Some 'Other' Wall Streets Embarrassed

"This is the real Wall Street,' says Mark Rosenstein, chef/proprietor of the Market Place restaurant on Wall Street (the one in Asheville, N.C.).



"If I ran this restaurant like the bankers ran their business, I would no longer have a job," says Celinda Knight, manager of the Wall Street Bar & Grill, on East Wall Street in Midland, Texas, childhood home of former President George W. Bush.

That is probably what infuriates people more than anything else: the double standard. That they get bailed out with our money is also infuriating.

Anger over runaway trading, financial engineering and compensation by financial companies has a strong resonance along at least 955 country roads, suburban streets and downtown blocks named Wall Street or something close to that. From Abilene, Texas, to south Los Angeles to Zeeland, Mich., these residents and business are wrestling both with the recession and the ignominy of a truly fallen address. (Never mind that most Wall Street financial firms aren't literally located on Wall Street, nor is The Wall Street Journal.)

"My father's always joked: 'My daughter works on Wall Street,'" says Robin Campbell, owner of Dolce Vita, an eclectic boutique halfway on Asheville's Wall Street that is stocked with handbags, earrings and wine. "Now he doesn't joke about that."

On Wall Streets throughout the country, the dominant view is that their New York cousins deserve their ruined reputation.

There is such a disconnect between normal people and financiers. Politicians straddle the two worlds, getting money from the latter, votes from the former.
As much as people on "other" Wall Streets want to distance themselves from the one known around the world, they can't escape its economic reach. In January, Asheville's unemployment rate hit 8.7%, up from 4.4% a year earlier. Tourism, the area's most important business, is slowing. Once-red-hot mountain real-estate developments are dormant.

Sending Childers Up McCain's Spine

Perhaps we, me, not just the media, need to change our focus, at least expand it, and look at other stories besides the sharp-elbow fight and the super-delegates. I saw this one yesterday, read about it some, and dismissed too quickly.

This particular story was written by John Mercurio, from the National Journal.

I'm referring to the special election in a northern Mississippi congressional district, the one President Bush carried in 2004 by 25 points. There, in the cradle of the conservative South, Democrat Travis Childers came within 410 votes of winning outright the seat former Rep. Roger Wicker (R) never took with less than 63 percent. Childers, who survived a barrage of TV ads aimed at connecting him to his national party, is now considered the slight favorite to win the May 13 runoff against Republican Greg Davis.

The bigger picture, looking elsewhere besides the minute details reported by AP, NYT and such outlets as daily fodder, as daily substitutes for investigate reporting, can look different than the repeated platitudes that become all that is talked about. And that bigger picture can at times be found in such places as northern Mississippi.

A fluke? Not really. Just last month, physician Bill Foster (D) captured former House Speaker Dennis Hastert's district in solid Republican territory.

See? It's hidden in plain sight.

Disaffection with the GOP brand at the House level has developed into a major concern this year for the man now trying to promote that brand from the top down. Few doubt McCain will carry Mississippi or Louisiana this fall, but then few people thought Democrats had a chance to pick up those House seats, either.

Conventional wisdom had Senator Clinton winning PA by 20 points; she won it by 9.7 points, and it is still being called a significant win: her campaign's spin is the conventional wisdom. Of course, she wants to win the nomination because the Democratic nominee is going to win the general election. Witness:

There were also signs of trouble for McCain in Pennsylvania, where more than a quarter of Republicans voted against him in the "uncontested" GOP race. McCain won 73 percent of the 805,000 votes cast, but Ron Paul took 16 percent and Mike Huckabee received 11 percent.
This is when McCain is the "presumptive" nominee. Still...

The disconnect is playing out elsewhere, too. In North Carolina, local Republicans bickered this week with McCain over a TV ad the state party plans to run in advance of the gubernatorial primary on May 6.


This is SwiftBoat 1.0; more releases to come.

McCain quickly cried foul. But local Republicans defied McCain, refusing to back down. Of course, such Sister Souljah moments have upsides for McCain, who keeps a delicate balance between appealing to conservatives and independents. It allows him to stake a claim against the tawdry side of politics while his party does his dirty work for him.

So I think: someone else does the dirty deed, Senator McCain plays the role of the statesman, whilst benefiting from the dirty work of people who support him. Such is politics.

But when the GOP brand is tainted, so is McCain, who then has more to worry about than trying to match the Democrats dollar for dollar. While Obama has yet to "seal the deal" among Democrats, McCain's task to convince voters that they should stick with a Republican, even one they like, could be a far more difficult challenge this fall.