Chicago voters must think the city is doing just fine…
…because they elected another leftist to replace Lori Lightfoot. The winner is Brandon Johnson, a paid organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union. That’s where his financial support came from:
Just a few months ago, Johnson was a relative unknown, even to some voters in the West Side district he represents on the Cook County Board.
He owes his meteoric rise to the millions in contributions and thousands of campaign foot soldiers provided by the CTU and its affiliates, SEIU Locals 1 and 73, SEIU Heathcare, AFSCME Council 31 and United Working Families.
That support in money and people allowed Johnson to rise above his greatest vulnerabilities: his past support for the concept of defunding the police; fears that his $800 million tax plan would be job killer that would drive businesses out of Chicago; and Vallas’ complaint that Johnson has “never run anything” bigger than a classroom.
Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.
Even though I don’t see how viewpoints on abortion are relevant to a mayoral contest, that subject featured heavily in this election – as it did in the Wisconsin judicial election I wrote about earlier today (where it was more relevant). Here’s how the subject played out in the Chicago contest:
Despite an avalanche of business contributions that allowed him to outspend Johnson by a 2 to 1 margin, Vallas could not overcome his own statements — on talk radio, Facebook and Twitter — that left voters in this overwhelmingly Democratic city believing he is an anti-abortion, pro-voucher Republican.
Not even a slew of endorsements from high-profile Democrats featured in Vallas’ television commercials — including retired Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White, retired U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush and U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin — were enough to erase that perception.
According to the article, it was young voters who put Johnson over the top in a race that was relatively close.
Rather than selecting a somewhat moderate Democrat, the brainless voters of Chi-raq have chosen a radical leftist who may well turn out to be (according to some initial speculation) even worse than the egregious Beetlejuice. The decline of all our most important cities continues apace, while our beleaguered republic may soon vanish into the pages of history with permanent one-party rule by ruthless and totalitarian Neo-Bolsheviks who welcome anarcho-tyranny as they wage war on the kulaks, while the nation comes to resemble more and more the film Idiocracy. It is noteworthy that Vallas was leading until the evening.
My oldest daughter now lives in Chicago. I’m worried sick about her. The only upside is that she will see and experience the failures of the Dem party. I just hope she doesn’t get hurt.
Are you surprised? They’ve voted a straight far left ticket for the last century or so.
Just remember what mayor Daley (son of previous mayor Daley) did to Meigs Field, Chicago’s downtown airfield, bulldozing the place in the middle of the night AFTER agreements with the state, city, and federal governments to keep it open (and getting paid to keep it open).
Chicago is moving towards the “Detroit model.”
No matter how quickly lawlessness / crime increases , the voters will keep electing politicians that will pilot the Titanic – full speed – into that iceberg, even though the iceberg has been visible for 100 miles.
Detroit has not and will not recover; that city is gone for good. The politicians there realize that if they do nothing at all to improve the lot of the citizenry they will keep getting re-elected and pocket a good salary and good benefits.
The only question re: Chicago is will the new mayor be worse than Lori Lightbrains. Frankly, it makes no difference.
If the new mayor is a one term mayor, the voters there will simply elect another Lighthead / Johnson clone.
Why businesses stay in Chicago is truly baffling.
“Even though I don’t see how viewpoints on abortion are relevant to a mayoral contest . . .”
I agree, but among my left leaning friends, if a candidate is not 100% supportive of a woman’s right to choose, they will never vote for him/her. It’s simply the make or break issue for them – all other issues, like crime, are irrelevant in comparison.
“ According to the article, it was young voters who put Johnson over the top in a race that was relatively close.”
I think it makes more sense to blame the women voters in Chicago and Wisconsin. Even before the overturn of Roe v. Wade, women disproportionately voted for Democrats by large margins. Dennis Prager thinks women are disproportionately to blame for many of our society’s problems and I think he makes sense. The universities are dominated by women, including the hard sciences and engineering but especially the left-wing, social sciences. The doctors mutilating and poisoning confused children with transgender drugs and surgery are almost all women. Prager’s thesis is that in the past it was men who were thought to need to overcome their nature. Recent events show that women are flawed too, no surprise, and need to control their base nature. Neo, I know you are great at pointing out problems, but do you have any solutions on how to reach women with conservative messages?
Let’s just hope that Obama’s Presidential monument isn’t adversely affected.
That toddlin’ town!
Bob Wilson–
Dennis Prager has been married three times– I’d take anything he says about women with the proverbial dose of salt. As for women being as flawed as men, St. Paul said in Romans 3:23 that “all [humans] have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God”– so I’ve never thought that women are (morally speaking) any better than men are.
“According to the article, it was young voters who put Johnson over the top in a race that was relatively close.”
Yep. I have been saying for years, it ain’t us Californicators turning red states blue. It is the young voters.
And, while on the subject of us moving to red states, it is a real shame how the greedy locals jacks up real estate prices, pricing friends and neighbors out of the market.
Democrats are the good people. Voting D makes someone moral, smart and compassionate. It’s always the best thing to do.
As for why all the Democrat-run cities are hellholes? Must be due to Republican racism.
PA+cat and Bob Wilson,
I don’t think it’s women in general, but liberal/leftist women. My own experience within academia as it turned into a “gynocracy” is that those type of women are the most extreme examples of harridans one could find. Truly repulsive people.
New Zealand, Jacinda Ahern, Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, and recently Finland, Sanna Marin, have not had much luck with leftist women leaders and have turned them out. Of course I will trade all of them and Joe Biden and a player to be named for Margaret Thatcher. But my question was serious. We need to be about solutions not just naming problems. How to reach women with conservative ideas because clearly current approaches are not working?
Decades ago, having disinterred my high school yearbook (’62), I was surprised that I’d forgotten several women’s notes that I had no emotion and looked at things only factually. Not sure where this surfaced, class discussions or extracurriculars.
The impression was the fact/emotion thing was about issues in which I was not involved–discussing something in history, maybe.
But apparently, coming to an erroneous conclusion by listening to my emotions was to be preferred. Or, perhaps, that it was emotionally driven meant it couldn’t be erroneous. Or…something.
Not many guys would say this, even if they thought it, a situation I cannot imagine anyway.
Can this be expanded to current events and politics?
My only direct evidence is that guys I know afflicted with TDS have one or another actual fact they think is definitive, while the women simply say they hate the Trump and don’t see the need for…facts. Hating him is sufficient and legitimate in terms of voting.
I have a couple of relations who have gloried in submitting to Covid and dismiss with accusations of “LIAR” anybody not going full Fauci. Even bringing up a question is dismissed scornfully. They are women. Where does this fall?
The Chicago election, just as the decline of Detroit, is racial politics. Coleman Young destroyed the city in his 20 years as Mayor. He was quoted as telling white residents to leave the city. Chicago is about as bad. My sister lives there still as she was married to a policeman, now deceased. Policemen had to live in the city. Her children live in the suburbs where I would like to see her relocate. Now crime is involving largely white neighborhoods, on the theory I suppose that there is more to steal there. All the violence is black generated.
In the aggregate, the voters of America’s major Democrat controlled cities have voted to allow the inmates to run the asylum. Those voters refusal to reflect upon the resulting consequences of the policies they support is how and why ‘good intentions’ pave The Road to Hell.
Chicago was a city where people made things. Now it’s a city where governments spend tax money and people live off that. The remaining corporate headquarters and financial enterprises are in thrall to woke HR departments and don’t make any waves. Business thought that gutting industry would weaken unions, but now the public employees’ unions have more power than ever in cities where industry has been in decline for decades.
Reformers thought that getting rid of the old fashioned political machines would bring decency and responsibility back into government but the blob of bureaucrats, government employee’s unions, non-profits, activists, and agitators functions as the new political machine. It might be comforting to think that this was an unintended consequence of reform movements, but perhaps the young professionals who sparked such movements intended something like this all along.
Mike K- I agree that Coleman Young with his racial politics was extremely destructive. Believe it or not though, I think that Detroit is making something of a slow comeback, and the racial politics have been subsiding. In 2013 the voters elected the current mayor Mike Duggan, who is white. He’s very low key but effective. The downtown area is experiencing something of a renaissance as are some of the neighborhoods. I think that it’s worth noting that there were no BLM/Antifa riots in Detroit. When the Antifa types (mostly young whites from outside the city), tried to start something in Detroit the citizens themselves kicked them out. There are still a lot of problems, but unlike most other big cities, things are slowly getting better rather than worse.
well the solution is spend less except possibly public safety, spend less on education, but direct the curriculum to teach the basics, chicago has done the reverse of all those courses of action
Vallas seemed a reasonable democrat, he denounced desantis, but otherwise,
What Abraxas said.
…but now the public employees’ unions have more power than ever in cities where industry has been in decline for decades.
The productive leave, those that stay vote socialist. The front page of the Chicago Tribune on Sunday was a picture of Bernie Sanders at a Brandon Johnson rally. The Tribune endorsed Vallas by the way. This was clearly their way of saying, “Don’t vote for this guy.” Little good it did.
There’s a season 2 episode of The Simpsons, when Bart is nominated along with Martin for class president. During their campaign speeches, Martin gets up and says that testing in this very room shows ## parts per million of asbestos, and Bart interrupts: “That’s not enough! We need more asbestos! More asbestos!” as the class joins in the chant.
That’s how I feel about elections these days in places like L.A., San Fran, Cal in general, Chicago, and Wisconsin.
The people cheer: “More asbestos!!!”
To PA Cat:
With all respect for your opinion, I can only reply by resorting to Biblical authority, specifically Paul the Apostle, who said in 1 Timothy, 2:
“I also want the women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, adorning themselves, not with elaborate hairstyles or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God. A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.”
Paul believed, as do I and should all believers in Biblical Christianity that the ordained roles of man and woman are different; complimentary, but unequivocally not “equal.” Each is given a unique and non-transferrable role in marriage, the family, the church and society in general. What we are witnessing today is the intentional subversion of God’s ordained order, and not merely in the relationship between the sexes. Nor do I for a moment excuse men who have abdicated their own Biblical role; they are as guilty as Adam was in acceding to Eve’s suggestion to participate in the original sin. In a larger context, we are witnessing a wholesale rejection of Biblical values and a replacement by ersatz “secular” values, which has given us homosexual “marriage” (a ludicrous neologism), “transgenders,” and child sacrifice in the form of abortion and encouragement to abandon their Godly innocence in order to pander to the obscene and degenerate desires of pederasts and pedophiles. Satan has, for the moment at least, become ascendant, but my confidence rests in the knowledge that God, our Creator, is not mocked and although He is patient with His creation, He will in the fullness of time execute righteous judgment, and woe to those who have decided to live outside the atoning sacrifice of Jesus upon whom His judgment will fall.
they picked the wrong lizard, (hitchhiker’s guide)
I called this. Lived in Chicago for ten years. Chicago voters are the most intellectually challenged in the galaxy.
Bob Wilson
Totally agree!
I grew up in Chicago and lived there until I was 18. This is not the same city. I knew blacks in the 1950s and we socialized together, It has been taken over by gangs and they control the city. Blacks are now about 30% of the population and vote as tribe. Scott Adams has good advice. Stay away from Chicago.
I think that Detroit is making something of a slow comeback, and the racial politics have been subsiding.
I hope so. The whites and the middle class blacks headed for the suburbs and I understand they are OK. My daughter was in the last class of the fiscal year at the FBI Academy and wound up in Detroit. It took her 7 years to get out and only a new SAC who did not know the territory let her escape. It was an interesting assignment,.
“Meet the new boss… Same as the old boss.”
I voted for the other guy.
>young voters
It’s just Chicago residents being Chicago residents: stupid – and young. Johnson was endorsed by Bernie Sanders so the young probably saw that and said “he’s my guy.”
“Scott Adams has good advice. Stay away from Chicago.”
I’m not sure if he said stay away from Chicago. He did say stay from blacks.
Democracy works best when you have informed voters. With the way the news media works today, very few are informed. The Izvestiya (news) is all slanted and there is little Pravda (truth) in the news.
So, we see how democracy dies. The voters think the know what they’re doing, but they’re really following a script that has been prepared for them by the ruling elites.
Constitutional conservatives, and indeed all who pray for the return of the American democratic recovery, should welcome Johnson’s close win over a leftist pretending somewhat less progressive values. Chicago, like Detroit, San Francisco, Minneapolis and other Democrat run cities, id dying. There was and is zero chance that Chicagoans will wake up in time to prevent that death.
First, that rescue would require a top-to-bottom overhaul of a political machine that has existed for the lifetimes of most Chicagoans. Merely electing a phenom like a municipal Trump would change little and would end-up convincing voters that “there is no difference between Rs and Ds.
Second, mega-cities like Chicago are de-evolving after a centuries long run. Technology has rendered the practical reasons that caused the rapid growth of cities since the beginning of the Modern Era nugatory. Cities, like Chicago, are deadmen walking.
I lived in Chicago for five years as a student and loved many parts of it – it truly was “magnificent” but even then it was living on an inertia that was, to use the in vogue term, “unsustainable.”
Real progress is always a destructive process and efforts to slow that destruction end up merely prolonging it and magnifying its costs. Progressivism is almost entirely an urban construct.Both Chicagoan and the rest of us will be better off when Chicago and its ilk are allowed to de-evolve. We can only hope that this will occur before the Progressive disease kills us all .
I’m pretty sure Brandon Johnson got elected based on the votes of the really old. The ones that ‘voted Republican until the day they died and have voted Democratic ever since’.
We know one thing. Chicago always has fair elections.
What?
The Chicago election, just as the decline of Detroit, is racial politics.
==
The black share of Chicago’s population is declining. It was larger when Richard Daley fils was racking up large majorities. The sum of (non-hispanic) whites, Orientals, and East Indians has seen only small change since 1990. Johnson’s not hispanic. Have a gander at the racial composition of Ilhan Omar’s district or Ayanna Pressley’s district. Recall that Omar in 2020 defeated a black lawyer in a primary who had old liberal views. Racial politics is a factor, but it’s mostly just wanting to see the world burn. The question is, how is it that this is so common among people born after 1980. Twenty-five years ago, the political affiliation of young voters was similar to that of the generic voter. What happened?
One thing to keep in mind is enthusiasm. I live in a distant suburb of Chicago and almost forgot to vote on Tuesday. Normally I early vote so I get it over with, but somehow I lost track of time. My city had someone with money and connections run for mayor. I liked the incumbent. But people who want ‘change’ are more motivated to vote. I was lukewarm about voting, but I view it as a serious civic duty.
But most people who liked the incumbent probably didn’t place voting high on their list of things to do.
Same thing is likely in Chicago. Say what you will about CTU, the teachers, and the people associated with them, but they are motivated.
Forget it Neo, it’s Chicago.