We will all be spending a while longer trying to spin yesterday’s elections.
One thing is clear. School Board incumbents, regardless of party, must be generally acceptable as they all clearly won.
The City Council would seem to be skewing left, although I don’t know that this actually appears since it seems to me that we have so few true leftists in this city or country in the first place.
Maybe this years elections signal a change in the way this city does things. Maybe they do not. American politics are based on people and people change.
In 1964 people thought the LBJ>Goldwater race signaled a new era of liberal politics for the United States. But four years later Richard Nixon and George Wallace combined for almost sixty per cent of the popular vote.
In 1970 Wendell Anderson was elected governor. In 1974 he carried every county in his reelection. In 1978, the governorship, both U.S. Senate seats, and the state House slipped away from the DFL. In fact, the DFL has never been to elect a non-incumbent governor since Wendell Anderson.
Trends people thought they were seeing did not develop.
On the other hand, Republicans controlled the Minnesota Senate from statehood in 1858 until 1973. Who would have thought that the 1972 election would mean a change to last for almost four decades at least.
Together, this year's elections certainly were not a victory for people who believe in freedom. [Cf. October 1, 2007 post] And they certainly weren’t a victory for common sense on transit, although I am not sure that there is/was any way for common sense on light rail or other transit to make itself evident.
We’ll have to wait to see if this year was the beginning of a new trend. Was Dan Bostrom’s party at Yarusso’s last night the last hurrah of an old crew or just something that in four years people will look back at and wonder why they had all of the concern? Was Debbie Montgomery’s defeat to Melvin Carter the end of a lifetime of one person’s service to the city and a sign of transition to a new generation?
We’ll find out in time, I guess.
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3 comments:
I am sure it was a typo, but statehood was in 1858, not 1958.
If we do not spend millions now on trains and alternative forms of transportation, we will spend billions, possibly trillions, in the future putting it in. The metro area will need it sooner or later. It shows wisdom and foresight to do it now as opposed to some time in the future when it will cost much, much more. We should have never removed the goddamn streetcars!
We must sacrifice to the future. It only makes sense. Think about it.
If you only think about yourself, disregard this post.
You are right, D.N. Berg. I cannot type right. Statehood was in 1858.
Transit is a tool for economic segregation. Instead of planning for an area in which all economic levels can live close to each other, transit helps make it possible for those in the service jobs to live in one place and those being served to live dozens of miles away.
Maybe we should have not removed the streetcars. Maybe we should have. It was done before my time. The need to continue the economic segregation which the streetcars had helped establish gave us these danged busses that we all dodge every day.
Light rail will ruin University Avenue and the people who have small businesses there and the people who live on Sherburne and Aurora who will have to hear the contraptions. The Northeast corridor will give disturb the peace on McAfee and English and make the passengers voyeurs into back yards.
But these things are only inevitable if we continue to make them so. Better metropolitan planning, putting jobs churches, and schools near the places people will be living makes more sense. It may mean a lot of spending on infrastructure such as for soil correction and utilities, but in the long run it cannot be more expensive.
People do not want to be put out of their cars. We just need to make it possible for them not to have to drive them so far.
Firstly, I presume you mean that you cannot type correctly. Saying, "I cannot type right." sounds awful. You did go to college didn't you?
Secondly, I am not sure if your thesis that "Transit (light rail) is a tool for economic segregation." has enough weight to outweigh the benefit of having this type of transport available. I think that you may be taking a page out of the 'conspiracy theorist cookbook.' There are well integrated transit systems serving the good people of Europe. I don't hear these complaints from those places.
As I mentioned to previously, if we don't do this now for 1 billion, we will have to do it in the future for 50 billion, 500 billion, or a trillion. The time for an integrated system is now. The longer we wait, the more expensive and difficult the implementation will be.
There are hard (and unpopular) choices to be made in any decision of this magnitude. True leadership, as you know, is not a popularity contest. A mature leader will make the hard decisions he/she has to make. Bitter medicine perhaps, but making tough decisions that have the long term good of all in mind is what being a true leader is all about.
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