The Wrong Take

On Chicago, It's By Any Means Necessary

I am reading on Twitter, and in today’s Wall Street Journal that a Marxist was elected Mayor of Chicago because all the voters who would vote against him moved out.

Mr. Johnson’s margin of victory was about 20,000 votes. How many of the city’s expats would have voted for moderate reformer Paul Vallas? Therein lies an enormous problem for Chicago and other big cities: Left-wing policies are driving away the types of voters and businesses needed for a course correction.

Between 2020 and 2022, about 71,000 people on net left San Francisco—nearly 10% of its population. During the same period, some 503,000 moved out of New York City—about four times the population of Topeka, Kan. High levels of out-migration amount to a political as well as economic brain drain. Cities are losing the voters who keep their leaders from going off the rails.

This is the exact wrong take.

A coalition of the Chicago Teacher’s Union, white Marxists, Blacks, and Marxist Hispanics elected a Marxist mayor. That should not be surprising to anyone.

I think Professor John McGinnis has a correct viewpoint. This election should be a bellwether, and wake up anyone that is a classical liberal or conservative.

First, it represents the triumph of the hard Left not on one of the coasts but in the heart of the Midwest, in a city known for its pragmatic, if machine-Democratic, politics. Second, it displays the raw power of public-sector unions in Illinois and in today’s Democratic Party. Johnson was not just supported by the unions; he is the paid agent of the most powerful and radical of them all—the Chicago Teachers Union. Third, Johnson’s victory will have national reverberations for years to come because his administration will test the Left’s attempt to transform urban policy.

Here is what really happened in Chicago. It didn’t happen overnight. My friend Matt Rosenberg has a nice expose on what it will take to change Chicago, but frankly, it’s not happening.

The Democratic Machine took power in the 1930s. They seized power over a Republican Machine. That Republican Machine elected Abe Lincoln. Chicago has been about Machine Politics and it’s been crooked since its founding.

Interestingly, Illinois is considered “The Land of Lincoln” but today the better moniker would be “The Land of Lenin”.

As the Democrats worked to exert power, they used the government as a cudgel over the head of the citizens. Get out of line, your garbage didn’t get picked up. Get out of line, a city inspector would visit your business and let you know it would be a shame for something to happen to your business.

They also stole lots of elections. As John Kass has expertly pointed out, who gets what office in Chicago isn’t competitive. It’s moving pieces around a chessboard. There are no surprises in the Chicago elections. The only drama is a faux drama created by the media and press. Today’s press in Chicago is merely a rubber stamp, a tool of the woke left. There are no true journalists in Chicago employed by the mainstream media. Not one.

They are either willing Marxists or bought.

As time moved along, the Democratic Machine saw it fortuitous to tie social issues to their power in order to promote guilt. By any means necessary right? The Bill Ayers/ Bernadine Dohrn wing of the Democratic Party took over the intellectual elite. They were readily accepted at the nice parties in Chicago and were accepted by the left-wing academics. The terrorists became respected. They played the long game and nationwide have fundamentally changed public school education in the entire United States.

Democrats in the city harnessed the Chicago street gangs to get out the vote. As long as the gangs got the vote out, the city brass would look the other way. By any means necessary.

'Not only did they take control of every political office in the city, county, and state. They took control of the city and state judiciary, with heavy input on the federal judiciary. If you were wronged by the city and went to court, you likely faced a judge that was crooked.

A recent court case on public pensions is a great example. A case wound its way through the courts. Who really ruled on it at the Illinois State Supreme Court? Anne Burke. Who is she? Alderman Ed Burke’s wife. He is one of the major cogs in the Democratic Machine, and is now in a years-long investigation over some of his actions. When you are one of the “in crowd”, the path to justice is long and twisted and the odds are good that you will get off.

Unwitting Democrats kept voting Democrat because of “abortion” and “Republicans are racist” which became “Republicans are Nazis” during the Trump Administration. The Illinois Republican Party didn’t rise to the challenge. Instead, it partnered with the Democratic Machine to pick up crumbs left behind. The Kirk Dilliard’s and Pat Brady’s of the world got appointed to all kinds of boards and the Republicans that were really the job creators got left behind to get beaten on by the Machine.

Republicans like Denny Hastert went to Washington and made some great real estate investments back in their home state. Amazing how a guy on a teacher’s salary could be worth millions and millions of dollars today even after being disgraced the way he was by his actions as a teacher.

Crony capitalism reigned, not real competitive capitalism.

Recent elections have a new wrinkle, ballot harvesting. In the old days, Machine workers would show up at nursing homes and help people fill out ballots. They’d bus old people to the polls and they’d do many things to rig elections. Ballot harvesting by the Chicago Teacher’s Union is so much more efficient.

In every single step, the Democratic Machine demoralized citizens. When you think you had a voice, your voice was snuffed out. They’d run you out of business. They’d run you out of social clubs. They’d run you out of being able to put your kids in certain private schools so you’d be forced to go to horrible public schools. The magnet schools that were actually pretty decent were gerrymandered so the favored people would get in.

If you look at the last three or four mayoral elections, voter turnout is statistically similar at about 35%. That’s because anyone with a brain in Chicago knows that their vote doesn’t really count and if you do vote, you need to vote for the person the Machine endorses otherwise adverse things happen to you, your business, and your family.

Due to the horrible fiscal condition of the state, and city, once Daley was out of power, people began to move.

I was at a few holiday parties in 2014. There were many well-heeled people there. Some were big philanthropists in the city and state. The talk at the party wasn’t about vacations. The talk was about where everyone was going to move. These were not hardcore conservative Republicans, but intellectually elite Republicans for the most part.

When I attended Democratic parties of the intellectually elite, the talk wasn’t about moving. It was about “buying a home somewhere else to get away”. That really meant, redomiciling to avoid most of the taxes.

An old trader friend of mine who lived in suburban Lake Forest told me that a lot of people he knew were moving but not selling their home. They could afford the property taxes which were extreme but because they were wealthy, their home wasn’t really an integral part of their personal balance sheet.

However, for middle-class Black people, the story is very different. They moved in huge numbers. For middle-class Whites, the same is true. You can read the data posted all the time at Wirepoints and Illinois Policy for confirmation.

For what it is worth, I began investigating my escape back in 2014. I wound up in Las Vegas. My property taxes on my home are less than the taxes on my one bedroom one bathroom walkup apartment in the city. Sales taxes are less and there is no state income tax. I can walk the streets and not worry about getting mugged or carjacked. It’s diverse. A lot of people wound up in other states.

The Chicago suburbs will not be left unscathed. Don’t operate under the false impression that you can flee the city for the burbs like it was the 1960s. The suburbs have been taken over by the Democratic Machine too so they are in on the game. There is no divide. The suburbs derive a good part of their value from a well-functioning city that provides economic and cultural opportunities.

What’s going to happen?

There is a lot of prognostication and none of it is good. When I read that Chicago will be like Detroit though, I think that is also the wrong take. Detroit was kneecapped by terrible decision-making by Big Three Auto executives combined with terrible decisions by Democratic politicians. It was not the policies of the Democratic politicians that caused the Big Three to go down in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

In Chicago, the decisions by the politicians are driving business away. See Citadel for one example. Already Brandon Johnson has been told that he won’t get his “transaction tax” for trading which would have guaranteed that the big exchanges and the entire trading community would exit.

However, you can easily envision a future where they would still leave. A corporate head tax will increase costs and so will higher property taxes. Higher user fees will increase costs. A city income tax will increase costs. An idiotic proposal to turn empty office buildings on LaSalle St into condos with Section 8 housing would turn the Loop into a ghetto. Even without that dumb proposal becoming a reality, Chicago is unsafe. When it’s unsafe to walk the street and you can’t recruit new employees to work for you, the C Suite will start to figure out if it is worth staying.

Many Chicago businesses might keep a figurehead office in the city, but my guess is there will be a lot of branch offices in other places as the city hollows out.

ADDED DUE TO A GREAT COMMENT BELOW:

I want to be clear. If NO ONE moved, or if everyone that moved out moved back, the outcome of this election would have been the same.