Bon Dieu!!! You wanna see the Democrats get stomped this November? Just have them pontificate that Americans' cars are a luxury and that gas should cost TWICE as much. I thought that progressives had learned a thing or two since the 1970s. The most important thing is that it is political suicide to decide what is best for the "masses" even if they don't know what is best for themselves. Kiss of death.
Link:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/4/23/18731/5367
You know, I tell my students that the physical structure of American communities is the result of political decisions that have advantaged some and disadvantaged others. One reason why old people fight giving up their driver's licenses is that to be without a car is to have one's freedom seriously curtailed. It would be wonderful if American cities were compact and had superb public transportation. But they don't.
First off, I think Jerome doesn't understand that there are cultural differences between Europe and the United States. And not all of those differences automatically favor the Europeans. Yes, Americans stole land from the Indians, but for much of the past 400 years, Americans have had a geographical/spatial experience that was much more expansive than their European counterparts. Physical space is deeply imbedded in the American psyche - even the suburban lot. Because European peasants had no chance to obtain land, such a perspective has been absent in Europe for a millennium.
Source: http://www.nbm.org/...
Just as East Germans voted with their feet prior to the construction of the Berlin Wall, so too did Americans vote with their automobiles after World War II. The Who's Who turned up their collective noses at the Levittowns that sprouted up all across America. But, working class Americans who had never had a chance to own their own homes lined up to buy them. The great myth of the destruction of the Los Angeles Transit System is just that - myth. Angelenos could buy a suburban house and a car - and did so by the hundreds of thousands. GM had little to do with it.
Americans are blasted every day with messages of fear. For the vast majority, their suburban homes are a refuge - however déclassé that may seem. Their homes are also their major asset in a time when jobs, pensions, and investments all seem tenuous. Is the current geography of the American city efficient? Obviously not. There is nothing more obscene than the acres after acres of parking lots, malls, and gridlocked boulevards. But to trumpet a plan that seeks to devalue this structure in one fell blow is absurd at the outset.
Middle-class Americans will not begin to tolerate a platform that undermines their incomes, assets, and modes of living. In an ideal world it could all be changed overnight. But in the real world such changes must take place slowly. We can offer increased government support to public transportation systems, tax incentives for close-in communities, research and development monies for post-petroleum vehicles, and rebates for high mpg vehicles currently produced.
But if the Democrats really want to lose this November, just start preaching to Americans how BAAAAD their cars and houses are. Sorry, Jerome, but you are way off the mark on this one.