Letters to the Editor

• P.G. County

  [Read the article: Newt Gingrich, supreme fear-monger]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  I went to JHS/high school there, in the late 60s and 70s. Your one-sentence characterization is an oversimplification, but I wouldn't call it entirely inaccurate.

  In those days, PG County was a local Democratic fiefdom whose leaders had close insider ties to the landowners/real estate developers who transformed the farms and scrub woodlands of the southern county into suburbia during that era. A good old boys club. George Wallace Democrats. The local Republicans in those days were actually the liberal reformers, comparatively speaking.

  These days, the population of Prince George's County is mostly black- many of the newcomers upwardly mobile black folks from DC who began moving en masse from the city eastward into suburbia in the 1980s in an effort to escape East DC's "urban pathology" (a phrase that is in my view a scapegoating obfuscation, to keep people from examining the effects of Drug Prohibition in institutionalizing organized crime and deforming the local political economy in vulnerable urban neighborhoods.) Unfortunately, the gangster relations followed the refugee strivers to suburbia- their money buys houses, too- and now much of PG county is nearly as crime-stricken as NorthEast DC.

  But PG County has still been the most affluent majority black county in the USA for around the last 20 years, and many of the newer neighborhoods are suburban enclaves of the successful black middle class (notwithstanding the impression given by the Metro section of the Washington Post, which rarely deigns to mention anything happening in PG County that isn't related to a violent crime incident.)

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_George's_County,_Maryland

  It's a reliably Democratic county. And I get the idea that Steny Hoyer has the political establishment there pretty well wired the way he wants it.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steny_Hoyer

  I worked for one of Steny's campaigns as a precinct walker in high school, ironically enough- the last bit of official political activism I ever did for any major political party.

  Which, parenthetically, leads me to address one of the statements in a previous post by omooex:

  "For fair minded people reluctant to associate themselves with Democrat "pansies" and "tree huggers" (otherwise known as Independents, such Republicans are a god-send..."

  Hold on a minute. I'm an Independent, but nothing like that. I keep hearing this mistake being made recurrently by people who have affiliated themselves with the Democratic Party- that all of the Independent voters reside in some vague zone bordered by the Democrats on the ideological left, and the Republicans on the right, and that the key to appealing to them is doing some sort of triangulation that soothes their indecisive insecurities.

  That's a huge misreading of the Independent vote, which is much more variegated. I recognize that some Independent voters fall into that category- but many of us do not. Perhaps even the majority of us do not. Speaking for myself, I simply feel no need to pledge allegiance to any political party. That fact gives zero indication about my stance in the political spectrum.

  My advice to the Democrats: if you want to impress independent voters, you'll woo more of them with integrity and steadfast principle than you will by pandering rightward.

  Permalink Tuesday, June 17, 2008 04:23 AM