Hitting the Acela Corridor

For John, BLUF:  We use the term "Acela Corridor", but I wonder how many folks have actually ridden the Acela?  In the interest of full disclosure, I have, between DC and the 128 Station, but I like trains.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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My 72-Hour Safari in Clinton Country

Here is the sub-headline:

More than a year into Trump’s presidency, the bubble has closed back over the Acela Corridor, where voters say they do not regret not voting for Trump.

From Politico and Reporter Adam Wren, 30 March 2018.

(Yes, it was getting a bit moldy.)

Here is the lede plus one:

On a recent March morning, as a nor’easter walloped an idyllic Brooklyn street with snow, members of the Park Slope Food Coop ambled inside, shopping for bargains on broccolini and organic wheatgrass.  I was here under somewhat false pretenses, as a reporter from out of state to tour the co-op—the truth, but not the whole truth.

At the door, a young blond woman told me I wasn’t welcome to roam a single organic-mango punctuated aisle unless under the supervision of a co-op member.  She instructed me to take an elevator upstairs, where I would find a customer service desk. There, I met several members.  I told them I had traveled here to take the political temperature of Clinton Country.  This place, I explained, seemed to be the epicenter of liberal consensus.

The Park Slope Food Coop—a 17,000-member-owned and operated food store with a vaguely communist-sounding name—is a Sam’s Club Republican’s fever dream of where card-carrying members of the East Coast elite shop for groceries.  For starters, I could locate no industrial-sized containers of ranch dressing.  All the food comes from no farther than 500 miles away, most of it from small farms.  And the politics of the co-op’s members are decidedly progressive, in case you missed the front-page story of the Linewaiters’ Gazette, which is sort of like the co-op’s Pravda:  “Immigrant Rights and Local Farms,” a piece that traces just how pivotal immigrants are to the PSFC’s food supply chain.  One member I met estimated that, during the 2016 primary, 60 percent of the co-op’s members threw their support to Clinton and the other 40 percent supported Bernie Sanders.  Not to mention that the co-op is situated in one of the toniest parts of Brooklyn, the site of Clinton’s campaign headquarters, and a borough that she won by 61 percent.

The whole thing is well written and at points I thought it was a sendup of the kind of reporting Ms Salena Zito provides, but in the end I decided it was a pretty good picture.  And, if Wikipedia is to be believes, Park Slope Food Coop is a real thing.

There is a point here and it is that we should all get out and learn about those who do not live in our own particular bubble.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff