servant's quarter was used for this purpose until around 1957 or 58. After that it sat empty, and I believe the current owners use it as a room for their teenage son. We did not have a pool back in the time I lived there. This was not a Gatsby-like lifestyle. Domestic labor was cheap and plentiful. A great many middle class and above households in Texas (and in many other parts of the US) during the 1950s had a maid or cook employed on a daily basis. Many of those domestics lived in the "servant's quarters" of these homes.

I second this about Texas. In fact, my grandfather employed a team of a dozen or so UT students as live in and around the clock help for my grandmother from the late 80s through a scholarship endowed in his name at the school until they moved into a retirement facility in ~2015, and prior to that employed various household help, including a governess when my father was a child. Every house they ever built had accommodations integrated for those in household employ, and it was common throughout the south thru the 70s—often, until the late 70s and the massive expansion of government bureaucracy and softening of racism allowing more options—women of color were often wrongly stopped from advancing past being domestic help, and because of the cheap labor supply, this provided the ability for middle class whites (rather than just the uppermost) to have a ready source of help. This practice only began to disappear when women of color began to have higher doors available for them to open, which is ~1976-78.

Understandably, a northerner would not fully be aware of this reality unless they’ve seen the film The Help, which is set in ~1964.

[3rd&Brown]

Originally Posted by Docere

About half of whites in the NY area are Jewish or Italian American. Italians are a strong Trump demographic even in fairly affluent suburbs, while the Jewish population is increasingly Orthodox.

In Brooklyn, you have some of the nation's most left-wing neighborhoods but also the most right-wing urban geography in the US (particularly the Orthodox areas but also Russians and Italians).

Oh. I'm aware. I've called out on this forum before that the changing demography of Judaism in NY State (becoming more and more orthodox) could put the state in play in a generation. No one is paying attention to it.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by wwmiv

Understandably, a northerner would not fully be aware of this reality unless they’ve seen the film The Help, which is set in ~1964.

Not clear anyone actually read my comments. I didn't refer to whether people had "help" in the 1950's. People of means have always had "help".

The claim was that people were commonly building homes with servants wings in the 1950's. I find that hard to believe. There was an almost complete shutdown in "rich person housing" from the Great Depression until the 60's, at least. The marginal tax rates and wage laws made the pre-depression lifestyles, where a wealthy household would have a large live-in-staff, largely untenable. This is why almost all the prewar giant estates fell out of private ownership. There are very few grand prewar estates in places like the Long Island Gold Coast, or Newport, that didn't fall into institutional hands in the postwar years.

Even today, the reason the public can tour homes in Newport, or the Gold Coast, and not in the Hamptons or Malibu, is bc the former are from the prewar years, and the latter are from recent times.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by 3rd&Brown

Oh. I'm aware. I've called out on this forum before that the changing demography of Judaism in NY State (becoming more and more orthodox) could put the state in play in a generation. No one is paying attention to it.

I do agree that the Orthodox demographic increase is changing NY and NJ politics, but it isn't entirely clear if this means the states will be increasing competitive.

Yes, this demographic is ultra conservative and rapidly growing, but they also vote as a bloc, and have voted solid blue in the past. The recent Trump-era deep red bloc is probably malleable. They basically vote as instructed by religious leadership, and most of their issues are alien to everyone else (such as, which party is less likely to regulate their yeshivas and whether they're following state/federal law). It's not like they're voting to "troll the libs" or bc they want to build a wall. All that crap is irrelevent.

[mrnyc]

^ you keep saying the orthodox have voted as a dem block somewhere in the past, but that isnt true, they have always voted conservative repub. as a block they are one issue voters.

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

^ you keep saying the orthodox have voted as a dem block somewhere in the past, but that isnt true, they have always voted conservative repub. as a block they are one issue voters.

They did, as recently as in 2000, when Gore/Lieberman won a similar vote share among Modern Orthodox as he did other Jewish subgroups. They even drew even among Haredi. Lierberman himself is Orthodox.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

^ you keep saying the orthodox have voted as a dem block somewhere in the past, but that isnt true, they have always voted conservative repub. as a block they are one issue voters.

That isn't true. Orthodox Jews have traditionally voted Dem. The shift red is very recent. They voted Dem for many, many decades.

And yes, they are essentially "one issue" voters. They vote for whomever they are told to vote by religious authorities. Since around 2000, they started to shift red, but the complete shift was very recent. So recent that the Orthodox members of the NY Legislature are still Dems.

[Crawford]

From the Times of Israel, referring to Orthodox Jews in the 1960's:
“If an Orthodox Jew were to vote Republican in those days, they would have been considered on par with having converted to Christianity,”

Bill Clinton was extremely popular in the Orthodox community and enjoyed overwhelming support.

Even if you look at the 2016 election, the Orthodox support for the GOP was pretty split. It didn't consolidate until 2020.

Borough Park, Brooklyn, the largest Orthodox community outside of Israel, still has all Dem representation, BTW. Their City Councilperson, State Senator and State Assemblyperson are all Dem Orthodox Jews.

There are some elected Republican Jews in Brooklyn, but in former Soviet neighborhoods, which are heavily secular and have a differing political calculus.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Crawford

From the Times of Israel, referring to Orthodox Jews in the 1960's:
“If an Orthodox Jew were to vote Republican in those days, they would have been considered on par with having converted to Christianity,”

That was the realignment era, so I think this needs a little more context. The Republican Party was considered the socially liberal party until the 1960s. After the Civil Rights acts of the 1960s a complete realignment took place in which the Democratic and Republican parties switched places on social issues. So the Orthodox Jews might have been attracted to the mid century Democrats for the reasons they're attracted to the modern Republican party.

[mrnyc]

^ yes that and also the later brooklyn orthodox did not go for clinton.

[FromSD]

Originally Posted by Crawford

There are some elected Republican Jews in Brooklyn, but in former Soviet neighborhoods, which are heavily secular and have a differing political calculus.

Is there a correlation between recent Russian immigrant neighborhoods supporting the GOP and Trump's embrace of Putin?

[Docere]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

That was the realignment era, so I think this needs a little more context. The Republican Party was considered the socially liberal party until the 1960s. After the Civil Rights acts of the 1960s a complete realignment took place in which the Democratic and Republican parties switched places on social issues. So the Orthodox Jews might have been attracted to the mid century Democrats for the reasons they're attracted to the modern Republican party.

I'd say the GOP was more the northern WASP party and in the North, the Democrats were the party of ethnic groups and immigrants and of labor.

Certainly every Democrat presidential candidate from 1932 on was to the left of the Republican candidate.

Also Orthodox Jews in the 1960s are different from Orthodox Jews today. In the 1960s there were still a lot of nominally Orthodox Jews, particularly older immigrant Jews still living in the old Jewish neighborhoods.

[mrnyc]

^ and there weren't nearly as many of them as there are today. they were still over in russia and wherever. the increase has definitely conservatived up their voting, whatever it nominally was in the past when they didn't have such numbers as today.

[Shawn]

Originally Posted by Phil McAvity

People don't need to tell me where they belong on the political spectrum to make logical deductions based on what they say. For example I would wager money that most people that come here and vote, vote for the Liberals/NDP in Canada and most Americans here vote for the Democrats

But where you sit on the political spectrum no longer strongly correlates with economic position, which is what Chef was commenting on. And I agree with him.

I vote Dem on the national level purely for social policy, and moreso as a hard rejection of GOP social positions than as a full-throttle endorsement of the Dems' positions. This has nothing to do with either my personal economic status or my views on economic and fiscal policy. I largely vote Republican on the state and local level for economic and fiscal policy reasons. Given that I'm from MA, I don't have to worry about the local GOP's social positions; they're inline with the rest of the state's center-left population. We still have Rockefeller Republicans at the state level in New England - which frankly is where most of us natively still stand.

If people really voted out of pure economic and fiscal self-interest, all the lower income and poor whites would be solidly Democrat, and a guy like me would be voting enthusiastically for tax-cutting, capital gains-friendly Republicans. We all know this isn't the case.

[Shawn]

Originally Posted by Docere

I'd say the GOP was more the northern WASP party and in the North, the Democrats were the party of ethnic groups and immigrants and of labor.

Certainly every Democrat presidential candidate from 1932 on was to the left of the Republican candidate.

Also Orthodox Jews in the 1960s are different from Orthodox Jews today. In the 1960s there were still a lot of nominally Orthodox Jews, particularly older immigrant Jews still living in the old Jewish neighborhoods.

As mentioned in my last post, the GOP of this time had a strong Rockefeller Republican contingent with broad support in New England the New York / New Jersey. Social moderates-to-liberals but fiscal conservatives. Entirely unacceptable to today's GOP primary voter, much to the detriment of the party's future.

[mrnyc]

^it may be diminished, but i would say your educational and economic status definitely still does correlate to who you vote for.

also, in reality you dont or rarely get to vote for what you stand for. you only get to vote against what you don't like the most.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

^ and there weren't nearly as many of them as there are today. they were still over in russia and wherever. the increase has definitely conservatived up their voting, whatever it nominally was in the past when they didn't have such numbers as today.

There weren't Orthodox Jews in the Soviet Union in the 1960s.

The Hasidim, who are now a big voting bloc in Brooklyn, were post-war immigrants from Hungary (though these lands are now in Romania and Ukraine). And there weren't that many of them to start out. But they had phenomenal growth rates.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by FromSD

Is there a correlation between recent Russian immigrant neighborhoods supporting the GOP and Trump's embrace of Putin?

Not directly, no. Former Soviets in the U.S. usually aren't particularly nationalistic towards their former homelands, and Putin isn't really popular. At the same time these neighborhoods are extremely hard-right politically in recent elections, and are huge Trumpist neighborhoods.

NY-NJ former Soviets are just a weird outlier, like South Florida Latins. They're aren't similar to the Ultra Orthodox, even if they live in geographic proximity and even if they both currently vote GOP (on a national level, at least). Also, former Soviets aren't all Jews.

[3rd&Brown]

Originally Posted by Shawn

If people really voted out of pure economic and fiscal self-interest, all the lower income and poor whites would be solidly Democrat, and a guy like me would be voting enthusiastically for tax-cutting, capital gains-friendly Republicans. We all know this isn't the case.

This is such a logical fallacy. "I'm high income. If I voted for my self interest I'd only vote for Republicans".

As if the only thing that creates high incomes is tax cuts. Not innovation, education, and investment in infrastructure. You know. A civil society.

There are plenty of pure play Republican states in this country with super majorities across all the chambers of government. You can see with your own eyes how those policies play out. This is not a theoretical exercise.

They're the poorest, least educated, lowest insured, least innovative states in the country. That's Republican trickle down applied at the macro level.

Not for me.

(Disclaimer: I'm not a zealot. I have always split my ticket particularly at the local level. But in recent years I've had to basically stop doing that because with few exceptions, esp in a state like PA where our state politics are redder than our national politics...there's no room for a "moderate" republican who quietly votes against womens rights, gay rights, and against an increase in the minimum wage).