VDH writes: “It is easy to chart the evolution of the wealthy progressive elite from the occasional limousine liberal of the 1950s and 1960s to the now dominant hierarchy of the Democratic Party.”
I was a teen living in NYC when the first “limousine liberal”–in fact, the man who inspired the term–was mayor. I mean, of course, John V. Lindsay, then a RINO, later a Democrat. It was interesting to me to see the “limousine liberal” species satirized (at least it seemed a satire to me) by Martin Scorsese in the figure of New York senator Charles Palantine, whom some critics saw as a Silk Stocking version of Jimmy Carter but seemed to me much more like Lindsay: the upper-crust politician using populist rhetoric to get votes. When Obama came along, in addition to reminding me of Mussolini with his liberal-fascist rhetoric and “Il Dufe” chin-tilt, I was also reminded of a less-classy, more thuggish version of Lindsay. Obama’s slogan could have been “We ARE the people!” So I was sort of pleased when someone–maybe this was also VDH–predicted that Obama would turn out to be the John Lindsay of the presidency, leaving a wreck behind the way Lindsay’s mayoralty left NYC a wreck. And the “limousine liberals” roll on . . .
VDH writes: “It is easy to chart the evolution of the wealthy progressive elite from the occasional limousine liberal of the 1950s and 1960s to the now dominant hierarchy of the Democratic Party.”
I was a teen living in NYC when the first “limousine liberal”–in fact, the man who inspired the term–was mayor. I mean, of course, John V. Lindsay, then a RINO, later a Democrat. It was interesting to me to see the “limousine liberal” species satirized (at least it seemed a satire to me) by Martin Scorsese in the figure of New York senator Charles Palantine, whom some critics saw as a Silk Stocking version of Jimmy Carter but seemed to me much more like Lindsay: the upper-crust politician using populist rhetoric to get votes. When Obama came along, in addition to reminding me of Mussolini with his liberal-fascist rhetoric and “Il Dufe” chin-tilt, I was also reminded of a less-classy, more thuggish version of Lindsay. Obama’s slogan could have been “We ARE the people!” So I was sort of pleased when someone–maybe this was also VDH–predicted that Obama would turn out to be the John Lindsay of the presidency, leaving a wreck behind the way Lindsay’s mayoralty left NYC a wreck. And the “limousine liberals” roll on . . .