Nobody gets suburbia

Least of all Donald Trump

The Republican National Convention has chosen Mark and Patricia McCloskey, who pointed guns at Black Lives Matter protesters who dared march through their gated community of Portland Place, to represent beleaguered white suburbanites. Never mind that Portland Place is in St. Louis, a city. Trump’s vision of the suburbs as the place where white women voters flee to protect their maidenhead against the incursions of dusky paupers and criminals is as outdated as it is racist.

(The image above is from the famous scene in Birth of A Nation, possibly the most racially offensive in the history of cinema, in which Flora, flower of southern white womanhood, throws herself off a cliff rather than yield to the brutish passions of Gus, a darkie Union captain, who—I’d forgotten—is played by a Caucasian in blackface.)

But if Trump gets the suburbs wrong, so do political commentators who prattle about suburbia’s supposedly unique role in the 2020 presidential election. Every presidential election gets decided in the suburbs, because that’s where the majority of Americans now live (including most poor folks). I elaborate in my latest, for the New Republic.

Update, Aug. 25: The McCloskeys, speaking last night from their gilded ersatz Medici palazzo, did not disappoint. “They want to abolish the suburbs altogether by ending single family home zoning,” said Patricia. “This forced rezoning would bring crime, lawlessness, and low-quality apartments in now-thriving suburban neighborhoods.”

So let me get this straight. Patricia doesn’t want low-income housing built in the city, where she lives. She doesn’t want it built in the suburbs, where she doesn’t live, except perhaps in spirit. Where the hell does she propose poor people reside? Pluto?