Boston remains the whitest big city in the entire US, with large working class neighborhoods like the North End (healthiest urban Little Italy left in the US), Charlestown, and South Boston (Southie). Lynn was historically a manufacturing center and still has many high-paying blue collar jobs thanks to the fact that General Electric's second oldest plant is located there. This is where GE's entire line of jet engines and other turbines is manufactured. A lot of people don't realize that the US is still either first or second in the world in the value of manufactured goods produced. It's just done more efficiently here than elsewhere so there are less actual jobs than in the past. The Route 128 corridor west of Boston once challenged Silicon Valley for primacy in high-tech, but those days are gone. All that remains from Digital Computer Corporation, which was once the largest in the US, is the credit union that was formerly for employees only.
People I've personally met in Massachusetts are a mixed-bag politically. Most of my experience is on Cape Cod, which has historically been more conservative than most of the rest of the state but has its own issues with its economy being based almost entirely on tourism. In my personal experience, people there tend to hide their powerlevel, so, not like Bob and Chris. Back when he was still alive, I could never find anyone who would admit to voting for Ted Kennedy even though the majority of the people that I discussed him with must have done so.
