Don't Blame Us traces the reorientation of modern liberalism and the Democratic Party away from their roots in labor union halls of northern cities to white-collar professionals in postindustrial high-tech suburbs, and casts new light on the importance of suburban liberalism in modern American political culture. Focusing on the suburbs along the high-tech corridor of Route 128 around Boston, Lily Geismer challenges conventional scholarly assessments of Massachusetts exceptionalism, the decline of liberalism, and suburban politics in the wake of the rise of the New Right and the Reagan Revolution in the 1970s and 1980s. Although only a small portion of the population, knowledge professionals in Massachusetts and elsewhere have come to wield tremendous political leverage and power. By probing the possibilities and limitations of these suburban liberals, this rich and nuanced account shows that―far from being an exception to national trends―the suburbs of Massachusetts offer a model for understanding national political realignment and suburban politics in the second half of the twentieth century.

Recommended on 2 episodes:

A $1.7 Million Toilet and Liberalism's Failure to Build

There is so much we need to build right now. The housing crunch has spread across the country; by one estimate, we’re a few million units short. And we also need a huge build-out of renewable energy infrastructure — at a scale some experts compare to the construction of the Interstate highway system. And yet, we’re not seeing anything close to the level of building that we need — even in the blue states and cities where housing tends to be more expensive and where politicians and voters purport to care about climate change and affordable housing. Jerusalem Demsas is a staff writer at The Atlantic who obsesses over these questions as much as I do. In this conversation, she takes me through some of her reporting on local disputes that block or hinder projects, and what they say about the issues plaguing development in the country at large. We discuss how well-intentioned policies evolved into a Kafka-esque system of legal and bureaucratic hoops and delays; how clashes over development reveal a generational split in the environmental movement; and what it would take to cut decades of red tape.

Books recommended:

• 📕  Don't Blame Us: Suburban Liberals and the Transformation of the Democratic Party (Politics and Society in Modern America) by Lily Geismer
• 📘  The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism (Studies in Environment and History) by Adam Rome
• 📗  A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life by George Saunders

Jerusalem Demsas April 16, 2024 3 books recommended

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Black Republicans, Donald Trump, and America's "George Floyd moment"

Books recommended:

• 📙  Don't Blame Us: Suburban Liberals and the Transformation of the Democratic Party (Politics and Society in Modern America) by Lily Geismer
• 📕  Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State by Megan Ming Francis
• 📘  One Person, No Vote by Carol Anderson

Sept. 7, 2020 3 books recommended

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