Why all party scholars should see "Gangs of New York"

I just showed Scorsese's "Gangs of New York" (2002) in my parties class. I've now seen it roughly half a dozen times, and every time I watch it I catch something new that screams important lessons about political parties. Yes, it's a brutally violent film, but it's worth getting through that to learn its lessons.

The movie spans a party regime cycle. At its beginning in 1846, the New York neighborhood known as the Five Points is neatly polarized between the Nativists, led by Bill "the Butcher" Cutting (Daniel Day Lewis), and a collection of Irish Catholic immigrant gangs, led by Priest Vallon (Liam Neeson) and his Dead Rabbits. This polarization comes to a quick end in a street battle that leaves Vallon defeated. Cutting absorbs many of Vallon's old lieutenants into his organization, keeping them from rising against him. And for many years, the Butcher's organization is the only real game in town. We even see Boss Tweed (Jim Broadbent) of the Tammany Hall organization forming an alliance with Cutting: Cutting turns out the vote, Tweed pays him handsomely for it and provides patronage jobs.

Much of the film's plot focuses on the rise of young Amsterdam (Leonardo DiCaprio) in Cutting's regime. Unbeknown to Cutting, Amsterdam is actually the son of the slain Priest Vallon and secretly harbors a desire for revenge. The system slowly repolarizes, as Amsterdam true identity is revealed, he is promptly ousted from Cutting's group, and then he reorganizes the Dead Rabbits. In what might as well be a quote from Schattschneider, Amsterdam tells his lieutenants of the advantage of organization:

There’s more of us coming off the boats each day. I heard 15,000 Irish a week, and we’re afraid of the natives? Get all of us together, and we ain’t got a gang, we got an army. All we need’s a spark, right? Just a spark, something to wake us all up.

The film suggests that the central societal schism is, in one form or another, immigrants versus natives, and that party systems keep polarizing, falling, and then repolarizing around that same schism. As one key character, Monk McGinn (Brendan Gleeson), explains,

My father was killed in battle, too. In Ireland, in the streets, fighting those who would take as their privilege what could only be got and held by the decimation of a race. That war is a thousand years old and more. We never expected it to follow us here. It didn't. It was waiting for us when we landed.

This ancient system is brought to a sudden and violent end by the military during the 1863 draft riots. It is, in some ways, a dissatisfying ending to the old system that was so distinguished by chivalry, blood oaths, and paternalism. But the film's ending makes perfect sense -- the old system cannot be the one that guides a modern nation.

There's so much more to this film that I can't begin to get into here, but I'd recommend it for classes on parties and civil war history. It's just brilliant.

Obama on campus

I waited for two hours to get into a Barack Obama speech at Magness Arena this morning, only to be turned away, along with thousands of others. Not fun for me, but still an impressive turnout.

Pleasantly enough, Obama spoke to those of us left outside before going in for his prepared speech. He looked out at all of us and said, "We're gonna need a bigger boat." Yeah, that's a Jaws reference! So he won me over with that.

But now I'm thinking more about it. If he's Roy Scheider's character, who's the shark? Remember, the shark was a New Yorker who had migrated from down south. Hello, Hillary?

And maybe he wasn't referring just to the movie, but also to Achen and Bartels' shark attack paper. If so, that's serious dog-whistle politics. I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who heard.

At any rate, I listened to his full speech later on the web in the warmth of my office. There were some interesting digs at Hillary Clinton in there, suggesting he was reaching out to the Edwards folks. He seemed to abandon some of that post-partisan talk in favor of saying that Americans need a choice in November, and that Hillary, with her Iraq war vote, is a bit too close to the Republicans on some key issues. That's the kind of talk that won me over to John Edwards in the first place. Keep talking, Barack.

Edwards out

Yes, I'm very sad about this. Maybe he could have done some things better, but I really thought he ran a nice campaign, had an excellent and important message, and rode that message about as effectively as possible.

He planned on running a long time ago. How could he have known that he'd be running against one candidate with all the insider support and another one with more raw political talent than we've seen in years? Who could have succeeded against those odds?

Florida Democrats

1.7 million Floridians participated in the Democratic primary today, even though it wasn't a close contest, there was almost no advertising, and there were no delegates at stake. This is just shy of the turnout in the GOP primary, which was close, had tons of advertising, and did involve delegates. It was more than double the turnout in 2004. Hillary Clinton raked in more of these "meaningless" votes than John McCain did.

Okay, so there were no delegates at stake. But this means something. Democratic voters are really, really motivated this year.

More from Digby.

I don't want a pickle

Huge endorsement news:
Arlo Guthrie endorses Ron Paul.

Florida - What it means

This was a really big night for McCain and an interesting night for the GOP. Florida is a closed primary state, so McCain managed to win among registered Republicans, a goal that's escaped him thus far. It's also a winner-take-all state, so for once it's appropriate that the media focus on the plurality winner.

It's interesting to look at the issue breakdowns in the exit polls. A full 45% of GOP voters said that the economy was their number one concern -- a huge shift from just a few months ago. The old speculation was that voters concerned about the economy would vote for Romney, a successful business leader, rather than McCain, whose area of expertise is considered military in nature. In fact, economy voters preferred McCain to Romney 38-32.

On top of this, Giuliani is apparently withdrawing tomorrow and endorsing McCain. Giuliani obviously sucks as a campaigner, but he still had 15 percent of the voters in his corner, and some of them might listen to that endorsement. (Still, the exit polls show that Giuliani voters would have leaned more toward Romney than McCain if Giuliani hadn't been on the ballot.)

So yes, I've been predicting a Romney nomination, and this puts a bleaker face on that. One plus for Romney was that he won tonight among self-described conservatives 37-27. The problem is that, even among registered Republicans, not everyone is conservative. 39% of those who voted in today's GOP primary described themselves as moderate or liberal. It's been a tough few years for conservatives. Not everyone's eager to describe themselves as such.

Huge developmental milestone

My son Googled "poop" today.