You know, I suspect Billy Corgan has a later-life return to relevance in him
It won’t be off the Chicago independent wrestling stuff, though that’ll be taken as an honorable thing to have been doing, it’ll be something that lets people say “that bald little 90s freak’s still got it”
If there’s ever a rock & roll revival, I could see him in on that
All those fancy-themselves-saucy young leftists on Twitter like “OMG who cares about inflation, I can think of buying a house now!” gonna be surprised when they find out how increased interest rates and a few million people having the same thought to put their tens of thousands in new wealth towards buying a house do to the mechanics of inflation a/o buying a house
Do wonder how the YIMBYs whose angle is largely “make housing affordable for 30somethings with even well-paying UMC-track urban jobs!” feel.
Or the economists (they hate it). Or even the selective-college graduates who already repaid any loans (that weren’t from their parents), whose concern about its effect on their relative standing probably isn’t alleviated by all the beneficiaries grave-dancing about how they’re more thrilled if their gain comes at these copartisans’ expense.
After all that’s probably the demographic that probably corresponds best to college graduates in, say, 1974, when Michael Dukakis was elected Governor of best-educated Massachusetts and started in on winning that traditionally Republican demographic to the Republicans.
Shifting industrial development from smokestacks to the State Route 128 “Silicon Highway”, proving Democrats could work with, not against, the market, fitting in with the way hippie-back-to-the-land sensibility had evolved to yuppie rurality (John Denver, Colorado, I guess around there Vermont and Maine).
But part of that wasn’t just offering goodies, it was giving assurance that the Democrats weren’t a threat to the middle class. That’s what Willie Horton was – the Republicans saying that however appealing the Democrat economy is, electing Dukakis carried the unacceptable threat that he’d be soft on crime.
(The New Deal coalition’s memory of the Democratic Party was that they ended the Depression and gave us the Golden Age of labor aristocracy, and then by the 50s they were like “let’s break up the almost nation-within-a-nation Dixie South’s formal structures of racialized government, not go McCarthyist wild, and culturally loosen up a bit!” and they were like “yeah fair”
Then that in by the early ‘60s the Dems were like “let’s smile on this northern Negro agitation, leftist and pleasure-seeking youth upsurge!” and the traditional base was like “I dunno, could see this going wrong.” Then by the late '60s “it’s gone wrong! UNDO it!” but into the 70s the Dems just did it more.
That’s the threat.)
Meanwhile, after the '70s, stagflation, the collapse of NYC finances, bringing the money guys on board (and without industrial unions to donate out of dues, the Democratic Party qua party needed money guys to fund it) requires their sense of threat to be assuaged.
After defusing black-crime threat – not sparing the bleeding-heart-sympathetic Ricky Ray Rector from execution! – and succeeding where Dukakis failed at beating George H.W. Bush on an “it’s the economy, stupid” basis, this is why Bill Clinton was so sensitive to the bond market, why he passed a balanced budget. He was assuring them! And since, money guys and business guys are increasingly part of the Democratic coalition.
Which is to say they were realigned in. And they can be realigned right back again.
Abortion’s a cleavage Dems can probably make something of (and if that makes for a back-to-90s-coalitions-cause-breeding-kink-is-hotter-without-breeding reaction, all to the good).
I’ve mentioned that this Oregon gubernatorial election has a centrist Democrat running third-party, basically as “the good 'ol” Democrats you remember before the 2010s, attentive to the nonurban economy and regional industries" against an over-nationalized Portland party (where it’s filling with not-even-Cascadian newcomers!)“
And they’re trying to use this against her but given her tag is "Pro Choice and Pro Jobs” it’s iffy – “She might preserve our access but she won’t join with Democratic governments in Washington and California to use the west coast to save the worrrrrld!” does not feel like it’ll be that compelling if you’re not already the type to be tied into party establishments that give you Twitter talking points
Well really, if the Republicans can run “the Democrats aren’t economically trustworthy for college grads with investments, they’re soft on the crime that might spread from urban centers to your suburb, they don’t run the schools to do what they’re for (COVID closings) and instead use them to incite moral sickness in your children (CRT, trans stuff)” that’s pretty much the 80s-90s playbook right there, and it did pretty well then. Now all they have to do is usher Trump offstage.
I have no idea who this is. This is not news. Conceivably if I took in all information from one source I might want it to show me this photo, I’m totally at sea who would want it described
Well now I want to see the photo, so here it is.
Should point out for the benefit of those not around then what an incredibly mid-90s aesthetic this is
The 90s are back? Has it happened? The decade that I grew up in, that, for that reason I never knew, is back? I always retreated to the 80s: Joy Division at one pole, Interpol at the other. But, has it happened? The 90s are back? Does this mean we have to deal with, like, Blind Melon again? I would put up with it if we got another Curve, which, like, with Boy Harsher, we might. But really, it's back, the bad dream is over, we can breathe again?
Yeah Joy Division was kind of in the background of the ‘90s, the prominent “alternative” genre/subculture claimed it as a forerunner, you’d see the Unknown Pleasures shirt even then. And the prominent “mall goth” style with raccoon-eye eyeshadow was aware it was in a lineage that ran through, like, Sandman and Beetlejuice to Robert Smith and Siouxie Sioux at least
Actually there were a lot of classic rock t-shirts back then, you saw kids wearing Led Zeppelin and Dark Side of the Moon shirts when they were born contemporary with, like, Coda and The Final Cut
I think there were just a lot of t-shirts then, I’ve talked about how Hot Topic’s original killer app was just selling band t-shirts to suburban kids who didn’t make it out to concerts or to independent record stores or anywhere you’d find a mail order catalog. They were behind a lot of the mallgoth stuff, too.
