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Don't Blame Us: Suburban Liberals and the Transformation of the Democratic Party
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.
392 pages, Hardcover
First published December 21, 2014
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960 people want to read
About the author
Lily Geismer
5 books11 followersLily Geismer is associate professor of history at Claremont McKenna College. She earned her bachelor's degree from Brown University and her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.
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June 12, 2018
A book that hits close to home! This is a study of suburban Massachusetts liberals in the period running from the 1960s to the 1980s. Geismer focuses on the Route 128 corridor that runs around Boston, and on the towns of Newton, Brookline, Lincoln, Lexington, and Concord in particular. So, in terms of personal biography, it’s a day early and about a half hour north- I was born under the second Dukakis administration, where Geismer ends, and grew up around where 95 and 495 meet, where the Massachusetts Miracle extruded suburbs over old farm/mill towns, replicating the original 128 boom thirty years before. I wasn’t quite the child of the inner-ring suburb professional/managerial elite Geismer writes about, though it’s certainly close enough if you squint, and I went to school with a lot of them.
Geismer writes of the 128 suburbs as the domain of the knowledge professionals. Spurred by Cold War funding and the presence of Harvard and MIT, early tech companies and their employees flocked to the cheap but accessible real estate in what were streetcar suburbs or historical farm towns. These towns became dedicated sites for the reproduction of the knowledge-based side of the professional/managerial class- from the aesthetics of the housing stock to the structure of local government to, especially, the schools, these people had found a way of life they liked and were going to both stick to it, and pass it on to their children. Part of this particular reproduction strategy involved a denial of itself as a class process, either through efforts to abate class privilege through ameliorating the conditions of poorer people, or justifying it via a notional meritocracy, or some combination.
Unlike many who flocked to the suburbs in the postwar era, the knowledge professionals of the 128 corridor considered themselves liberals, indeed, more liberal than the boss-dominated democratic politics in the city some
of them departed. They believed in a gentler, more rational world, and in values of fair play, compassion for the less fortunate, and most of all education. Geismer depicts the original 128 settlers as well aware of the stereotypes of suburbanites — small minded, reactionary, living in houses made of ticky-tacky that all looked just the same — and strove to be different, particularly the highly educated women among them determined to remain active in the outside world and who got involved in many liberal causes.
Of course, we all know that liberal values and a dollar seventy gets you on the bus- though you might be waiting a good long while for one all the way out in Concord. The fight to bring public transit to the 128 suburbs — including a Red Line extension to Concord — is just one of many that Geismer documents where suburban liberalism either failed to act upon, or actively hindered, egalitarian projects in Massachusetts. The nice towns with the nationally-rated public schools were ok with bussing in a select few black students through METCO, especially if they could (in language that is pretty cringeworthy today) spin it as an opportunity for their little darlings to learn to work with (or manage) a diverse population. But no way were they going to consider a metropolitan pooling of school resources with Boston, especially once the Supreme Court ruled they didn’t have to. Towns like Lexington routinely evaded efforts to build more housing and make them more accessible by public transit using arguments about good, liberal values like historical preservation and open space. And of course, as times got tighter in the 1970s, the mask started to slip a little and plenty of people in the nice liberal towns voted for Prop 2 1/2, avoiding the kind of taxation on their appreciating property that might have made a difference for the less fortunate for whom they sometimes professed caring.
Conservatives (and the occasional radical) have been making hay out of the Massachusetts liberal stereotype for decades- arguably, given its role in clinching the presidency for both Bushes at various points, it is a caricature of world-historic importance. And there’s ample justification for that. But Geismer admirably resists caricature, and the result is to make the critique more potent, not less. While undoubtedly there many hypocrites among the suburban liberals, Geismer depicts many of them as quite sincere… within the bounds of their worldview. They genuinely believed in progress… all the progress that could be made without forcing a substantial change in the way of life in towns like Concord.
Something big like ending the Vietnam War was more feasible, in this worldview, than seemingly smaller things like building public housing in Lincoln or a red line extension to Concord or really desegregated local schools. The effect of Vietnam on their property taxes, the schools their kids went to, their quality of life as measured by hiking trails and the view out of their windows, was not readily apparent, though it did have an impact on that other important motivator of suburban liberalism, their senses of self as good, progressive people. They could oppose many egalitarian measures from plausibly liberal values standpoints — by reference to quality of life issues, meritocracy, freedom of choice, and so on — and often did. The people most loudly suggesting an alternative value arrangement in Massachusetts at that time were violently reactionary white ethnics in Boston, the ones behind the anti-busing and anti-abortion movements. It’s important to avoid romanticizing the working-class urban politics of mid-twentieth century in our desire to stick it to the neoliberalism that arose from the suburbs. Sometimes, there aren’t good choices- left movements in the area at the time were marginalized, where they weren’t sucked into suburban liberalism’s gravitational field.
Once Massachusetts — parts of it, anyway — began thriving again during the “Massachusetts Miracle” in the 1980s, national Democratic Party politicians began taking notice. Like other rapidly growing suburban areas organized around knowledge and service work, the 128 suburbs portended a new kind of politics, a technocratic, issue-oriented neoliberalism promising jobs, growth, and meritocratic social progress. It could present itself as progressive and rational, as opposed to the ward-heelers made to stand in for working class politics and the screaming yahoos on the right. In other words, like other forms of liberalism, it attempted to split the difference between popular power and reactionary rage through various management techniques. Mike Dukakis was an early poster-child for this kind of politics, and if it didn’t work out for him nationally (in large part due to massive race-baiting), it did work out for Bill Clinton, who had all the same policies but with a fake populist drawl. The Democratic Party is still basically that party today, and seemingly cannot adjust.
Geismer isn’t a prose stylist (most academics aren’t) but given the subject matter, the book was still highly evocative to me. I’ve come to see liberalism in general and the sort of suburban liberalism I was raised partially in and around as the tool of a class that needs to be overthrown not just if we’re going to make progress, but if we’re going to survive. But I’ll admit, having been raised around it’s tropes has had an impact, though maybe it’s just local chauvinism- I think our education-based bullshit social structure stacks up well, or is at least less tacky, than the rest of the country’s real estate and god-bothering-based bullshit social structure. It’d be easy for me to hate most of our leadership class in any event, even if I hadn’t gained a political education, because they seem like, are generally, crass dummies. But the sort of academic politicians my state produces — Dukakis, Robert Reich, Elizabeth Warren — raise my hackles precisely because I can feel them tickling some deep spot in my brain that identifies their affect and rhetorical ticks with competence and safety, probably from imbibing WBUR and Channel 5 in the cradle… suburban politics have a uniquely powerful way of wrapping regionally-tailored cultural fantasies around a means of socially reproducing an unsustainable system in a way that reinforces both. It’ll be interesting to see how it develops as that unsustainability becomes more clear. ****’
Geismer writes of the 128 suburbs as the domain of the knowledge professionals. Spurred by Cold War funding and the presence of Harvard and MIT, early tech companies and their employees flocked to the cheap but accessible real estate in what were streetcar suburbs or historical farm towns. These towns became dedicated sites for the reproduction of the knowledge-based side of the professional/managerial class- from the aesthetics of the housing stock to the structure of local government to, especially, the schools, these people had found a way of life they liked and were going to both stick to it, and pass it on to their children. Part of this particular reproduction strategy involved a denial of itself as a class process, either through efforts to abate class privilege through ameliorating the conditions of poorer people, or justifying it via a notional meritocracy, or some combination.
Unlike many who flocked to the suburbs in the postwar era, the knowledge professionals of the 128 corridor considered themselves liberals, indeed, more liberal than the boss-dominated democratic politics in the city some
of them departed. They believed in a gentler, more rational world, and in values of fair play, compassion for the less fortunate, and most of all education. Geismer depicts the original 128 settlers as well aware of the stereotypes of suburbanites — small minded, reactionary, living in houses made of ticky-tacky that all looked just the same — and strove to be different, particularly the highly educated women among them determined to remain active in the outside world and who got involved in many liberal causes.
Of course, we all know that liberal values and a dollar seventy gets you on the bus- though you might be waiting a good long while for one all the way out in Concord. The fight to bring public transit to the 128 suburbs — including a Red Line extension to Concord — is just one of many that Geismer documents where suburban liberalism either failed to act upon, or actively hindered, egalitarian projects in Massachusetts. The nice towns with the nationally-rated public schools were ok with bussing in a select few black students through METCO, especially if they could (in language that is pretty cringeworthy today) spin it as an opportunity for their little darlings to learn to work with (or manage) a diverse population. But no way were they going to consider a metropolitan pooling of school resources with Boston, especially once the Supreme Court ruled they didn’t have to. Towns like Lexington routinely evaded efforts to build more housing and make them more accessible by public transit using arguments about good, liberal values like historical preservation and open space. And of course, as times got tighter in the 1970s, the mask started to slip a little and plenty of people in the nice liberal towns voted for Prop 2 1/2, avoiding the kind of taxation on their appreciating property that might have made a difference for the less fortunate for whom they sometimes professed caring.
Conservatives (and the occasional radical) have been making hay out of the Massachusetts liberal stereotype for decades- arguably, given its role in clinching the presidency for both Bushes at various points, it is a caricature of world-historic importance. And there’s ample justification for that. But Geismer admirably resists caricature, and the result is to make the critique more potent, not less. While undoubtedly there many hypocrites among the suburban liberals, Geismer depicts many of them as quite sincere… within the bounds of their worldview. They genuinely believed in progress… all the progress that could be made without forcing a substantial change in the way of life in towns like Concord.
Something big like ending the Vietnam War was more feasible, in this worldview, than seemingly smaller things like building public housing in Lincoln or a red line extension to Concord or really desegregated local schools. The effect of Vietnam on their property taxes, the schools their kids went to, their quality of life as measured by hiking trails and the view out of their windows, was not readily apparent, though it did have an impact on that other important motivator of suburban liberalism, their senses of self as good, progressive people. They could oppose many egalitarian measures from plausibly liberal values standpoints — by reference to quality of life issues, meritocracy, freedom of choice, and so on — and often did. The people most loudly suggesting an alternative value arrangement in Massachusetts at that time were violently reactionary white ethnics in Boston, the ones behind the anti-busing and anti-abortion movements. It’s important to avoid romanticizing the working-class urban politics of mid-twentieth century in our desire to stick it to the neoliberalism that arose from the suburbs. Sometimes, there aren’t good choices- left movements in the area at the time were marginalized, where they weren’t sucked into suburban liberalism’s gravitational field.
Once Massachusetts — parts of it, anyway — began thriving again during the “Massachusetts Miracle” in the 1980s, national Democratic Party politicians began taking notice. Like other rapidly growing suburban areas organized around knowledge and service work, the 128 suburbs portended a new kind of politics, a technocratic, issue-oriented neoliberalism promising jobs, growth, and meritocratic social progress. It could present itself as progressive and rational, as opposed to the ward-heelers made to stand in for working class politics and the screaming yahoos on the right. In other words, like other forms of liberalism, it attempted to split the difference between popular power and reactionary rage through various management techniques. Mike Dukakis was an early poster-child for this kind of politics, and if it didn’t work out for him nationally (in large part due to massive race-baiting), it did work out for Bill Clinton, who had all the same policies but with a fake populist drawl. The Democratic Party is still basically that party today, and seemingly cannot adjust.
Geismer isn’t a prose stylist (most academics aren’t) but given the subject matter, the book was still highly evocative to me. I’ve come to see liberalism in general and the sort of suburban liberalism I was raised partially in and around as the tool of a class that needs to be overthrown not just if we’re going to make progress, but if we’re going to survive. But I’ll admit, having been raised around it’s tropes has had an impact, though maybe it’s just local chauvinism- I think our education-based bullshit social structure stacks up well, or is at least less tacky, than the rest of the country’s real estate and god-bothering-based bullshit social structure. It’d be easy for me to hate most of our leadership class in any event, even if I hadn’t gained a political education, because they seem like, are generally, crass dummies. But the sort of academic politicians my state produces — Dukakis, Robert Reich, Elizabeth Warren — raise my hackles precisely because I can feel them tickling some deep spot in my brain that identifies their affect and rhetorical ticks with competence and safety, probably from imbibing WBUR and Channel 5 in the cradle… suburban politics have a uniquely powerful way of wrapping regionally-tailored cultural fantasies around a means of socially reproducing an unsustainable system in a way that reinforces both. It’ll be interesting to see how it develops as that unsustainability becomes more clear. ****’
December 8, 2015
Lily Geismer’s Don’t Blame Us: Suburban Liberals and the Transformation of the Democratic Party offers sharp insights into how the Democratic Party evolved from the New Deal era to the Reagan years (and beyond), in which upper-middle class professionals with postgraduate degrees came to be a core part of the coalition (a group often cited as part of the Obama coalition).
She focuses on a few suburban towns in the Route 128 belt outside of Boston: Brookline, Newton, Lincoln, Concord, and Lexington. These towns saw a lot of growth in the 1950s and 1960s due to increases in R&D spending from the federal government (particularly for “defense” purposes). The towns thus ended up with large populations of post-graduate professionals: lawyers, doctors, businessmen, and (especially) scientists and engineers. These people were liberally-minded, and because of their class/status, they had access to power and the knowledge/capacity to use it.
Geismer explains how suburban politics should be treated as its own phenomenon, one that often shares similarities across partisan lines—with a focus on “low taxes, high property values, quality education, and the safety and security of children.” Cultural issues (abortion rights, diversity), foreign policy issues (namely, peace activism), and quality-of-life issues (around the environment) were a key part of this framework and reflected many of the same ultimate values. Geismer shows how grassroots liberal activism harnessed these suburban values to achieve their goals, in ways that often obscured wider issues of structural inequality.
Housing and education activism epitomized this dynamic. Grassroots liberal activists in the suburbs saw housing discrimination as largely an individual phenomenon, protesting against decisions of landlords or realtors to block specific families. But when it came to wider issues of affordable housing, activism faltered. With education, the popularity of METCO, which bused minority students in Boston to the suburbs, was prefaced on a belief that diversity would benefit the upper-middle class white students and would not cost anything (because the state would reimburse). Diversity was about enrichment and awareness, not redistributing power.
The commitment to “open space” as part of a vision of local character and quality-of-life often ran against a commitment to affordable housing and inclusion, weakening the possibilities of cross-class, cross-race coalitions. Peace activism, despite some attempts otherwise, also suffered from such limitations in alliance formation. In the feminist movement, cross-class, cross-race coalitions were also hindered by the emergent rhetoric of “choice” in abortion politics, a rhetoric that hides how socioeconomic forces bear heavily on low-income women’s ability to make such choices in the first place.
Geismer also offers a useful corrective to the idea that Dukakis lost in 1988 because he was some “Massachusetts liberal.” As governor, in fact, he pioneered many policies that the DLC would later push nationally, such as welfare “reform,” balanced budgets, and a focus on high-tech and service jobs (via public-private partnerships and tax cuts).
When reading the book, I was curious about whether any of the individual activists discussed underwent political evolutions of their own—from grassroots liberal activism to anti-tax activism. Or was it mainly just a shifting of those weakly in the suburban liberal consensus, committed more to the broad priorities of suburban politics than their manifestation on the left-right spectrum? And, to look at polling numbers in the towns she provides, they sometimes don’t seem that “liberal” in the first place (well, except for Brookline).
And I would have also liked to see a broader treatment of environmental grassroots activism. The only environmental issue discussed at length is conservation, but the period of time she discussed also marked the time when the environmental movement grew nationally to focus on issues beyond that (importantly, pollution—clean water/clean air). As other books have shown, there were limits to cross-class, cross-race coalitions here as well, and attention to this could have bolstered her argument.
Stars: 4.5
She focuses on a few suburban towns in the Route 128 belt outside of Boston: Brookline, Newton, Lincoln, Concord, and Lexington. These towns saw a lot of growth in the 1950s and 1960s due to increases in R&D spending from the federal government (particularly for “defense” purposes). The towns thus ended up with large populations of post-graduate professionals: lawyers, doctors, businessmen, and (especially) scientists and engineers. These people were liberally-minded, and because of their class/status, they had access to power and the knowledge/capacity to use it.
Geismer explains how suburban politics should be treated as its own phenomenon, one that often shares similarities across partisan lines—with a focus on “low taxes, high property values, quality education, and the safety and security of children.” Cultural issues (abortion rights, diversity), foreign policy issues (namely, peace activism), and quality-of-life issues (around the environment) were a key part of this framework and reflected many of the same ultimate values. Geismer shows how grassroots liberal activism harnessed these suburban values to achieve their goals, in ways that often obscured wider issues of structural inequality.
Housing and education activism epitomized this dynamic. Grassroots liberal activists in the suburbs saw housing discrimination as largely an individual phenomenon, protesting against decisions of landlords or realtors to block specific families. But when it came to wider issues of affordable housing, activism faltered. With education, the popularity of METCO, which bused minority students in Boston to the suburbs, was prefaced on a belief that diversity would benefit the upper-middle class white students and would not cost anything (because the state would reimburse). Diversity was about enrichment and awareness, not redistributing power.
The commitment to “open space” as part of a vision of local character and quality-of-life often ran against a commitment to affordable housing and inclusion, weakening the possibilities of cross-class, cross-race coalitions. Peace activism, despite some attempts otherwise, also suffered from such limitations in alliance formation. In the feminist movement, cross-class, cross-race coalitions were also hindered by the emergent rhetoric of “choice” in abortion politics, a rhetoric that hides how socioeconomic forces bear heavily on low-income women’s ability to make such choices in the first place.
Geismer also offers a useful corrective to the idea that Dukakis lost in 1988 because he was some “Massachusetts liberal.” As governor, in fact, he pioneered many policies that the DLC would later push nationally, such as welfare “reform,” balanced budgets, and a focus on high-tech and service jobs (via public-private partnerships and tax cuts).
When reading the book, I was curious about whether any of the individual activists discussed underwent political evolutions of their own—from grassroots liberal activism to anti-tax activism. Or was it mainly just a shifting of those weakly in the suburban liberal consensus, committed more to the broad priorities of suburban politics than their manifestation on the left-right spectrum? And, to look at polling numbers in the towns she provides, they sometimes don’t seem that “liberal” in the first place (well, except for Brookline).
And I would have also liked to see a broader treatment of environmental grassroots activism. The only environmental issue discussed at length is conservation, but the period of time she discussed also marked the time when the environmental movement grew nationally to focus on issues beyond that (importantly, pollution—clean water/clean air). As other books have shown, there were limits to cross-class, cross-race coalitions here as well, and attention to this could have bolstered her argument.
Stars: 4.5
July 6, 2024
A solid work of scholarship that makes a case that is even more blindingly obvious now than it was in 2014. The heart of the Democratic Party is the professional class, that is upwardly mobile, committed to diversity (with many limits), left on social issues, and allergic to higher taxes. There is more to it than that, but I think the best point, particularly coming in 2014, is that a major story of the 1972-2012 period is the Democratic Party's embrace of professionals. Since this book came out, more have picked up the thread, and in some circles the term PMC (professional managerial class) is quite common.
I took off a star for the author's bias but mostly the prose, which while clear, was more of a slog than I thought it would be. That said, this is a good community study, made better by the complexities of Massachusetts' experience and its ties to larger trends.
I took off a star for the author's bias but mostly the prose, which while clear, was more of a slog than I thought it would be. That said, this is a good community study, made better by the complexities of Massachusetts' experience and its ties to larger trends.
March 16, 2021
This should be required historical reading for anyone immersed in Massachusetts politics and advocacy. More broadly, a perceptive and rigorous case study into the tension between the Democratic Party’s commitment to racial and social justice and its increasing electoral reliance on relatively affluent white people in the suburbs. Probably remains the most critical fault line here in Massachusetts and nationally for progressives.
December 22, 2019
This book is an interesting look at suburban politics and is full of insights large and small that are helpful to understanding the unique material conditions of suburbanism and its resulting politics. It is also helpful to understanding the origins of an ideology that has gradually hollowed out the left wing in the US over the past half century.
There are plenty of things to criticize, though. First, it does not fully deliver on its subtitle; the linkages between the suburban political dynamics described here and the “transformation of the Democrats” are definitely relegated to the book’s B plot. It also has too much detail and the argument frequently gets lost in the sea of names and acronyms and groups.
Most annoying to me was that it is guilty of a problem common to writing on suburban politics: it conflates "liberals" and "mostly liberal areas."
Time after time you will read articles about ostensibly liberal suburbs rejecting affordable housing or alterations to their school district boundaries, with the implication that the liberalism of these areas is of the “for thee, not for me” variety.
This is probably true in many or even most cases, but these articles rarely provide evidence that it is actually liberals who are doing the rejecting. In my experience, these class and race-charged controversies are actually driven by these areas’ conservatives who are significant in number even in the most liberal places.
“Don’t Blame Me” continues in this tradition, albeit with much greater detail and sophistication. The book's central argument is that the suburban liberals studied here have unique class interests that lend themselves to particular areas of advocacy (generally cultural issues like feminism, the environment, fair housing, abortion, etc), and to advocacy that does not address structural inequalities and inequities in outcomes, but instead focuses on choice and opportunity and requires few personal sacrifices from suburbanites.
The author shows that suburbanites frequently rebel when they feel the proposed solutions to social problems are threatening their own quality of life.
From this she draws two main conclusions: the suburbs are a land of contrasts, which include conservative and progressive views; and that suburban liberalism is weak tea, which is unwilling or unable to address society's problems issues in a meaningful way.
However, she does not show that it is actual liberals who are stymieing progress. A better book would have shown that Person X or Group Y that previously did all these liberal things actually flipped to advocating for the conservative position because their own narrow interests were threatened.
But instead, the evidence is usually: The majority of Newton votes liberal; some Newton residents raised enough of a stink to block affordable housing; therefore Newton’s liberals don’t like affordable housing.
In fact the author offers countervailing evidence: it’s usually the liberal advocacy groups who are pushing the hardest for the most aggressively progressive solutions.
Of course, this does not mean the author is wrong. There is undoubtedly overlap — possibly significant overlap — between those voting McGovern and those who don’t want their kids going to majority-minority schools. It’s just that she doesn’t prove it.
What she does prove, though, is that the atomized, free choice ideology of suburban liberalism is no match for the politics of backlash. And this is a crucial point that continues to haunt us.
There are plenty of things to criticize, though. First, it does not fully deliver on its subtitle; the linkages between the suburban political dynamics described here and the “transformation of the Democrats” are definitely relegated to the book’s B plot. It also has too much detail and the argument frequently gets lost in the sea of names and acronyms and groups.
Most annoying to me was that it is guilty of a problem common to writing on suburban politics: it conflates "liberals" and "mostly liberal areas."
Time after time you will read articles about ostensibly liberal suburbs rejecting affordable housing or alterations to their school district boundaries, with the implication that the liberalism of these areas is of the “for thee, not for me” variety.
This is probably true in many or even most cases, but these articles rarely provide evidence that it is actually liberals who are doing the rejecting. In my experience, these class and race-charged controversies are actually driven by these areas’ conservatives who are significant in number even in the most liberal places.
“Don’t Blame Me” continues in this tradition, albeit with much greater detail and sophistication. The book's central argument is that the suburban liberals studied here have unique class interests that lend themselves to particular areas of advocacy (generally cultural issues like feminism, the environment, fair housing, abortion, etc), and to advocacy that does not address structural inequalities and inequities in outcomes, but instead focuses on choice and opportunity and requires few personal sacrifices from suburbanites.
The author shows that suburbanites frequently rebel when they feel the proposed solutions to social problems are threatening their own quality of life.
From this she draws two main conclusions: the suburbs are a land of contrasts, which include conservative and progressive views; and that suburban liberalism is weak tea, which is unwilling or unable to address society's problems issues in a meaningful way.
However, she does not show that it is actual liberals who are stymieing progress. A better book would have shown that Person X or Group Y that previously did all these liberal things actually flipped to advocating for the conservative position because their own narrow interests were threatened.
But instead, the evidence is usually: The majority of Newton votes liberal; some Newton residents raised enough of a stink to block affordable housing; therefore Newton’s liberals don’t like affordable housing.
In fact the author offers countervailing evidence: it’s usually the liberal advocacy groups who are pushing the hardest for the most aggressively progressive solutions.
Of course, this does not mean the author is wrong. There is undoubtedly overlap — possibly significant overlap — between those voting McGovern and those who don’t want their kids going to majority-minority schools. It’s just that she doesn’t prove it.
What she does prove, though, is that the atomized, free choice ideology of suburban liberalism is no match for the politics of backlash. And this is a crucial point that continues to haunt us.
November 13, 2020
Initially wary of a book so heavily focused on Massachusetts and the Boston Suburbs, I am reminded of the universality to be found in specificity. Geismer performs an almost surgical deconstruction of a host of issues, most heavily focused on land use, fair housing, abortion rights and tax levees in 1960s and 1970s Massachusetts politics and the role they played in the inchoate suburban politics of the era, which helped lead to the formation of the technocratic, meritocratic and Big Tech-beholden Democratic Party we find today.
It feels especially prescient to consider what we might learn about the perils and pitfalls of suburban politics as we see in Trump-era America a Democratic Party keen on re-capturing that fabled golden goose, The Suburbs, and the ways in which suburban politics may in fact hinder more substantial, radical metropolitan reforms.
It feels especially prescient to consider what we might learn about the perils and pitfalls of suburban politics as we see in Trump-era America a Democratic Party keen on re-capturing that fabled golden goose, The Suburbs, and the ways in which suburban politics may in fact hinder more substantial, radical metropolitan reforms.
June 20, 2021
Since the George Floyd uprisings in 2020, it has felt like America is coming to a new reckoning with regard to race. This book is a good reminder that there's nothing new under the sun, and that many of the conversations we are having today are very similar to those had by prior generations. This book focuses on the high tech suburbs of Boston around route 128. I grew up in a very similar, very white town that was a suburb of Boston, not around route 128, but fundamentally powered by very similar dynamics. If I had a different history/didn't have a commitment to this area, and if I was reading this a few years ago or a few years from now, maybe it wouldn't be a 5 star book. But right now, it feels very "of the moment" and very important.
There are other stories of the modern Democratic party, but this one has a laser focus on some particular dynamics. The main message is that, if we are to look for a truly emancipatory politic, liberals will not save us, and that we can expect class-segregated suburbs to prioritize their own comfort over any solidarity with oppressed groups. In many ways, this is expected: it's the Malcom X adage that "Power never takes a back step – only in the face of more power". The title is ironic: we certainly can blame the suburbs for rejecting calls for a more equitable society, despite, or even perhaps because of, their liberal commitments.
Suburban liberal causes may include busing black children from the city to the suburbs. They may include environmental protection. They may include anti-war sentiments and pro-feminist agitation. And these are all grounded in genuine care for these concerns. But they are also circumscribed and limited by the socio-economic perspective of suburban liberalism. For example, environmentalism may mean reserving wetlands from development. But this is because reserving land from development precludes the need for providing additional municipal services that raise taxes, so it also is in the economic interests of the town's residents. Anti-war activism may push for re-allocating funds, but it does not push for shutting down the companies that provide much of the economic activity of these towns. Suburban feminist politics of the years covered in this book centered around abortion *access*, but not necessarily provision, excluding poorer women from the rights secured by wealthier suburban women and not allying with less well-off women who also may have struggled more with domestic violence, housing, or affordable childcare. While the public imagination associates conservatism with an "I've got mine" ideology, this book shows that liberalism, in practice, has many of the same instincts.
These lessons are drawn out by a careful and thorough history of the politics of Massachusetts generally and the "tech corridor" route 128 Boston suburbs specifically in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Different chapters have different focuses in both topic and time focus. But the trend is clear: well-educated and well-funded liberal organizers can (and often did) make large political movements happen and induced changes in policy according to their wishes. They leveraged their relatively larger amount of leisure time combined with easier access to politicians and money to create some important "wins". And yet, they never were able to form alliances to allies in poorer communities nor to cross the race-line to minoritized parts of the state. Both the vision and the strategy ended up repeatedly limited by the insularity of suburban liberal politics and the way the strengths of the movement also were its weaknesses. "Fiscal responsibility" and a "freedom to choose" inherently is at odds with any emancipatory politic or the equal treatment of poorer communities because richer communities do not see any reason to make common cause with poorer communities. In this paradigm, racial justice is impossible. It's clear to see, that with suburban liberals in the driver's seat, it's no wonder that Boston is just as segregated now than it was years ago (when looking specifically at black and latino families - Asian Americans are a different story, not the focus of this investigation).
Geismer walks through the various chapters on education, on integration and busing, on environmentalism, etc. with an easy-to-read narrative arc. There are lots of interesting little details on the people involved, the alliances (not) made, and the organizations formed for various interest groups. In some cases, it feels minor, but that's what this history is made of: people starting movements and leading other citizens in various causes. Some of the chapters feel a bit repetitive, but I think that's because a lot of this story rhymes due to the same sort of politics and approaches playing out in different arenas/battles.
There's a really great podcast interview that covers much of the ground of the book itself that was my introduction to the book. https://www.thedigradio.com/podcast/r... It's an important book for anyone trying to understand the nature of modern American politics and especially for anyone with a connection to Massachusetts and Boston's suburbs.
There are other stories of the modern Democratic party, but this one has a laser focus on some particular dynamics. The main message is that, if we are to look for a truly emancipatory politic, liberals will not save us, and that we can expect class-segregated suburbs to prioritize their own comfort over any solidarity with oppressed groups. In many ways, this is expected: it's the Malcom X adage that "Power never takes a back step – only in the face of more power". The title is ironic: we certainly can blame the suburbs for rejecting calls for a more equitable society, despite, or even perhaps because of, their liberal commitments.
Suburban liberal causes may include busing black children from the city to the suburbs. They may include environmental protection. They may include anti-war sentiments and pro-feminist agitation. And these are all grounded in genuine care for these concerns. But they are also circumscribed and limited by the socio-economic perspective of suburban liberalism. For example, environmentalism may mean reserving wetlands from development. But this is because reserving land from development precludes the need for providing additional municipal services that raise taxes, so it also is in the economic interests of the town's residents. Anti-war activism may push for re-allocating funds, but it does not push for shutting down the companies that provide much of the economic activity of these towns. Suburban feminist politics of the years covered in this book centered around abortion *access*, but not necessarily provision, excluding poorer women from the rights secured by wealthier suburban women and not allying with less well-off women who also may have struggled more with domestic violence, housing, or affordable childcare. While the public imagination associates conservatism with an "I've got mine" ideology, this book shows that liberalism, in practice, has many of the same instincts.
These lessons are drawn out by a careful and thorough history of the politics of Massachusetts generally and the "tech corridor" route 128 Boston suburbs specifically in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Different chapters have different focuses in both topic and time focus. But the trend is clear: well-educated and well-funded liberal organizers can (and often did) make large political movements happen and induced changes in policy according to their wishes. They leveraged their relatively larger amount of leisure time combined with easier access to politicians and money to create some important "wins". And yet, they never were able to form alliances to allies in poorer communities nor to cross the race-line to minoritized parts of the state. Both the vision and the strategy ended up repeatedly limited by the insularity of suburban liberal politics and the way the strengths of the movement also were its weaknesses. "Fiscal responsibility" and a "freedom to choose" inherently is at odds with any emancipatory politic or the equal treatment of poorer communities because richer communities do not see any reason to make common cause with poorer communities. In this paradigm, racial justice is impossible. It's clear to see, that with suburban liberals in the driver's seat, it's no wonder that Boston is just as segregated now than it was years ago (when looking specifically at black and latino families - Asian Americans are a different story, not the focus of this investigation).
Geismer walks through the various chapters on education, on integration and busing, on environmentalism, etc. with an easy-to-read narrative arc. There are lots of interesting little details on the people involved, the alliances (not) made, and the organizations formed for various interest groups. In some cases, it feels minor, but that's what this history is made of: people starting movements and leading other citizens in various causes. Some of the chapters feel a bit repetitive, but I think that's because a lot of this story rhymes due to the same sort of politics and approaches playing out in different arenas/battles.
There's a really great podcast interview that covers much of the ground of the book itself that was my introduction to the book. https://www.thedigradio.com/podcast/r... It's an important book for anyone trying to understand the nature of modern American politics and especially for anyone with a connection to Massachusetts and Boston's suburbs.
April 15, 2023
This book shows how interconnected the different levels of our political system are and how many similarities there are between factions thought to be polar opposites. It is essential in understanding Massachusetts politics as well as the shaping of the post-New Deal Order Democratic Party, and even the Republican Party in their response to the other party’s shift. Massachusetts is not exceptional—and Geismer does a great job here at using this history to illustrate liberalism’s duplicity. It also clearly shows the limits to localism and why decentralization usually increases inequities. Very important reading--some chapters, including the last couple tying everything together, definitely deserved 5 stars, but I'm giving the book as a whole 4 stars because a lot of it dragged and spent way too much time focusing on the specifics of suburban liberal activism, I thought.
Suburban liberals like the ones pictured in this book feel bad about things like racism, so they take performative actions to show that they care—but they stop short of taking responsibility for inequities that they have had a part in perpetuating. They will say that a great education is something everyone should have access to, but then vote for lowering property taxes that fund public education because they can send their kids to private schools. They will say their little suburb cares about social equality, the environment, and free choice, but continue to separate themselves from the greater metro and inhibit anyone else from moving there. Their exceptionalism and the way they soothe their guilty consciences are the only things that separate them from those who live in the Deep South suburbs.
Democrats and Republicans have been responsible for the privatization and austerity of the last 50 years, and the extent of Democrats’ involvement has not been simply responding to a rightward turn of the Republican Party. The shifts in the Democratic Party described in this book, which Massachusetts suburban liberals were instrumental in, show clearly how the Democratic Party got the elitist label which has driven working-class voters to the Republican Party and allowed conservatives to be such successful reactionaries. And even when Democrats manage to win, they don’t do much to win back those working-class voters.
Liberalism does not produce better results than Reagan-style supply-side economics, and the knowledge professionals fighting for the kind of policy that Dukakis, Clinton, etc., ushered in have still been vulnerable to the same kind of abandonment, with firms in search of cheaper land and cheaper labor. And the actions taken by these suburban liberals enabled these runaway firms to exploit the fragmentation of metro areas.
The liberal elite exceptionalism, as seen in the 1988 election, is perhaps why there has not been another major political realignment since 1968/the 70s. Post civil war was an obvious reason for a realignment, and so was the new deal. But Democrats have shown no proof that they are not just elites. Even when Obama had a trifecta in 2009, he didn’t do anything. Dukakis being nominated in 1988 was a bigger deal than I ever had any knowledge of...it perhaps solidified the ‘death’ of the Democratic Party, and the New Democrats’ response to the ‘88 election literally couldn’t have been worse. Obama’s 2012 platform and the neighborhoods he won show that not much changed at all in those 24 years, apart from the racial and economic segregation being further obscured. It’s telling that his 2004 DNC keynote speech, where he went off about there not being a black America or a white America or a liberal or a conservative America, was in Boston.
There are a black America and a white America--but acting like there isn't this division, resulting from slavery, segregation, and economic inequality, just inhibits these problems from being addressed. Democrats want to act like there is no liberal America or conservative America; Republicans want to drive the culture wars by illustrating liberal America as increasingly dangerous; yet unfortunately, aside from these calls for unity vs. calls for political violence amidst the supposedly unprecedented polarization, the ballot box sometimes feels like that meme where the recycling and landfill slots both go to the same bin. Our urban policy, tax system, inadequate regulatory state, and our two-party system all serve the interests of those with wealth. "Supply side liberalism" (as coined by Brent Cebul) is not going to bring any kind of equality--as I said, the Dukakis/Clinton focus on growth is not any better than Reagan's.
Suburban liberals like the ones pictured in this book feel bad about things like racism, so they take performative actions to show that they care—but they stop short of taking responsibility for inequities that they have had a part in perpetuating. They will say that a great education is something everyone should have access to, but then vote for lowering property taxes that fund public education because they can send their kids to private schools. They will say their little suburb cares about social equality, the environment, and free choice, but continue to separate themselves from the greater metro and inhibit anyone else from moving there. Their exceptionalism and the way they soothe their guilty consciences are the only things that separate them from those who live in the Deep South suburbs.
Democrats and Republicans have been responsible for the privatization and austerity of the last 50 years, and the extent of Democrats’ involvement has not been simply responding to a rightward turn of the Republican Party. The shifts in the Democratic Party described in this book, which Massachusetts suburban liberals were instrumental in, show clearly how the Democratic Party got the elitist label which has driven working-class voters to the Republican Party and allowed conservatives to be such successful reactionaries. And even when Democrats manage to win, they don’t do much to win back those working-class voters.
Liberalism does not produce better results than Reagan-style supply-side economics, and the knowledge professionals fighting for the kind of policy that Dukakis, Clinton, etc., ushered in have still been vulnerable to the same kind of abandonment, with firms in search of cheaper land and cheaper labor. And the actions taken by these suburban liberals enabled these runaway firms to exploit the fragmentation of metro areas.
The liberal elite exceptionalism, as seen in the 1988 election, is perhaps why there has not been another major political realignment since 1968/the 70s. Post civil war was an obvious reason for a realignment, and so was the new deal. But Democrats have shown no proof that they are not just elites. Even when Obama had a trifecta in 2009, he didn’t do anything. Dukakis being nominated in 1988 was a bigger deal than I ever had any knowledge of...it perhaps solidified the ‘death’ of the Democratic Party, and the New Democrats’ response to the ‘88 election literally couldn’t have been worse. Obama’s 2012 platform and the neighborhoods he won show that not much changed at all in those 24 years, apart from the racial and economic segregation being further obscured. It’s telling that his 2004 DNC keynote speech, where he went off about there not being a black America or a white America or a liberal or a conservative America, was in Boston.
There are a black America and a white America--but acting like there isn't this division, resulting from slavery, segregation, and economic inequality, just inhibits these problems from being addressed. Democrats want to act like there is no liberal America or conservative America; Republicans want to drive the culture wars by illustrating liberal America as increasingly dangerous; yet unfortunately, aside from these calls for unity vs. calls for political violence amidst the supposedly unprecedented polarization, the ballot box sometimes feels like that meme where the recycling and landfill slots both go to the same bin. Our urban policy, tax system, inadequate regulatory state, and our two-party system all serve the interests of those with wealth. "Supply side liberalism" (as coined by Brent Cebul) is not going to bring any kind of equality--as I said, the Dukakis/Clinton focus on growth is not any better than Reagan's.
“The emphasis on high-tech growth and knowledge workers by the Democratic Party and cities like Boston as the solution to the nation’s economic and social problems shows much more of a commitment to the future than addressing many of the persistent problems of the past. Yet coming to terms with the roots of the high-tech and upper-middle-class transformation of liberalism and understanding its possibilities and limits offers an important first step in advocating for more collective, metropolitan-based solutions that transcend these class, race, and spatial divisions and benefit everyone.”
October 3, 2021
Don't Blame Us chronicles the rise of the suburbs in the 50s 60s and 70s, and illustrates the limits of civic engagement without structural reform. Geismer meticulously documents the activism that gave the Massachusetts suburbs their liberal reputation; engineers, students, and homemakers advocated for environmental protection, fair housing, school integration, and peace. But the knowledge economy, with its culture of individualism (exemplified by the myriad small towns ringing Boston on Route 128, each with separate municipal governments - and crucially separate school systems) paved the way for the rise of neoliberalism through welfare reform, school choice, and balanced budgets. The long history of METCO is a great and thoroughly documented example. For decades the Commonwealth has paid for Black students from Roxbury and Dorchester to take buses to well-funded suburban schools in Newton, Brookline, Lexington, etc. But this program does nothing to reduce regional income inequality, housing segregation, or to improve the quality of neighborhood schools in low-income and predominantly Black and/or Hispanic areas of Boston. This book is terrific but also terrifically depressing.
February 3, 2022
being a progressive is like being a fan of a sports team that always loses but also the game itself is not fun at all and also a lot of people will die because the team is either too apprehensive to play hardball or maybe just has no strategy to win. no idea who said this first, but this book basically proves the point: if it weren’t for fiscal conservatives, we wouldn’t need social liberals
October 16, 2021
Great content. Sooo dense. T_T
September 13, 2024
having grown up in this area, I found this relevant in a timeless way, especially given the current state of the MBTA Communities Act and the decision by Milton to not comply
February 12, 2025
Typical boring monograph writing but more or less a good argument
(Gutted for class)
(Gutted for class)
May 1, 2015
"By the 1970s, Route 128 had earned the labels as both 'America's Technology Highway' and the 'Road to Segregation.'" (23)
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