I'm the same age as the Baileys. I don't worry about terrorism or my property tax. Or the border for that matter. I worry about local school quality, living wages for my neighbors, care for my disabled brother, college debt my hard working friends carry & addiction & homelessness in my community
I heard it a few times derisively. Between the O'Reillys, the Baldwins and Jerry Seinfeld and the Gilgo Beach killer, Massapequa is not looking so hot.
"I base my ideology on two imaginary people who think exactly like me, so I never have to blame myself for making stupid decisions because I was only trying to please these people who live entirely in my head."
Some might call this schizophrenia.
Since Chuck is an older sort, I kind of wonder if he thought his original imaginaries would remind people too much of Bill O'Reilly, & thought George, I mean, Joe Bailey was safer. This is still akin to a man asking for political advice from the tiny figures in his model train set-up, regardless.
Love that this is clearly what he came up with rather than the sane option literally everyone else would pick of befriending or even talking to a single person of a lower class.
Chuck to himself: “I’m sure the Baileys will understand my total capitulation to Trump fascism. After all, they’re a whole 25 years away from Social Security eligibility.”
He prefers being able to acquiesce the Baileys with an imaginary apology dinner at a New York bistro when things don't turn out their way. And they are always happy to donate $20 to his campaign everytime a donation email comes through lol.
Hey I don't know, if I was trying to get a handle on how some 45 year old voters were feeling about some issue, I don't know, I'd try contacting them, or having staff contacting them? Just seems more useful than using your fanfic characters to guide your actions
tfw you've been higher than the balls of a giraffe that was an astronaut on a moon of jupiter but god damn have you never been as high as this sober dude in charge of deciding the fate of a country
Very cool how his imaginary friends are from a town so astonishingly racist that, in *2008,* a local Realtor showing me apartments felt the need to “warn” me that (gaspshockhorror) there were BLACK people living on that street
The closest real life people to who he imagines haven’t voted for a Democrat in 30 years. And this is who the Democratic leader of the Senate is concerned with catering to.
So. As written. Average insurance manager is apparently... 90K?! Ha. And average receptionist is 40K, so we'll say 20K.... They do not make enough to make living wage to live in a family home in Massapequa, which according to BestPlaces is around 128K a year. They cannot afford that on average.
Oh come on. Surely Schumer knows that property taxes are charged by their locality, not the federal government. And surely he also knows that his imaginary middle class friends would pay LESS imaginary tax if the billionaires in Manhattan didn't have so many loopholes to stash money in.
if he'd succesfully led the house, this might be something to brag about. instead he's very smugly telling everyone hes bad at his job because he pretends his overactive superego is a pair of republican voters
I think you have to be in your 80s to still use Matzo-Pizza to describe Massapequa. Wiki has a hilarious citation related to that nickname linking it to a 1980 Newsday article about that "brash young star" from Massapequa, Steve Guttenberg 😂
I am 46 years old, have always lived on Long Island, and I have never heard anyone say that. And I lived through the Buttafuoco era, when everyone made fun of Massapequa.
What Chuck doesn't know is that Joe Bailey lost his job last week when the insurance company which had a bunch of government contracts let a bunch of people go, the Eileen left him, and now he's incandescent with rage that his representative is collaborating with the guys responsible for his woes.
Chuck Schumer's imaginary Democrats are literally every suburban Republican family you've ever met.
If someone asks a person to give the quick elevator pitch of their politics and it includes "I take my hat off for the anthem at sporting events," that's a Qanon loon.
Weirdly, I think this was the outcome of a subplot in an episode of Friends. Chandler is annoyed by a character Joey is being, so he invents his own character to sleep with Joey's character's even more imaginary wife.
The imaginary Bailey children are working towards finishing their dental hygienist degree in at Nassau County Com College and driving Doordash on Long Island while tryin to get their micro-travel podcast to take off, respectively. They have been ducking their parents' calls since November.
Things have never been the same since that awkward moment at the Thanksgiving dinner table when Eileen jokingly apologized to her daughter’s Puerto Rican boyfriend for not having any tamales to serve.
Ah, a customer persona model. It's like business and retail stuff, trying to have a name or a person in mind when thinking about your target market. It's a narrative device, but if the underlying data is out-of-date it's out-of-date
A former friend who I no longer speak to because they went full White Nationalist (while being pro-Ireland reunification and pro-Russia) named one of his daughters Eileen.
They also live in a solid blue district but vote every election even if it's pointless. Their one redeeming factor.
I'm a real 40-something working class NYer. If Schumer ever bothered to answer his phone or respond in any way to our emails, he wouldn't have to make up imaginary people to bolster his idea of what our issues are.
I do kind of get the idea behind having "what would this imaginary average middle-class couple think" as a grounding mechanism to avoid becoming too out of touch. That's fine, actually.
The problem is that he's so out of touch that his imaginary average middle-class couple is ALSO out of touch.
I'm sorry, Senator, but today's 45-year-olds aren't worried about property taxes because property hasn't been affordable in decades. A cubicle drone for an insurance company and a part-timer in a doctor's office *combined* would be barely holding down a cramped leaky slum of an apartment, at best.
I'm mid-40s and living with my parents because lol, disability. I'm one of the LUCKY ones--the ONLY person in our friend circle, actually, who will actually own a house someday, and that's just because we'll be inheriting this one when my parents die. Which hopefully won't be for a VERY LONG time.
I was SUPER lucky to get mine because I just happened to be looking at JUST the right time for the housing and lending markets to recover from the massive bubble pop that happened back in 2007. I'm pretty sure if I had waited until now, I'd be absolutely fucked.
But sure, Senator, keep thinking the Simpsons can still afford a house like that on Homer's salary alone, and they're mostly worried about property taxes and "values."
The funniest part is, I can guarantee this is advice he got from a consultant 30 years ago and it became gospel to him.
Every consultant I've worked with has done some version of "this is your customer. Her name is Janet. She works in insurance. She shops at Target but also sometimes Walmart."
"She wants to vote Democrat because her father supported Kennedy, but is skeptical of candidates who talk about things like UBI and universal health care."
Maybe he should think about the corporeal people he represents instead of the made-up ones that he can trick himself into believing they'd support whatever he thinks already.
So, @schumer.senate.gov does what the voices in his head tell him to do. You know, usually when people say that they wind up in an institution until they're judged mentally fit to stand trial...
I'm virtually Joe Bailey. I'll be 45 in a month, I live upstate, and I work in insurance. I left Schumer's office a message the other day voicing my opposition to giving a blank check to fascists.
-Broke: deciding policy by consulting your imaginary middle class friends
-Woke+Bespoke: deciding policy by asking yourself "What would Salacious Crumb do?"
This is insane, but finally something that makes sense. All the info here is enough to know that the Bailey's are definitely MAGA, they hate Schumer, have never voted for a Democrat, but still they are the ideal people that he's trying to appeal to.
He named them the Baileys after the family in It's a Wonderful Life which has such a collectivist and frankly anticapitalist message which flies in the face of Schumer's work to uphold that status quo.
I’m a middle-class mid-40s married school teacher. He can ask me.
Things I’m worried about:
Can we afford healthcare?
3 children + college costs= impossible debt?
Working while caring for young children and declining parents in their 80s
Raising children in a nation embracing historic levels of evil
Immigrants (other than letting everyone come work here who wants to)
People “stealing” food or healthcare they ??”Don’t Deserve”??
*Every single person deserves education, food, housing, and healthcare. Every. Single. One. Okay, Chuck?*
I'm an Irish from Long Island. I know these people, like these people exactly, and I want to say this very sincerely: They are landlords who did January 6th.
Fellow Long Islander here and I can confirm, they are charging $2800 for an illegal basement apartment in their house, while they complain that Freeport "used to be nice."
I’m a Jewish (is this how identify now?) from Long Island and I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone call Massapequa “matzoh-pizza.” Also, this couple have been registered Republicans since 1964 and throw darts at a photo of LBJ while spitting dip into beer cans as their date night
What, “Éireannach” isn’t good enough for you? Jew is also slur-adjacent, fwiw (see: Shakespeare, Dickens, etc.). I should disclose that, while I didn’t grow up with that half of the family, I, too, am an Irish… and am okay with being called “a Jew”
As weird as this is on it's own, you also need to consider that Americans are possibly the most heavily surveyed people on the planet. There's actually a fuck-ton of info about what Americans think, on just about any subject you could ask.
The Baileys are out of touch white people that don't know what it's like to be behind on rent or paying student loans 20 years after you finished your BA. This is not who most people are. The Baileys think a dash of pepper is too strong. If they were a, spice they would be flour.
So this fucking prick who has been given control over a branch of the Democrats operates primarily off of what the voices of imaginary republicans in his head tell him to do and we're all supposed to believe that democracy is real and isn't just a fable told to keep us from revolting?
The imaginary friends he describes are 65 not 45. The oldest millennials will be 45 in a few years. Find me a non-rich democratic party millennial who cares about taking his hat off at the game and property taxes on Long Island.
Schumer’s imaginary constituents have totally accepted conservative framing. Any half-wit can recognize that this is a failure of Schumer/Dems, who should be waging a campaign against such framing, not accepting it.
Also, these ppl are imaginary! He has actual, real constituents that he could ask!
Started figuring out that these dudes are pandering to these bigots they imagined in their minds w/ how they talk about Macomb County, but I still was not ready for anyone to name theirs
Yeah but it could be “crypto-Irish” for those not in-the-know. Not as blatant as an O’Whatever or a McSomething. Or that’s what I’m assuming the reasoning is.
An MRI of Chuck’s brain shows a tiny focus group sitting around a table, debating the merits of his imaginary friends being WHITE WHITE or FRECKLED WHITE.
Funny, I grew up next door to Massapequa and went to school in Massapequa Park.
I think his fake friends are bullshit stand-ins for corporate donors and the rest of the big shots, Albeit in middle-class drag. #FuckSchumer
They were 45 in 2007, when Schumer renamed them. They’d be 63 now, and probably reflexively support Israel, hate congestion pricing and any new housing, and think people are just too sensitive these days
Comments
What is he TALKING about?
I wouldn't eat it unless it was Passover, though.
Nope: Mom from Floral Park and Dad from Babylon - neither ever heard of it in their entire lives
Some might call this schizophrenia.
...and then just picking another Irish name
Imaginary people are much easier to appease.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsg29nIkl5o
If someone asks a person to give the quick elevator pitch of their politics and it includes "I take my hat off for the anthem at sporting events," that's a Qanon loon.
But, I have a Dorothy, named after her great grandma, so I suppose I'm fond of "out of fashion" names.
They also live in a solid blue district but vote every election even if it's pointless. Their one redeeming factor.
"They are patriots, worry about 'values' and hate tax"
Uh huh.
The problem is that he's so out of touch that his imaginary average middle-class couple is ALSO out of touch.
Every consultant I've worked with has done some version of "this is your customer. Her name is Janet. She works in insurance. She shops at Target but also sometimes Walmart."
-Woke+Bespoke: deciding policy by asking yourself "What would Salacious Crumb do?"
Things I’m worried about:
Can we afford healthcare?
3 children + college costs= impossible debt?
Working while caring for young children and declining parents in their 80s
Raising children in a nation embracing historic levels of evil
Terrorism????
Property Taxes
Immigrants (other than letting everyone come work here who wants to)
People “stealing” food or healthcare they ??”Don’t Deserve”??
*Every single person deserves education, food, housing, and healthcare. Every. Single. One. Okay, Chuck?*
But that's not what Schumer is using.
We let these people rule us.
That is pretty funny.
Todays 45 year olds are milenials ffs.
Everyone’s overreacting. We aren’t supposed to be so polarized that we never ever vote on each other‘s issues.
It’s a shit bill, but the shut down is even worse
Also, these ppl are imaginary! He has actual, real constituents that he could ask!
For those who don’t know… NYC’s 57th street is known as “Billionaire’s Row” since so many of them live there.
Oh, looks like I stumbled into the Irish side of town
Wow.
I think his fake friends are bullshit stand-ins for corporate donors and the rest of the big shots, Albeit in middle-class drag. #FuckSchumer
this man belongs nowhere near any decision-making role.
I thought magas were nuts, but ...
As an almost 40 year old, we are Not Worried about terrorism.