People in Connecticut like their diners. There are no fewer
than 28 all-night diners in the state. It’s where you go to shed your problems
over an omelet and hash browns, accompanied by a fresh cup of coffee and, if
you are lucky, the companionship of a friend or two. During election time, this
holy solitude is broken by lean and hungry politicians on the hunt for votes who
have turned out to mingle with the proletariat. Politicians too, it would
appear, are just like the rest of us.
The most accomplished of them do not eat when they are
conducting business. Imaging is important, just ask U.S. Senator Dick
Blumenthal, about whom it is said that the most dangerous spot in Connecticut
is between Blumenthal and a television camera. Politicians are more
attentive to their weight than to their religious prescriptions, and because
many of them are life-servers -- the average age of a member of Congress is 57
– caloric intake is more important to many of them as avoiding the near occasion
of sin.
Some politicians are temperamentally gregarious; one thinks
of Democratic U.S. House of Representatives John Larson of the 1st District,
who appears genuinely to like people, even some Republicans. Others, forbiddingly
aloof, have a rough time of it when they commingle with the hoi polloi; conviviality is not their
cup of tea. But, longing for votes and campaign contributions, they solider on,
smiling, engaging in chit-chat and looking for all the world like a naked
manikins pulled off the floor and gathering dust in lightless corridors of an
out-of-business retail establishment. There are quite a few of these in
Connecticut.
For some reason, politicians like to perform in diners,
small, intimate and politically safe venues. There are no grumps here, especially early in the morning, when the customers have had sleep enough and are munching
on bread and eggs with a side of sausage or bacon. A diner is the perfect
theater for a sweaty politician, a little town hall full of people with their
best manners on whose politics is inscrutable. Though patrons in diners are
more than willing to affect affability, dialogue with strangers beyond the
usual pleasantries is rare. Politics recedes into the background and is seen as a
potential menace on a far horizon. The people the politicians talk to in diners
are well behaved and well fed. A customer does not frequent his favorite diner
to start a quarrel with a cardboard-cutout senator, particularly after he has
stowed away his omelet and a second cup of coffee.
There are, by the way, crucial differences between town hall
crowds and those who frequent diners. Serendipity reigns supreme in diners; not
so in town halls – not any more. With a little help from an underpaid staff,
any politician worth his salt should be able to stuff a town hall meeting with like-minded
folk gathered together to give democratic unction to the politician's favorite
hobby horses, whether the group be, as is the cause with progressives,
unionized employees nursing a grievance against Big-Business or, as is the case
with alt-rightists, counter-revolutionaries who want to send establishment
Republicans and Democrats to a frozen gulag in Vermont – average snowfall 89.25
inches per year, and also home to socialist commandant Bernie Sanders.
When he bid goodbye to a life in politics, Joe Lieberman did
a farewell tour of diners in Connecticut. White's Diner in Bridgeport, the
Athenian Diner in New Haven, Norm's Diner in Groton and Shady Glen in
Manchester were all on Lieberman’s itinerary. Lieberman’s career in the U.S.
Senate began in 1988. During the course of his career, he had visited 130
diners in more than 60 Connecticut cities and towns.
In 1988, Connecticut was just emerging from a lingering recession,
William O’Neill was Governor and Connecticut’s income tax was yet a glint in
Lowell Weicker’s eye. Mr. O’Neill’s budget was $7.5 billion, and he was staring
down a deficit of $1.5 billion. In 2017, Connecticut is ensnared in yet another
recession, the state’s biennial budget is $40 billion, and its projected
deficit for the next fiscal year is $5 billion. Economist Don Klepper-Smith has
pointed out that Connecticut is usually first in, last out during national
recessions; the state has yet to recover jobs lost during the current
recession, which officially ended more than six years ago. As the French say,
the more things change, the more they remain the same.
Diner owners in Connecticut have not yet responded to an increase
in the minimum wage to $15 dollars an hour by replacing their wait staff with
kiosks, but the wait staff in diners are growing impatient with politicians and
never-ending taxes and the shortage of high paying jobs in Connecticut that
send wave upon wave of customers their way.
Connecticut politicians these days prefer town hall gatherings
they can stack with their supporters to diners where, during upcoming elections
in Connecticut, the crackling air may be charged with righteous dissent and acrimony
– not from the wait staff, who in diners are usually unfailingly cheery, even
during brimstone showers, but from that guy in the booth who has been forced to
take a lower paying job after his company moved to South Carolina. He’s been
thinking of joining his children who moved to North Carolina two years ago, but
just now he’s happily concentrating on his eggs and bacon.
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