Starbucks Nation
Perhaps a cleaner way of making the point I made in yesterday’s United States of arugula post is to think about the growth in Starbucks. Even within my memory, espresso drinks were, once upon a time, not only considered somewhat hoity toity but genuinely difficult to acquire. Now I grew up in Manhattan, so it was hardly impossible. But you had to go to special places. You could get a cup of joe on any old corner, but not a cappuccino. Thanks to Starbucks and its competitors, this stuff is now all over the place. We haven’t become France or Italy where this is all anyone drinks, but espresso products are hardly a rare delicacy. Anywhere that people go, you’ve got a Starbucks and places like Dunkin’ Donuts have upgraded their offerings.
In electoral terms, the Starbucks/arugula set still isn’t a majority. But it’s a much larger slice of the electorate than it was in 25 years ago. And at the same time, the proportion of African-Americans in the electorate has grown and the proportion of Hispanics in the electorate has grown. The McGovern constituency from 1972 still isn’t a winning political coalition, but it’s a much larger minority than it was in McGovern’s day. A progressive politician needs more than zero non-college whites — and you certainly can’t afford to have McGovern’s terrible relationship with the labor movement — to win, but it’s not nearly as steep an uphill climb as it’s been in the past.
UPDATE: The image is from Bernie Hou’s comic strip Alien Versus Predator.
51 Responses to “Starbucks Nation”
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October 11th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
“The McGovern constituency from 1972 still isn’t a winning political coalition”
Well, McGovern’s 40% represents more than 50% of today’s electorate.
October 11th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Starbucks is so mainstream now that I doubt there’s even a cohesive “Starbucks/arugula” class of voters.
My local Starbucks at 18th and Columbia in DC attracts a wide range of clientele (although you could certainly argue an inner-city DC Starbucks is atypical).
October 11th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
So now if you like burned coffee, you’re all set.
Well, I guess it’s obvious I’m not a big fan of Charbucks. Dark roast = good coffee is not an equation I agree with. And years ago they bought up Coffee Connection, a wonderful locally-owned coffee shop here in Harvard Square, and shut it down, for which I still harbor some further dislike of ‘em. But I get the point.
October 11th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
I still don’t get it. I know it has something to do with a way of discussing Democrats getting more non-college whites (did you adjust by region, excluding the South?) to vote for them, using some sort of aesthetic consumer choice reference.
October 11th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Starbucks is so common, that even Jane Sixpack drinks mochas.
October 11th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
In Oregon and Washington, you can get an espresso or a latte at drive-throughs next to the gas stations.
October 11th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Reminds me of one of my favorite Bill O’Reilly making-shit-up-that-fits-the-narrative moments from about six or seven years ago. He was insisting vehemently that cops don’t go to Starbucks. Clearly Bill’s research on who does and doesn’t go to Starbucks didn’t involve an actual visit to a Starbucks.
I think this was around the same time he was insisting that the California energy crisis wasn’t due to market manipulation, but to hedonistic liberal Californians using hot tubs.
October 11th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
nice post.
http://culturedecoded.wordpress.com/2008/10/10/barack-obama-and-the-party-that-cant-lose/
October 11th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
What DrBB said.
October 11th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
No one goes to Starbucks on L.A.’s Westside. #1. The coffee and mis en scene make McDonald’s seem high class. #2. Starbucks Ziocon owner helps Apartheid Israel’s Occupation and “settlements” and people know this and don’t patronize the shitholes.
October 11th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Yeah, as the example of Trevor shows, the real cultural left is anti-Starbucks, and is probably sipping a cup of free trade something at the local indie coffee shop.
October 11th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
It was a Starbucks cup that Sarah Palin used as a source for misquoting Albright. But she did specify that it was a mocha, so she wasn’t endangering her reputation for unsophistication.
October 11th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
I remember about a decade ago, I still considered habitual Starbucks drinkers to be vaguely snobbish. I mean, who else would pay such prices for coffee?
Well, it ain’t exactly Wal-Mart even now, but I’d imagine attacking Starbucks drinkers is pretty close to attacking Target shoppers.
October 11th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
The reason you do not hear about Starbucks being elitist is that John and Cindy McCain are Starbucks Junkies. And since the McCains are everyday people, their psychopathic friends in the media can not mention it. Lest they appear less than deferential to their republican daddy.
October 11th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
And at the same time, [over 25 years] the proportion of African-Americans in the electorate has grown and the proportion of Hispanics in the electorate has grown.
Just as a quibble, the number of African Americans in 1980 was about 11.7% Today it’s around 12.5 - 12.7%.
The growth in the Hispanic vote totally dwarfs this 1% increase. For that matter, I would guess that the growth of the inner suburban/urban professional vote and its switch from Republican to Democratic is also much larger than the growth in the African American vote.
October 11th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Ummmm….. Duh.
The rise of wealth in the last 25 years is pretty much the only political/economic story worth telling, it created a whole new class (whole foods too?) and clearly contributed to Obama’s rise (and victory).
Starbucks is a nice proxy, as is say ‘The Sopranos’ and it’s spinoffs.
Ironically, I wonder if this class is now coming to an end, will Whole Foods survive?
October 11th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
I think the real point here is that while anti-elitism will always work in American politics, the signifiers for “elite” are constantly shifting, and if you keep using the same ones forever you’re going to eventually end up sounding like an idiot.
Put another way, the “Starbucks/arugula set” used to be meaningful in a way it just isn’t anymore. The demographic that’s a shorthand for has expanded somewhat, but latte drinks and arugula are no longer useful ways to target that demographic.
Well, maybe “arugula” is still meaningful. My spell checker is flagging it, so apparently the stuff is still obscure.
October 11th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Not to dispute your main point, but the difficulty of finding espresso drinks used to be quite regionally variable. I remember when they were hard to come by in New York (or D. C., where I grew up), but quite commonplace on the west coast in SF, LA, or Seattle. (Refer to Steve Martin’s L. A. Story for documentary evidence.)
October 11th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Now if only we can get people to stop pronouncing “espresso” with an X…
October 11th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
It was on a Starbucks cup, after all, that Palin said she found the remark by Madelyn Albright about women supporting women (that Palin misquoted, to Albright’s consternation).
October 11th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
The Starbucks/Arugula set?!?
I’m hardly the epitome of hipness and neither are my friends, but Starbucks ranks only slightly above McDonald’s in my social stratum, i.e. you wouldn’t want to be seen dead in there because it’s mean corporate crap and the coffee sucks too.
October 11th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
Meanwhile, there are those of us who just don’t like coffee. I’ve certainly had my share of boba tea, though it seems like that peaked about 5 years ago. Now all the hip kids are eating Pinkberry, which I think is disgusting… like ice cream, except weak and sour.
October 11th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
Oh, yeah, Pinkberry is widely known to be awful. Even if you’re looking for frozen yogurt that’s a bit on the tart side, there are much better options. And Pinkberry’s pretty much been flat-out lying about their product being all-natural. If there’s one thing constant about food trends, it’s that they have nothing to do with stuff actually being good.
I’m a little more puzzled about why people are down on Starbucks. Is it just because they’re “too big”? The latte drinks are OK (standard coffee not so much , but you don’t go there for that anyway). Granted, their roasting is not to everyone’s taste.
October 11th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
Can’t we just call it ROCKET like the other anglophones? That would take care of the problem.
October 11th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
just so you have a little better grasp of the historic fundamentals, matthew, the reason that mcgovern didn’t have a good relationship with the labor movement is that the labor movement was vehemently anti-anti-war. there wasn’t a damn thing he could have done about it.
and, frankly, although things are much different today, if the price of obama having strong relations with the labor movement was adopting john mccain’s position on iraq, you wouldn’t want him to.
October 11th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
places like Dunkin’ Donuts have upgraded their offerings.
Even places like McDonald’s have upgraded.
October 11th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
Doesn’t Sarah Palin drink Starbucks? In fact, hasn’t she appropriated, or co-opted a potent and hard-won symbol of the left? Strong woman. “Egalitarian” marriage. Aren’t these things conservatives, not very long ago, saw as signs of the imminent collapse of civilisation (and some still do)? If you’d time-machined in from 1982, and saw Sarah Palin speaking at the debate (with the sound off), you never guess that she was the Republican.
The culture wars are not what we think they are. Reagan co-opts Bruce Springsteen. Hard-core Christians co-opt heavy metal.
My guess is, twenty years from now, the Republicans will be running a gay candidate (happily married and with a huge family) and accusing the Democrats of homophobia.
October 11th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
I worked for Starbucks for four years in Houston, Texas. Starbucks is kicking ass because it has nothing to do with politics. The majority of my customers I talked to about political issues were Republicans (usually economic, but frequently fundie). The staff was largely liberal.
The location I worked at was located across the road from Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church. The fact that starbucks popularized a new way to ingest a popular drug does not mean there’s any sort of progressive Starbucks vanguard.
(This post would be more cogent were I sober.)
October 11th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
Also, it is true that the liberals ordered “respectable” drinks such as lattes and dry cappuccinos. Republicans love them some white chocolate mochas.
October 12th, 2008 at 12:12 am
Like others, I don’t think the patronage of Starbucks symbolizes a left-leaning demographic. Here in DC, as you know, Starbucks is a bi-partisan habit.
Let’s try the converse of your argument: The GOP is going to need more than non-college whites to make a winning coalition. As David Brooks just wrote, conservatives have been driving away the educated class, as if they could do without them (or weren’t them).
October 12th, 2008 at 12:15 am
I can’t remember the last time I was in a Starbucks that wasn’t full of Republican Suburban Bourgie Assholes.
October 12th, 2008 at 12:17 am
But, I still think their coffee is ok.
October 12th, 2008 at 1:03 am
i work in a movie theater and we serve espresso, lattes, capuccinos, americanos, etc. a hoity toity movie theater to be sure, but still a movie theater.
October 12th, 2008 at 8:04 am
In truth, there are very few Starbucks stores in rural
Wal-Mart America. The Starbucks / Wal-Mart divide roughly maps onto the blue / red divide.
Returning to the Washington, D.C. area from Bethany Beach one late Sunday afternoon, my family decided to look for a coffee shop to reduce the blood in our caffeine systems for better driving. We were in the middle of the Eastern Shore and couldn’t find (a) a free-standing coffee shop that (b) was open on Sunday.
October 12th, 2008 at 10:09 am
As many people have pointed out (sorry, no time to look up the sources now, but I think they include MY writing about college attainment), the big demographic transition in college access in the US came in the 1950s and 1960s, with much less progress since 1970. There is no big difference in college attainment between 1988 and 2008 except that some of the 1930s and 1940s educated cohorts have died out.
My point: a) thinking of the fading away of 1930s educated cohorts as a win for the ‘latte’ culture strike me as a misleading way of thinking of cultural politics, b) progressive material culture was different in the early 1970s, but the population base was pretty large, not much smaller than it is today (indeed, lost of pundits were writing about the new progressive majority and youth culture) c) drinking lattes may simply not be the cultural market it once was, just like being a college graduate is no longer the cultural marker it once was.
October 12th, 2008 at 10:13 am
Finally: Starbucks products — as made — are low quality and pretty much a marker of bad taste in coffee.
October 12th, 2008 at 11:18 am
Compared to what, stefan? Dunkin Donuts?
October 12th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
(”But you had to go to special places.”)
The Penguin.
(It was called the Peacock Linus.)
Oh.
October 12th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
You still can’t get a good espresso in most places including most of the Westside. If you have no other options, a Starbucks iced americano is the least bad thing they make.
Liberal hipsters are at Intelligentisa, while trustfund dbags are at Lamill.
October 13th, 2008 at 5:29 am
I always find the American view of Starbucks quite jarring, as I come from New Zealand where Starbucks is very downmarket and essentially the coffee equivalent of McDonalds.
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