The Hardhat Riot: Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of the White Working-Class Revolution
by David Paul Kuhn
Let them Eat Tweets: How the Right Rules in an Age of Extreme Inequality
by Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson
Liveright, 2020, 288 pp.
When a young Chuck Schumer arrived at Harvard in 1967 as a freshman, he joined the great political stirring of those yearsâwho could resist it? But Abbie Hoffman he was not. âI was faced with what Alexander Hamilton called
mobocracy,â Schumer recalled in his coauthored 2007 book
Positively American. He became a College Democrat, canvassed for Eugene McCarthy, and eschewed the radicals. Campus members of the New Leftâs Progressive Labor faction horrified him, and he felt âsickenedâ seeing protesters scream at cops. âThe police werenât pigs. They were the people Iâd grown up with. They were my neighbors. My friends. They were the Baileys [imaginary Irish-American Long Islanders with whom Schumer consults on decisions].â Soon enough, Schumerâs partyâthe College Dems and, of course, their friends the non-college Demsâwould pay the price. âBy the late â70s,â Schumer observed, âthe Baileys did not trust the Democrats anymore, and the Democrats werenât listening to the Baileys.â