Beware The Hip Urbanites Mr Obama - Road to the Middle Class

Yes, all the fashionable people agree that hip urban living in the “ideopolises” of the Cultural Creatives of Richard Florida is the wave of the future—not to mention necessary to save the planet.

In recent months, the city-centered media such as CNN, The New York Times and National Public Radio have jumped on the urbanist bandwagon... This return to a more urbanized demography, some Democratic bloggers suggest, would assure a new liberal ascendancy.

You’d expect that, of course. But most people never in their lives go near a downtown neighborhood. They might even feel uncomfortable there. In fact, I’d guess that most Americans are a little envious and resentful of the downtown crowd. They get all the attention and, it seems, too much of the money.

Of course, it’s true that the cities are becoming more and more Democratic in the great sorting out as the middle class keeps on moving out from the city, the poor stay put where the liberals can shower them with benefits, and the hip arty crowd move in.

But Kotkin and Schill warn that Democrats could end up owning a permanent minority, just like the long days of the great Republican ascendancy from the Civil War to the Great Depression.

Most people still grow up, get a job, get married, and have children. Anyone who has half a brain knows that to raise a family you need to get away from the poor and away from the liberals. That means out of the city and out to the outer suburbs, somewhere where the houses are cheap and the teachers and young and enthusiastic.

Barack Obama is the very personsification of upscale urban hipness and liberalism. He’d probably do best by not reminding people too much where he comes from. More log cabin and less arugula.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.