Brooklyn Might Be Too Liberal and Full of Communists to Host the Next Democratic National Convention
Mayor and erstwhile Park Slope-resident Bill de Blasio has some big plans for Brooklyn in 2016: he wants the Barclays Center to host the next Democratic National Convention. Now, before you get carried away with excitement (Nancy Pelosi, here?! In our own backyard?!), it seems that Brooklyn—despite being “a nexus of the new Democratic left that has morphed from working-class enclave to a gritty, global arbiter of cool”—might not be chosen to host the DNC. Why? Well, because we’re too liberal.
Yeah, it turns out that all the Brooklyn-based men and women toting around Piketty have made it pretty clear that this borough is as progressive as it gets. And while, as Mike Grynbaum of the New York Times notes, the Democratic party is trying to embrace the progressive spirit that ushered de Blasio (a career-long member of the Democratic party machine) into office, Brooklyn still might be a bit outré for the party’s more moderate factions, who think of Lenin when they think of beards and are wary of the borough that is “arguably the most liberal redoubt of one of the country’s most liberal cities.”
Fourteen other cities (including Detroit, Atlanta, Nashville, Orlando, and Phoenix) have submitted formal bids to host the convention, and none of them have the same reputation for being a, you know, Marxist stronghold like Brooklyn. So, we’ll have to wait and see what happens and if Brooklyn gets to host the Superbowl of political events, but, we’ll be honest, we don’t really care even a little bit if Brooklyn gets to host this thing. We actually really hope that by 2016, nobody will be paying attention to Brooklyn anymore and that the Bronx will be where all the Times trend pieces will focus and Staten Island is where all the fresh-out-of-NYU students will settle. Hey, a lot can happen in two years, you know? Fingers crossed, you guys.
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