Another Progressive Buzzkill – WSJ

Former President Barack Obama thinks Democrats can be a bit of a “buzzkill,” too easily offended over accidental slights and the complicated scenarios of modern life, he said in a podcast interview late last week.

“How does politics even – how is it even relevant to the things that I care most deeply about? My family, my kids, work that gives me satisfaction, having fun, not being a buzzkill, right?” Obama said in an interview with “Pod Save America.” “And sometimes Democrats are, right? You know, sometimes, people just want to not feel as if they are walking on eggshells. And they want some acknowledgment that life is messy and that all of us at any given moment can say things the wrong way, make mistakes.”

Obama is publicly addressing a concern voiced by Democratic strategists privately for quite some time now – that the liberal base of the party is so focused the possibility [sic] of offending certain interest groups that they lose the broader thread of speaking to what voters actually care about.

Now it seems that one can offend a certain type of environmentally concerned leftist merely by making sensible choices in home décor. Josh Barro, host of the Very Serious podcast, teases on Twitter that the

New York Times

“has invented a new thing for you to feel bad about: ‘fast furniture,’ which is mass produced and therefore bad. (Even pretty expensive stuff like Crate & Barrel.) Want to be a good citizen? Build your own furniture.”

The Times would perhaps argue that it is simply reporting on trends in furnishings, not inventing virtue signals. In any case, Mr. Barro is responding to a Times story in which Debra Kamin writes:

Fast furniture, which is mass-produced and relatively inexpensive, is easy to obtain and then abandon. Like fast fashion, in which retailers like Shein and Zara produce loads of cheap, trendy clothing that’s made to be discarded after only a few wears, fast furniture is for those looking to hookup but not settle down. It’s the one-season fling of furnishings.

Many of the Ikea beds and

Wayfair

desks bought during the Covid-19 lockdown were designed to last about five years, said Deana McDonagh, a professor of industrial design at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. “I relate to fast furniture like I do to fast food,” Ms. McDonagh said. “It’s empty of culture, and it’s not carrying any history with it.”

Can you imagine? This message may sing to Times readers who insist on bespoke pieces in the sitting room, but that probably doesn’t make a majority. In the newspaper’s defense, Ms. Kamin does acknowledge the benefits of furniture that is efficiently produced:

For all of its flaws, fast furniture offers millions of homeowners the opportunity to live in a stylish home at an affordable price point. As young people contend with skyrocketing housing prices and economic anxiety, even those who would prefer to browse antique markets or shop for custom pieces simply don’t have the resources to do so.

But the Times report also warns of large volumes of furniture ending up in landfills and sketches out a beautiful life that is lived by almost no one:

Sometimes, however, homeowners have a change of heart. Doug Greene, 34, bought a 200-year-old rowhouse in Philadelphia five years ago, and after doing a gut renovation, found he didn’t want to bring mass-produced furniture into a space he’d so painstakingly restored. So he taught himself how to make furniture, and he and his girlfriend, Ashley Hauza, now have a home where he handcrafted nearly every stick of furniture from solid wood. There’s a western red cedar waterfall bench. There’s a white oak bed frame with a hand-cut bridle joint.

Sounds gorgeous, but some Twitter users are wondering how many young people have the time and money to create such surroundings. Having more fun on Twitter, Mr. Barro writes:

If you don’t have time to build your own coffee table, store bought is NOT fine!

A number of other Twitter users noted that the environmental footprint of homemade furniture is bound to be much larger than that of pieces created in factories.

Someone called The Man Stan tweets:

As someone who’s built a coffee table or two, there is an incredible amount of waste that goes into the learning process.

A Twitter user named Michael Josem writes:

The idea that the division of labour uses more resources is just nutty.

Meanwhile someone identified as E. Perez tweets:

Great. I’ll just make a table after my 8 hr workday and right before I make dinner for my family… It’s not like I have anything to do most days between work, cleaning the house and taking care of my family.

A tweeter named Alex Liber asks:

How do they feel about store-bought lathes, circle saws and sanders?

Far from a buzzkill, the Times story—with help from Mr. Barro—seems to have sparked a rather entertaining conversation online.

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Speaking of Democrats Worrying About Buzzkills
Ally Mutnick reports in Politico on what looks like a sign of a red wave:

House Democrats’ top super PAC is making a last-minute buy to aid Rep. Joe Morelle, a New York Democrat in a deep-blue seat — the latest sign that the battle for the House is lurching toward the GOP.

Morelle, who was elected in 2018 to replace the late Democratic Rep. Louise Slaughter, holds a Rochester-area district that backed President

Joe Biden

by 20 points in 2020. His Republican opponent, La’Ron Singletary, is a former Rochester police chief who has staked his campaign on rising crime rates in New York…

In recent days, Democratic money has been pouring into seats once considered safe… It’s possible the late spending is only out of an abundance of caution — but it’s not a good sign for Democrats with just a week to go until the midterms.

This follows a Scott Wong and Ben Kamisar report for NBC on Sunday:

From New York to California, Democrats find they have to spend big in the midterms homestretch to defend incumbents in blue House districts that President Joe Biden easily won two years ago.

The crush of last-minute spending in deep-blue states and Democratic strongholds, detailed through data from the ad-tracking firm AdImpact, underscores just how much the political winds have shifted in Republicans’ favor and how the GOP — buoyed by well-funded super PACs — has expanded the battlefield in the final sprint of the campaign.

In Southern California, Rep. Julia Brownley is making personal appeals to Democratic colleagues to send her campaign cash as her internal polls show a neck-and-neck race with her GOP challenger, two sources told NBC News.

Could the 2022 midterm election season be remembered as the Year of the Deep Blue Buzzkill?

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James Freeman is the co-author of “The Cost: Trump, China and American Revival.”

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