f{"id":40265,"date":"2025-03-14T22:31:36","date_gmt":"2025-03-15T05:31:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=40265"},"modified":"2025-03-14T22:31:45","modified_gmt":"2025-03-15T05:31:45","slug":"chuck-schumers-imaginary-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2025\/03\/14\/chuck-schumers-imaginary-friends\/","title":{"rendered":"Chuck Schumer’s Imaginary Friends"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

$\"The$ <\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Newsletter<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Wind On Capitol Hill<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
By Jeffrey Goldberg<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
March 12, 2007 (NewYorker.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hunan Dynasty, a few blocks from the Capitol, is not generally considered to be one of Washington\u2019s better Chinese restaurants, which is saying something, because, Chinese-food-wise, Washington is not New York, or, for that matter, Philadelphia. Even its devotees\u2014for example, New York\u2019s senior senator, Charles Schumer\u2014admit that the restaurant \u201calways has the faint smell of disinfectant.\u201d Nor does Hunan Dynasty draw a notably powerful crowd. One night last week, as Schumer sat down for dinner, the only other diners were a group of out-of-town electric-company executives and Representative Dennis Kucinich, of Ohio, who is running for the Democratic Presidential nomination. \u201cI believe I\u2019m going to win New Hampshire,\u201d he said, adding, \u201cThe tofu here is very good.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Schumer, on the other hand, is more of a Szechuan-shrimp, spicy-beef sort of federal legislator. \u201cI love this restaurant,\u201d he said, and meant it. Hunan Dynasty, he said, serves cheap, honest, middle-class food, and Schumer styles himself a cheap and honest member of the middle class. The middle class, in fact, has been the key to his success. Schumer, though less widely known than New York\u2019s junior senator\u2014whom he has dragged, on occasion, to Hunan Dynasty; she even hosted a party there for his new book, \u201cPositively American\u201d\u2014has been more instrumental than Hillary Clinton in rejuvenating the Democratic Party. It is fair to say that only George W. Bush did more than Schumer to help the Democrats retake the Senate last year. As chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Schumer recruited such ostentatiously centrist candidates as Claire McCaskill, Jim Webb, Jon Tester, and Bob Casey, and he raised enormous amounts of cash to fund their campaigns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Liberal \u00e9litism, he said, as he stirred Sweet \u2019N Low into his tea with a chopstick, alienates middle-income families from the Party. \u201cMiddle-class people don\u2019t think everybody should have to drive a tiny little car to achieve improvement in global warming,\u201d he said. Invoking opponents of expanding the tuition tax credit to the middle class, he went on, \u201cIf we listened to the New York Times<\/em> editorial board, we\u2019d have twenty-one votes in the Senate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Schumer says that he is accompanied everywhere he goes by two imaginary middle-class friends, who advise him on all manner of middle-class concerns. Their names, until recently, were Joe and Eileen O\u2019Reilly. \u201cFor the book\u2019s sake, we wanted them to be more national,\u201d Schumer said, \u201cso they became the Baileys.\u201d The Baileys live in Massapequa, in Nassau County, a town that is invariably known on Long Island as \u201cMatzoh-Pizza.\u201d The Baileys are both forty-five years old: Joe works for an insurance company, Eileen is a part-time employee at a doctor\u2019s office. They worry about terrorism, and about values, and they are patriots\u2014\u201cJoe takes off his cap and sings along with the national anthem before the occasional Islanders game,\u201d Schumer wrote. He elaborated, \u201cThey\u2019re not ideologues. They\u2019re worried about property taxes. It\u2019s the tax they hate. And that\u2019s what Democrats don\u2019t get.\u201d He has also drafted the Baileys in defending the C.I.A.\u2019s human-intelligence program: \u201cHad Joe and Eileen been in the room after the hum-int screwup, they would not have indulged in the blame game, gutted the human-intelligence program, or weakened America.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Baileys, Schumer said, sometimes dine out\u2014not often, because of the cost\u2014and they like Chinese. Which raised the question: What would the Baileys eat, if they were here at Hunan Dynasty? \u201cThe more conventional stuff,\u201d Schumer said, \u201cbut they\u2019re with it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They\u2019re with it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI mean, they\u2019re not not<\/em> with it.\u201d Schumer looked at a plate of steamed chicken and vegetables, and said, \u201cThey wouldn\u2019t order that. They would order kung pao chicken.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was suggested to Schumer that he is a little bit weird. He acknowledged this to be true. \u201cThey\u2019re real for me,\u201d he said. \u201cI love the Baileys.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As swing voters, Schumer said, \u201cthe Baileys were very anti-Hillary when she ran in 2000, but they voted for her in 2006.\u201d He went on, \u201cThey like Rudy. It depends on how he plays it. If Rudy continues to adhere to the right-wing Republican line, just cutting taxes for the wealthy, he won\u2019t get their vote.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It turns out, Schumer said, as he ate an almond cookie, that there are some actual Baileys in Massapequa, and he once met a couple of them. Mrs. Bailey was a kind woman, \u201cvery nice, a nice lady,\u201d but the actual Mr. Bailey was a Republican. Even worse, Schumer said, he had a goatee. \u201cJoe Bailey would never have a goatee.\u201d \u2666Published in the print edition of the March 19, 2007<\/a>, issue, with the headline \u201cImaginary Friends.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More:Chinese Restaurants<\/a>Imaginary friends<\/a>Middle Class<\/a>Senators<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Wind On Capitol Hill By Jeffrey Goldberg March 12, 2007 (NewYorker.com) Hunan Dynasty, a few blocks from the Capitol, is not generally considered to be one of Washington\u2019s better Chinese restaurants, which is saying something, because, Chinese-food-wise, Washington is not New York, or, for that matter, Philadelphia. Even its devotees\u2014for example,… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40265\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}