The Democrats Were Not For Me

'da fix is in ....... long read but informative

The Democrats Were Not For Me


I was programmed at birth to be a Democrat, a big city liberal. My parents were Irish and Catholic. Pardon any redundancy. In my slice of the East Bronx, you went to high school, you did a few years in the military, and then you came home to look for a job with Con Ed or the city. Two of my uncles were on the job, NY City cops. The guy across the street was a fireman. The neighborhood was mainly blue collar Irish, Italian, Jewish, and just a tad Puerto Rican.

The local political machine was run out of the Van Nest Society, a store front political club; or run out of the Step Inn, a bar on White Plains Road next to the fire station. The Step Inn was a microcosm of the neighborhood; the guy who owned building was Jewish, the guy who ran the saloon was Irish, and the lady who made the pizza in the back was Italian.

If you wanted a job with the borough or the city, or you needed something fixed on your street, you had to see someone at the Van Nest clubhouse or at the Step Inn. There were no other political organizations in our precinct. Little did I know at the time, but my Bronx neighborhood was a mirror image of inner cities nationwide. I never heard anyone call themselves a "conservative" and, just as surely, there were no Republican or Libertarian precinct captains in our area.