Letter from a Remote Political Island

Well, it’s almost Labor Day, the beginning of the real presidential campaign. Forget about polite squabbling; from here on, it will be internecine warfare. The battle has been joined; the fight has begun in earnest.

Politics has been a long-running passion of mine. When I was a child in Detroit, I thrilled to author Theodore White’s campaign journal, The Making of the President 1960. I am old enough to remember John F. Kennedy coming to the Detroit Labor Day Parade. To this day, the Motor City is a bubbling electoral cauldron. This year, Kamala Harris will be there with Buffs on. 

And then there’s poor me stuck in Manhattan, stranded on this little uncontested isle of liberal certitude. Not that I’m unhappy with the election results — far from it. I’m just feeling a little overlooked. Call it the Plight of the Blue-State Political Junkie. Although my pulse starts to race as the campaign season heats up, there’s little presidential action for me to partake of locally. Sure, I can donate money or make phone calls, but it’s not the same. 

Because New York is so dependably liberal, and the results so predictable, there is no need for anyone to campaign here. (I once heard a Republican sourly call my neighborhood “the United Socialist Republic of the Upper West Side.”) As the Harris-Walz and Trump-Vance tickets ramp up their efforts, jetting from one battleground state to the next, no one of note is disembarking at LaGuardia or Kennedy — not even Jill Stein. 

It wasn’t always like this. Ronald Reagan won New York handily in 1980 and 1984. It is only since 1988 that New York has consistently voted Democratic in presidential elections. In 2020, Trump — despite being a hometown boy — only got 38% of the statewide vote.

In short, political addicts like me must make do with vicarious stories on cable news. Where are the MAGA hats and Kamala banners on Broadway? Even Donald Trump has skipped town and moved to Florida. The best that New York has to offer is scoundrels like George Santos. 

I’ll admit it — I am so starved for election fare that I would even welcome a partisan political ad or two. Instead, all I see on TV are those insufferable Jardiance commercials that are played hundreds of times a day. Jardiance is really swell! The little pill with a big story to tell! They portray a bunch of people so thrilled to take medicine that they spontaneously break out into song and dance. It’s enough to make you nostalgic for the epically annoying Crazy Eddie ads of the 1980s. Crazy Eddie, his prices are insane! 

Life’s tough right now for a Manhattanite with a serious political jones. This weekend, don’t expect me at the barbecue. I’ll be glued to my favorite network, desperately trying to transport myself psychically to swing states like Pennsylvania and Arizona. I just may have to go to Saks Fifth Avenue’s Labor Day Sale and drown my sorrows in some serious conspicuous consumption.