Approaching it on the New Jersey Turnpike just after dusk, a driver stares across sulfurous marshes, the burn-off fires of oil refineries flickering like purgatory. Then all at once, in the distance, he sees the city, a kind of Oz, its lighted crystal buildings like piled diamonds. F. Scott Fitzgerald once said that looking at Manhattan from afar was always to behold it "in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world."
Well, illusions cannot last forever. As they gather for the Democratic National Convention, the...
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