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Note to the '08 Candidates: The American Heartland is a Big City

Posted by Andrea Batista Schlesinger, Drum Major Institute at 8:01 PM on December 20, 2007.


Mayors urge presidential candidates to address urban issues.
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In today's presidential campaign, America is all heartland -- tractor pulls, county fairs, town halls and truck stops. Candidates scramble for photo ops in plaid, stump in wheat fields and scarf down corn dogs. Our country, it seems, is all country.

Yet we are an urban nation. More than 80% of Americans live in cities. Urbanites drive 90% of our economy. In pandering to rural voters, presidential candidates ignore the bread and butter issues that most Americans deal with every day -- housing, transportation, infrastructure, crime, education.

Have the presidential candidates lost touch with urban America? Are "urban issues" code for poor people and ethnic minorities, and thus to be avoided at all costs? Should the candidates have an urban agenda? What should it be?

To find out, we asked the people who know our cities best -- America's Mayors. In punchy video interviews, a diverse and influential group of mayors gave their prescription for an agenda that supports American cities, and thus America at large.

The result -- MayorTV.com -- offers surprising insights into presidential politics, priorities and the candidates themselves. [Ed: you can view one of the videos, featuring Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, in the window to your right]

Update: New York Times columnist Clyde Haberman's December 14th column, "So Many Presidential Debates, So Little Concern Shown for Cities" is all about MayorTV. You can read it here.

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Tagged as: election08, cities, urban

Andrea Batista Schlesinger is the Executive Director of the Drum Major Institute.


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View:
urban doesn't always mean New York City
Posted by: microphoneblues on Dec 21, 2007 1:50 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Urban is defined by wikipedia as a town of more than 50,000 living close to each other. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_area#United_States) There are a lot of cities with 50,000-100,000 that still have tractor pulls, county fairs, town halls, truck stops, and people who enjoy corndogs. In fact, from my experience traveling around this country, I would say more people identify with what the author apparently considers "rural" then they do with being urban - even if statistically they are urban.

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GOP Heartland?
Posted by: Dianka on Dec 28, 2007 9:54 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Silly. The rural Great American Heartland, where men wearing crisp designer jeans drive huge spotless tractors while the womenfolk sit back making those charming country crafts items. Uh huh. But here in the real world, much of that farmland was taken over by developers and mega-farm corps back in the '80's, pushing farm families out, and taking down the economy of surrounding towns. Most never were able to get back on their feet before the most recent economic collapse. Those periodic spurts of prosperity that we hear about rarely trickle down to the rural communities. The Great American Heartland, where Republicans (and their "values") are adored, is a fantasy.

Get past the stereotypes. Rural people aren't uneducated, naive or stupid. Conservative ideology is not popular out here; at the very least, it isn't practical. At it's worse, it contradicts/directly opposes the religious beliefs of most rural Americans. In real life, conservative politics (from the time of Reagan up to today) is the worse thing that ever happened to rural America, wiping out more farms and driving more people into poverty than the Dustbowl of the Great Depression. Thanks to conservatism (from both Republicans and Democrats), we no longer have a "social safety net" to help people keep their families together to get through the hard times. (Hate to burst any bubbles here, but many, many rural families have needed to use welfare on occassion, understanding that welfare was simply insurance---you pay into it with your taxes, like you pay premiums for any other kind of insurance policy.) As a result of conservative policies (the anti-New Deal policies), we have seen significant increases in alcohol abuse and suicides out here. Talk to even those who identify themselves as "conservative", and you will be stunned by just how progressive---often downright socialist!-- their ideas are in comparison to what we hear from politicians and the media. And our politicians know it.

The Great America Heartland, with its waving fields of grain, is a marketing prop. Period. Politicians couldn't care less about real rural America. After all, this isn't where the money is (or the votes).

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