The PA Primary, the Election, and the Creative Class

Today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran a revised and updated version of my original Globe and Mail column on the subject.

Pennsylvanians are going to have a much bigger-than-usual role in determining the Democratic nominee this time around. Pundits say the key to the race lies in the traditional fault lines of race, gender and generation. A recent story in The Wall Street Journal featured a map of the so-called "three Pennsylvanias" -- with the "older lower west" and the conservative central regions inclined toward Hillary Rodham Clinton, and the "more affluent, diverse east" breaking for Barack Obama.

Mr. Obama now appears to be closing what looked to be a huge gap in the public opinion polls just a couple of weeks ago. He continues to pull overwhelming support from greater Philadelphia's black community. But he also is drawing in new voters from the tens of thousands of college students in Philly, Pittsburgh, State College, the Lehigh Valley and other pockets across the state. He's also likely to do well in the affluent suburbs around several of the state's largest cities.

Mrs. Clinton, on the other hand, resonates with baby-boomers, seniors and especially with women. The Clinton campaign also gains support among union members in the state's historically blue-collar industrial districts, which have been hard-hit by deindustrialization and economic anxiety for years.

The rest is here.

Comments

[Whitney Gunderson]

What a great article and discussion topic. In the April 6 column, Dr. Florida states that "in the short months remaining until the general election, deep-seated working-class anxiety about economic and social change is not likely to be overcome." I agree, and that is why I think Hillary Clinton will win the Pennsylvania Democratic primary by at least 5 points and will go on (hopefully, not all the way to the convention this summer in Denver) to be the Democratic nominee and the next President. And I think Hillary Clinton will be the first "place" President ever. The concept of “place” is important even in Presidential elections, as globalization is not missing a single beat going into the 21st Century and continues to challenge our personal identity, both individually and in nationally collective ways.

What do I mean by Hillary Clinton being a "place" President? Let me explain. Recently, I went to a small local movie theater and saw “Chicago 10,” a movie about the 1968 Democratic Convention held in Chicago, Illinois and the Vietnam War, which by then, had been raging on for over 5 years. The movie had some great old footage of Chicago in 1968, and its Mayor at the time, Richard J. Daley. One scene contained actual footage of Mayor Daley walking up to reporters standing on a sidewalk so that he could fulfill a few requests to answer questions from the press. One of the reporters asked why the Mayor was so supportive of the Democratic Convention coming to Chicago in 1968, even with the threat of violent anti-Vietnam War protests. Mayor Daley answered something like this, “Because Chicauwgo [misspelled to imitate Daley’s famous Chicago accent] is a great city. We really have a great city here.”

Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have ties to Chicago. Hillary Clinton was born there, and lived with her family in Chicago until she graduated high school and left in 1965 to attend Wellesley College in Massachusetts. Barack Obama moved to Chicago in the mid-80s to become a community organizer, before attending Harvard Law, and then moved back to Chicago after he graduated with a law degree in 1991. Both Clinton and Obama claim Chicago as their hometown, but each cannot help but have a different perception of Chicago, and how it has transformed itself almost constantly since 1960. In the 1960s, Chicago was a factory town that Midwest farm boys came to so that they could find work, find a wife, buy a house and live the American Dream. In the 1970s, Chicago saw fallout from the cultural revolution of the 1960s; the Chicago culture remained religious and conservative even though cities in the rest of the country, especially on the West Coast, grew drastically more liberal and open-minded. In the 1980s, Reaganomics helped to drive Chicago factories out of business and widened the social gap between people in poverty and the large and affluent middle class. In the 1990s, the tech-boom helped reinvent Chicago as a global business town; a place where you had to be if you were involved with global finance or global law, and Chicago remains a thriving, global, creative place today.

The way Clinton and Obama experienced Chicago influences their view on “place” and shapes the way they see the United States and globalization. When the Democratic Convention came to town in the summer of 1968, Clinton was back in Chicago visiting friends and family and preparing for her senior year of college. Clinton went with a friend to see the riots that were sparked as a result of anti-Vietnam protesters, and basically, the suppression of free speech. Not only did Clinton witness first-hand the transformation of Chicago and popular culture that was exemplified by the 1968 Democratic Convention, she could not help but observe as it changed constantly through the 1970s and the 1980s. Obama was growing up abroad when Clinton was home in Chicago for the summer of 1968, but he came to town in the 1980s when factories were closing and people were standing in Soviet-style bread waiting lines. Obama saw the effects of poor economic policy, but does not have the depth of observation that Clinton cannot help but have with regard to the cultural revolution of the 1960s and how it affected people in Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, and the entire Midwest. That’s why comments from Clinton and Obama occupy different schools of thought on manufacturing jobs and globalization. Clinton said, according to “A Debate on Jobs in Pennsylvania. Not,” a recent article in Time Magazine, “I really am one of those who believes passionately that you can’t be and won’t be a strong economy if you don’t make things. So, absolutely, I believe we can once again be a [21st Century] manufacturing economy.” Obama said, according to the same article, “Now, if we’re honest with ourselves, we know that some of the changes in our economy can’t be reversed. The swift and strong currents of globalization can’t be stopped.” The implications of these comments, which have been coming consistently from both Clinton and Obama for most of their political careers, are this: Clinton, once supportive of NAFTA, is having second thoughts and strongly supports an economy that makes things. Obama, supportive of globalization, isn’t so sure where the United States manufacturing economy stands, and believes that the United States has to continue to end subsidies that prevent international competition.

Clinton acknowledges the working class anxiety that many people are feeling in places like Pennsylvania. She can explain to working class voters that globalization does not mean the end of manufacturing. Obama takes a much more threatening stance on manufacturing jobs, by saying that the trends of globalization cannot be reversed. Perhaps, the world is “spiky” for Hillary Clinton, who cannot help but say “Chicauwgo,” like Richard J. Daley, even when she is badly faking an Arkansas accent, and perhaps the world is “flat” for Barack Obama, who unlike his competitive counterpart, does not see the value of preserving the manufacturing industry in the Midwest, either economically or politically, for at least a decade or so. When and if Clinton cinches up the Democratic nomination and the Presidency, she can count on the power of “place,” and her views on globalization and working class anxiety as one of the biggest reasons for being elected.

[MPS]

Whitney - what an intriguing analysis. I grew up just outside of Chicago in the 1970s-1990s, so while I'm younger that Obama & Clinton (well, much younger than Clinton - she is the same age as my mother), I've noticed Chicago's transformation from the tail end of its days as a manufacturing hub to a global creative class city. I looked up Clinton's father's (Hugh Rodham) bio on wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_E._Rodham) and was astonished at how well his story fits into the Hillary-from-the-old-industrial-economy story. The most interesting item is that Hillary actually has authentic deep roots in blue-collar Pennsylvania. Her father was from a line of British coal miners, was originally from Scranton, PA, and successfully developed his career as a textile dealer, eventually settling in the Chicago suburb of Park Ridge, which until recently was a haven of conservative, upwardly-mobile middle-class white families whose success was tied to Chicago's older industrial economy (and who were also escaping the collapsing social order in 1960s/1970s Chicago). As such, Hillary's Chicago is not that different from an over-sized Detroit or Cleveland. Obama's Chicago is more of the creative class professionals living in high-quality urban neighborhoods with good "El" train or express bus service to downtown like Lincoln Park, Bucktown, Wicker Park, South Loop, etc. This Chicago barely existed before the 1990s. Even Park Ridge, as a well-built "border" suburb with excellent commuter rail connections and its own pleasant downtown, has begun to attract young creative class couples and condos.

[Mike L.]

Quote: "we can once again be a [21st Century] manufacturing economy" - Sure. But as Richard Florida points out, modern manufacturing is machine-intensive, not labor-intensive, except where labor is really cheap. "21st Century agricultural economy" does not mean "agricultural jobs", and nor does "21st Century manufacturing economy" mean "manufacturing jobs".

[Whitney Gunderson]

Modern manufacturing requires high capital investment and a workforce that is not made up of high school dropouts - people with a high school diploma or a vocational degree. The capital investment part requires creative people, and the workforce part requires people to either take-up a trade right out of high school or be retrained at middle age.

To me, a 21st century agricultural economy means a small number of large farms producing as efficiently as possible, and creative professionals working to process and market the harvest - examples - "CBOT," The Chicago Board of Trade, ADM, biofuel research, etc.

A 21st century manufacturing economy has a creative class requirement for administration, and a relatively educated workforce requirement for production. It also means creative manufacturing clusters. Like the music scene in Nashville and the movie scene in Los Angeles, there is a car manufacturing scene around Detroit (which has taken its share of hits lately) and an orthopedic manufacturing scene around Warsaw, Indiana.

Agricultural and manufacturing economies do not mean a plethora of jobs for uneducated people, but they are beginning to encompass the creative class and are beginning to form clusters and spinoffs -the orthopedics industry in Warsaw, Indiana supports 6,000 jobs, according to Richard C. Longworth - speaking of whom, who is this Longworth guy? Does anyone have any insight on Longworth?

Anyway, everyone knows that politicians can be disingenuous. Hillary Clinton shouldn't take the heat because she thinks the manufacturing economy remains a strong part of the United States economy, because it is.