"The Irish stick with the Irish. The Italians go with Italians. Jews stick together, but they're in the suburbs now. There aren't enough Negroes to elect anyone. Poles and Greeks have to go with the Italians. People stick to their own kind. That's how they vote."
Mr. Conway, in the parlor of his home near Central Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Mr. Conway was Marylou's father. He sat me down on a Saturday afternoon to find out who I was and what my intentions were. Marylou Conway was a senior at a Cambridge high school. I was a college freshman. We were both 18.
In late afternoons she staffed the dry-cleaning place across the street from my dorm. Lewandos. It had a logo of a cat doing laundry. I dropped off one of my three sport jackets. When I entered the shop three days later to pick it up, Marylou was there again. She smiled and addressed me by name. "Hello, Peter."
She remembered me!
We struck up a conversation, then another, and then a "date," such as I could afford. We took the subway out to Revere Beach to look at the ocean. We could sit on the retaining wall and look at the waves.
I went to the Conway home. Before Mr. Conway called for Marylou to come downstairs, he engaged me in conversation for a half hour or so. Mr. Conway seemed to find satisfactory that my father was an elementary school principal -- not rich, but respectable. He heard about the farm and my melon business. I had short hair, was clean-shaven, and was at Harvard. That was probably enough to suggest I could someday earn a living and support a family. He asked what I was learning. I mentioned a political spectrum, liberals and conservatives, and the politics of the war in Vietnam. Issues of public policy, I said.
He said issues were irrelevant to how people vote. He said people stick with their own kind when they vote. They claim they like to mix, but they don't. People vote for people like themselves. And then he said the words at the top of this page about Irish sticking with Irish.
Democrats have defined Trump as a racist. I believe it is objectively true, but Trump is probably not any more racist than was Mr. Conway or the people of Boston and Cambridge that Mr. Conway described. Trump is simply more frank and direct about it. Trump says he prefers people from Norway, not dark-skinned people from "shit-hole countries." Politicians may feel that way, but it is crude to say it aloud. Trump does anyway. People like that he says what they secretly think. He likes people who are like himself. He is not alone. People sort themselves into circles of like-minded people. It might be ethic similarity, an age cohort, a political cohort, a religious cohort, a group defined around work, or a combination of those things. Everyone does it.
I wrote two posts about neighborhood and the clash of signs: My Harris sign, my neighbor's Trump sign, and a third neighbor's homemade sign calling Trump a liar and felon. It was stolen, but it is back up.
My neighborhood is at a political crossroads, where country club Republicans meet well-educated Democrats. No one is persuaded by signs. It is all tribal signaling. All of Oregon's electoral votes will go to Harris.
Even though I was born in Medford, I suppose I would be more simpatico with my neighbors if I lived in college-town Ashland, an enclave of educated, prosperous liberals, where people vote four-to-one for Democrats and "YES" on bond issues. Democrats say they like diversity, and they do, but they are thinking about race and ethnic diversity, not political diversity. There aren't many Trump signs in Ashland.
We are in a battle between political tribes. Trump has simplified the tribal choices. Those undecided voters in Pennsylvania are deciding right now if they are mostly normal White Christian folks, under pressure from smarty-pants liberal elites who bend over backwards to help victims of prejudice, and not them. If so, they will vote for Trump. Or, are they people who are put off by Trump's rabble-rousing ethno-nationalism and the tone of resentment, and aren't part of the whole MAGA tribe vibe. In that case they will vote for Harris, even if they aren't all that sure about her positions on issues. The undecided voters aren't looking at issues. They are in between tribes and deciding which one fits better.
It is mostly about Trump. You are either in Trump's tribe or you aren't.
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