Posts Tagged ‘leftism’

By John Ruberry

Last’s week’s convincing victory by Donald J. Trump over Kamala Harris offers a plan for the future of the Republican Party.

Let’s begin with this development. America is in a new political era. The Sixth Party System, which covers the shift of the Democratic Solid South to the Republican Party, is over. While Georgia is still a swing state, the GOP still owns the South. 

The shift of the working class, regardless of race, to the Republican side is in motion. The Seventh Party System is here. The Democrats are now the party of the wealthy metropolitan elites and people collecting public assistance. Good luck trying to create functional policy out of those odd lots. This, as Trump would say, is yuge. Sure, there are some unfriendly ripples in the Red Wave, women favor the Democrats and the tiny blocs with permanent grievances, such as the trans lobby and the Green Luddites, will always favor the left.

In politics the game is never over. Envision the GOP as a football team with a 27-14 lead over the Dems–and Trump, as quarterback, has the ball, with a skilled backup ready when he’s needed in JD Vance.

QB Trump needs to pass the ball into the cities for the long-term victory.

Because I live just outside of Chicago, I’m going to focus on that city, which hasn’t had a Republican mayor since 1931. But the story is similar in other big cities, particularly New York.

Trump collected 12 percent of the vote in Chicago in 2016, he improved to 16 percent four years later. This year he took 22 percent; it was the GOP’s best presidential Chicago performance since 1992. Trump won a Chicago ward, the 41st, and that hasn’t happened since that same year. The now president-elect came close in several other wards, mostly ones where many Chicago police officers and firefighters live, but Trump was also in shouting distance in the 50th Ward, which has many Orthodox Jewish residents. 

Trump made massive gains among Chicago’s Hispanic voters. To be fair, the black vote and the haughty white know-it-all vote on the North Side continued past patterns

Yes, 22 percent in an election is a long way from a majority. But there much room for growth.

Elsewhere, after Election Day some urban leftist pols are now out of a job. They include three woke prosecutors, California’s George Gascón and Pamela Price (who was recalled), and Deborah Gonzalez in Georgia. Two other California leftist mayors are now cleaning out their desks, London Breed lost her reelection race in San Francisco and Oakland’s Sheng Thao was recalled.

Voters nationwide are fed up with leftist public officials and there doesn’t seem to be too many moderate Democrats, particularly in big cities. Chicago’s woke mayor, Brandon Johnson, who was elected in a low turnout election just last year, now has an approval rating of just 14 percent.

The GOP, even in cities like Chicago that have nominally non-partisan elections, needs to start recruiting candidates now for the next few election cycles, not just for municipal races, but for state legislature and congressional contests.

In many cities, such as Chicago, “Republican” is still toxic in many circles. To counter that, conservative candidates can run as an independent. Gascón’s opponent, Nathan Hochman, a Republican, did just that in California.

Never forget, the Democrats are the party many unpopular political positions.

Including:

  • Sanctuary cities and open borders.
  • DEI.
  • Featherbedding government worker payrolls.
  • No-cash bail laws.
  • Lax prosecution of criminals.
  • Defunding the police or cutting the number of law enforcement officers.
  • Transgenderism–including supporting boys playing in girls’ sports.
  • Forcing expensive electric cars on us.
  • Banning natural gas stoves and ovens.
  • Burdensome regulations.
  • Opposing fossil fuels.
  • Red-light and speed cameras.
  • High taxes.
  • Hostility to school choice and private school vouchers.

And so much more.

Yes, party identity is a tough nut to crack, but progress has already been made by the GOP.

Big cities are the rotten apples on the dying Democratic tree.

Conservatives offer a better way. Say it now and say it loud.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

By John Ruberry

The big political news from last week, unless that is, your only news sources are MSNBC and CNN, was not the prime-time January 6 show trial masquerading as a hearing, but the resounding vote by San Francisco voters to recall radical leftist so-called prosecutor Chesa Boudin. 

Oh, he is a piece of work, this one. Boudin’s parents were Weather Underground terrorists, both of whom served long prison terms for their crimes, including murder. Boudin’s guardians were two other ex-Weather Underground terrorists, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, he attended an elite private high school, and he is a Yale law school graduate. Boudin was served a translator for Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez. In 2019, campaigning as if he was a woke social worker, Boudin was elected district attorney for San Francisco. “We will not prosecute cases involving quality-of-life crimes,” Boudin the candidate said. “Crimes such as public camping, offering or soliciting sex, public urination, blocking a sidewalk, etc., should not and will not be prosecuted.” Well, I’ll concede this fact to him. Boudin honored his campaign promises.

And criminals received the message. Shoplifting soared under Boudin, as well as what one Nation writer, Sasha Abramsky, called other “low-end crimes,” including burglary and car break-ins. To me, a low-end crime is littering or jaywalking, but I am not a leftist. For many people, particularly renters and the poor, an automobile is their most valuable asset. Low-end? Really? Abramsky, you are quite out of touch, but of course you are, you write for the Nation.

The murder rate went up under Boudin. His misrule was a validation of the Rudy Giuliani’s “broken windows” policy of policing. Notice that I didn’t call it the “broken windows” theory of law enforcement.

I’ve only visited San Francisco once, in 2010, which residents of the City on the Bay probably look back on as “the good old days.” I was appalled by the level of homelessness there, and by all accounts, there are now many more indigents sprawled out on San Franciso sidewalks. Tellingly, during my time there I noticed the strong smell of urine even in the best neighborhoods. Boudin couldn’t smell the pee?

I’ve heard there are Republicans in San Francisco, albeit very few. The two Republican opponents of Nancy Pelosi–her entire district is within the city–collected 11-percent of the vote in 2020. But 60 percent of voters in San Francisco voted to purge Boudin last week. Earlier this month, another Nation writer, Christopher D. Cook, warned of a “centrist uprising” against progressivism in San Francisco. And all of this time, particularly from the left, I’ve been told we need more moderation in our politics, which of course to them means conservatives veering over to their side. In fact, as Democrat policies, from Biden down to Boudin, prove toxic, it’s liberals who are heading to the center, which is best exemplified by Bill Maher’s regular attacks on the far-left. 

Over at the Washington Post, Perry Bacon Jr. warns of centrist Democrats attacking far-left policies on crime. Writing for the New York Times, Shane Goldmacher commented, “Centrists and former law enforcement leaders hailed the successful San Francisco recall as a crushing blow to progressives.”

Oh, those evil centrists, they are taking America down a treacherous moderate path.

Boudin, true to form for any leftist, blamed “right-wing billionaires” for his defeat. Oh, what’s this? Radical leftist billionaire George Soros contributed to an anti-recall political action committee.

The Democrats of course don’t possess the right side of the political spectrum. And they are losing the center. Or perhaps it’s already lost to them. Which leaves the Democratic Party with the extreme left, or to channel Biden’s insult on conservatives which ricocheted against him, the Ultra Left.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

By John Ruberry

On occasion I get accused of living in a right-wing silo, or if you prefer, bubble.

But it’s left-wingers who are more likely to dwell in their own political silo. And it’s hurting their side. 

Good.

And because many people, particularly leftists, are terrible listeners, I have to repeat myself yet again.

Here we go.

Even if I wanted to, I can’t remain in a right-wing silo. Besides–broadcast and cable media, as well as streaming services, are dripping wet with liberal and woke bias. And I can’t always avoid them. Last year, Mrs. Marathon Pundit underwent a minor medical procedure. In the waiting room I had to sit through ABC’s Good Morning America, hosted by Clintonista George Stephanopoulos, and then, on the same network, The View. 

Earlier this year I had some complicated dental work done. My dentist has TVs in front of each chair. What was on? The View. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was one of the show’s guests. 

“John,” my dentist calmly said to me as she drilled, “tell me if you experience pain.”

Conservatives–and if you are a regular viewer of MSNBC or CNN this will shock you–are more tolerant of people who hold opposing views.

It’s an old study, but Pew Research found that liberals were more likely to block or unfriend a conservative than the other way around. 

The mainstream media, the Biden White House, and big-city governments are leftist monocultures. Big tech too, but I’ll attack them again, I am sure, in a future blog post.

When you live in an echo chamber, you are bound to inadvertently come up with ideas that outsiders will mock. Or even, like a lit stick of dynamite with a long fuse, have them thrown back at you. 

Last month, a contender–and oh my, is the competition steep–for worst Biden cabinet member, Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, revealed the formation of the Disinformation Governance Board. Conservatives immediately pounced, and almost in unison, called the group “Orwellian” and labeled it “the Ministry of Truth,” which is where reluctant liar Winston Smith toiled in George Orwell’s novel, 1984. When it was revealed that a disinformationist, who had cast doubts on the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop, Nina Jankowicz, was the head of that panel, the Orwell analogy was complete. 

One rule of politics, one that the woke ignores because of what Ben Shapiro calls the left’s “unearned sense of moral superiority,” is that when (not if, because the right errs too) you make a whopper of a mistake, you must immediately correct it. So rather than eliminating the Disinformation Governance Board as soon as Mayorkas acknowledged its existence, “the Ministry of Truth” and Jankowicz dangled for three weeks. During that time the Orwellian memes of Jankowicz flooded social media, and an embarrassing TikTok video of Jankowicz, singing to the tune of “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” emerged, which gained her the nickname Scary Poppins.

Anita Dunn, who in 2009 cited the genocidal Mao Tse-Tung as one of her favorite philosophers, which led to her departure from the Obama White House, worked on the 2020 Biden campaign. She was briefly a senior White House advisor to Biden. Dunn is said to have been behind the president’s recent use of not only MAGA as a pejorative, but the heretofore unheard moniker “Ultra MAGA.” Conservatives on social media immediately and proudly declared themselves as “Ultra MAGA,” mirroring the response in 2016 when Hillary Clinton called Donald Trump supporters “deplorables.” During a speech earlier this month, Biden referred to his predecessor as “the great MAGA king.” On Truth Social, Trump struck back with a Lord of the Rings-themed meme as he gleefully adopted the nickname.

If Dunn didn’t live in a left-wing bubble, she would have seen all of those snarky responses coming.   

On the local level, last month Chicago’s inept leftist mayor, Lori Lightfoot, declared that the summer of 2022 will be “the Summer of Joy.” John Kass has derisively referred to the Summer of Joy in several of his columns and he poked fun at it in his most recent podcast. Hey Jackass, the sarcastic yet accurate tabulator of Chicago murders and shootings, is selling Summer of Joy T-shirts and coffee cups. Now that Memorial Day weekend has arrived, every time there is a mass shooting in Chicago–and we only have to look back a few hours to find the most recent one–bloggers and right-leaning social media users will quip something along the lines of “Wow, here is more ‘Summer of Love’ Chicago carnage for you.”

All Lightfoot would have needed to prevent this mockery is to have a politically moderate advisor–she would never hire a conservative–who would be bold enough to say, “I don’t think ‘Summer of Love’ is a wise idea, and here’s why.”

As Mary Poppins, not Biden’s Scary Poppins, said in that classic movie, “Sometimes a person we love, through no fault of their own, can’t see past the end of his nose.”

Such is the status of liberalism in 2022.

Which is why it will be a glorious election season for the right this year.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

By John Ruberry

If you give a press conference and the result looks like a Saturday Night Live sketch, a pre-woke version of the show that is, then you have a big problem.

So it was last week with Chicago’s inept leftist mayor, Lori Lightfoot, when she blamed retail crime victims for the rise of flash mob thieves plaguing Chicago’s Magnificent Mile shopping area.

“We still have retailers that won’t institute plans like having security officers in their stores, making sure that they’ve got cameras that are actually operational, locking up their merchandise at night, chaining high-end bags,” the first-term Democrat said. “These purses can be something that is attracting a lot of organized retail theft units.”

So it’s the victims’ fault.

Just like it was in this SNL skit from 1991, featuring Chicago native Joe Mantegna, where he blames New York City crime victims for their problems.

“Yeah, I was flying to Florida, and we had a stopover in New York,” a caller to a talk radio show told Mantegna. “Well, while we were sitting on the ground a group of ‘wilding’ teenagers boarded the plane and beat with me on the head with a pipe.”

“And which airport was this,” Mantegna asked,

“LaGuardia,” was the reply.

“Well, there you go,” Mantegna scolded the caller.

Chicago Police brass were said to have a plan in place to combat smash-and-grab thieves and avoid scenes such as what happened when a Burberry’s on North Michigan Avenue was emptied of purses–each handbag was worth more than a thousand dollars. 

If there was a plan by the CPD, then it clearly didn’t work. Since Lightfoot’s delusional presser a North Face store on the Mag Mile was struck twice. But proving that the Burberry’s looting was just a tame opening act, yesterday a luxury car dealer just off of the Magnificent Mile was robbed of an estimated $2 million worth of high-end watches–which, are you paying attention Mayor Lightfoot?– were locked up inside a locked glass display case. Yep, $2 million.

The dealership is now seeing customers on an appointment basis only–its doors are locked during store hours. Welcome to the new Chicago.

On Friday night’s Flannery Fired Up show on Fox 32 Chicago, host Mike Flannery estimated that 20 percent of the storefronts on North Michigan Avenue are empty. Regular readers of my posts know that the Mag Mile was devastated by two rounds of looting–oops, I mean “mostly peaceful protests”–in 2020. 

The luxury dealership, which sells Rolls-Royces, Bentleys, and Lamborghinis, is owned by Joe Perillo, who is rethinking operating in Chicago.

“It is wrong for someone to break into a place – if they get caught, they get let out!” Perillo explained to ABC 7. “If they get arrested, they get let go. So, how do you intend to ever solve that problem?” He added, “If they don’t do anything about this, they’re going to lose a lot of businesses. They lost Macy’s. They’re losing Neiman Marcus. They may lose this store.”

While Neiman Marcus still has a store on the North Michigan Avenue, the Gap and Disney have also left in the last year. And remember what Flannery said about Mag Mile vacancies. 

It’s not just Lightfoot’s fault.

Kim Foxx is one of those woke so-called prosecutors whose campaign was funded by radical leftist George Soros. She’s received plenty of well-deserved scorn for her mishandling of the Jussie Smollett case. But the greater sin of the Cook County state’s attorney is her catch-and-release policy involving criminals accused of serious offenses. Even some alleged murderers are out of jail on electronic surveillance.

How ’bout if a non-woke SNL updated that skit with a Chicago twist?

“Hello, my store was emptied of merchandise by flash mob looters,” a caller to that SNL-radio show might say.

“What do you sell,” Lori Lightfoot would reply.

“Purses worth more than $1,000.”

Lightfoot’s retort would be, “Well, there you go.”

Retail groups have been complaining that shoppers are now afraid to visit North Michigan Avenue. Who can blame them?

Chicago is dying. The cause of death? Woke politicians.

Well, there you go.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.