I found Allysia Finley’s Wall Street Journal analysis of the Chicago mayoral election unsatisfying:

Chicago’s mayoral election is a power struggle between Democratic Party bosses and activists—the city’s rusted-out machine versus its progressive grass roots. And the Smollett case has become a key flashpoint.

The nation’s third-largest city has long been ruled by the Democratic machine. Although Mayor Emanuel once served as a Washington power broker, he was never embraced by Chicago’s machine or unions. Kingpin Richard M. Daley served as mayor for 22 years (1989-2011), but Mr. Emanuel is stepping down this year after two tumultuous terms rather than fight an uphill re-election battle amid deteriorating city finances, increasing property taxes, high crime and a restive electorate.

His retirement sparked a nonpartisan primary free-for-all in February with 14 candidates. Bill Daley was an early favorite but the former mayor’s brother (who succeeded Mr. Emanuel in 2011 as President Obama’s chief of staff) was derided by unions and progressives as too moderate. Despite performing strongly in the city’s downtown business district, he finished third with 14.8% of the vote.

Ms. Lightfoot led the field with 17.5% and ran away with the limousine-liberal vote on the city’s North Side. The 56-year-old black former prosecutor highlighted her sundry opponents’ ties to Alderman Ed Burke—the longest-serving member on the City Council—who was indicted in January for extorting campaign donations from a Burger King franchise owner.

What’s missing is that more black voters voted for the most anti-establishment and most conservative candidate running in the primaries than either of the two candidates who ultimately prevailed. Mostly white Lake Shore liberals and whites supporting public employees’ unions voted for the machine candidate; the Northwest Side voted for Lightfoot. The candidate most representative of the views of the “new left” came in fourth.

The editors of the Washington Post agree with President Trump that there is a crisis at our southern border but propose a somewhat different strategy for dealing with it:

THERE IS a genuine problem at the U.S.-Mexico border, as President Trump says. Unfortunately, his proposed solutions will not help. Worse, his defiance of Congress puts a genuine solution further out of reach. But — and here’s the good news — there is action Congress could take that would help, and an imaginable political route that would bring victories all around, including to the United States’ young “dreamers.”

The problem is an upsurge in Central American families arriving at the border, in numbers that constitute “an unprecedented humanitarian and border security crisis,” according to Kevin K. McAleenan, the commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Speaking to reporters in El Paso last Wednesday, Mr. McAleenan said agents had detained more than 4,100 migrants on the previous day, the highest for one day in more than a decade. Many are adults traveling with children; some are unaccompanied minors. The numbers, the commissioner said, are overwhelming the United States’ ability to process people safely and humanely. Many will end up being “paroled” into the United States, though they are not legally entitled to settle here.

This is bad for everyone. No matter what level of immigration you favor — and we support healthy levels of legal immigration — every country wants to control its borders and decide who may enter. Meanwhile, thousands of desperate Central American children are being lured into a potentially hazardous journey.

[…]

Some of these undocumented arrivals are indeed skirting the fence — but as soon as they do, they turn themselves in. They want to be apprehended.

That is because current law prevents the government from detaining children, either alone or with relatives, for long. If the migrants claim asylum, they must be released before their claim can be considered. They enter the United States, perhaps find work, perhaps go underground before their hearings ever take place. This creates a powerful incentive for Central Americans who are struggling to make a living at home.

Mr. McAleenan would like Congress to give him authority to hold these migrants for up to eight weeks. That would allow time to process their claims, which would in many cases be denied. He also wants authority to return unaccompanied children to their home countries, which the law allows for Mexicans and Canadians but not Central Americans. If word got out that paying $7,000 to “coyotes” for the trip to the border was likely to result in a prompt return trip, the flow would diminish — which would mean fewer children in danger.

They follow that with a call for legalization of “longtime, law-abiding residents of the United States”, which to my eye flies in the face of their stated support for controlled legal immigration.

Our present problem goes back to changes in policy by the Obama Administration, broadening the definition of asylum, and a court decision limiting the federal government’s ability to detain families with children, coupled with an information campaign in Central America that basically told people that families with children would be admitted to the United States, no questions asked.

I agree that Congress should act to empower border agents to detain families with children and unaccompanied children for long enough to process their asylum applications, returning them to their countries of origin expeditiously as we do with Mexicans and Canadians. I also favor serious workplace enforcement and our own information campaign in Central America: we will only accept legal immigrants; all others will be sent back.

But I would have thought we would have learned our lesson by now. Blanket legalization of those here illegally has consequences—it incentivizes more illegal immigration. Apparently, the editors of the WaPo are slow learners.

Hmmm. Remember my mentioning the idea of splitting up New York State not long ago? Apparently, there’s a separatist movement brewing in the Empire State that wants to do just that:

HOST INTRO: Yet another Brexit deadline was missed today. British lawmakers had to negotiate a plan to leave the European Union. But with tensions high and no resolution in sight, they got a two-week extension to decide for good whether the UK wants in or out. Meanwhile, as Ali Swenson reports, there’s another separatist movement brewing — right here in New York state.

((SOUND: Taking steps in the Albany Bus Terminal.

SWENSON 1: When you arrive at the Albany Bus Terminal, it’s immediately clear: You’re not in Manhattan anymore.

((SOUND: Door opening. Country music playing outside the terminal.

SWENSON 2: At this one-room transit station, country music blasts over the speakers. Down the street, hotel doors welcome guests inside with decals that read “howdy y’all.” Albany’s population would fit inside New York City more than 80 times.

Albany is just three hours north of Manhattan, but it feels like part of a different state entirely. And if a new bill in the state assembly passes, it might as well be.

DIPIETRO 1

It’s been talked about. No one’s ever had the guts to actually put it into a bill and say you know what? This is a law, let’s actually move it. (0:06)

SWENSON 3: Assemblyman David DiPietro is from upstate New York. His bill is the first to propose splitting the state into three independent regions. The five boroughs would keep the name “New York,” downstate suburbs and Long Island would be called “Montauk.” Upstate, where DiPietro lives, would be called “New Amsterdam.”

One of the things I learned from reading that article is that Illinois is not the only state that has the upstate/downstate relationship wrong. A lot of Illinoisans who live downstate, i.e. outside Chicago and its “collar counties” believe that Chicago and its “collar counties” are receiving more than their fair share of state revenues. It’s actually the other way around.

I know little about New York politics but I suspect that a divorce between the New York City area and the rest of the state would initially be disastrous for the rest of the state but over time would benefit it. It would also in all likelihood result in two more Republican senators.

Another story much in the news is President Trump’s announcement of his plan to cut U. S. aid to Central American countries. NBC News reports:

The Trump administration said Saturday that it intends to end foreign assistance programs for Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, a move that Democrats called “reckless” and “counterproductive” in addressing the problems that cause people to flee to the U.S.

A State Department spokesperson said that “at the Secretary’s instruction, we are carrying out the President’s direction and ending FY 2017 and FY 2018 foreign assistance programs for the Northern Triangle,” a term that refers to the three countries.

The spokesperson said “we will be engaging Congress as part of this process,” which could mean it needs Congress’ approval to end funding.

The aid affects nearly $500 million in 2018 funds and millions more left over from the previous fiscal year. The money was destined for Central America but had not been spent yet, the Washington Post reported

That’s something I with which I simultaneously agree and disagree. I think we should actually increase our aid to the “Northern Triangle” but that aid should take a form completely different than it does now. Most of our foreign aid to Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador does nothing for the people of those countries. It is snatched by the countries’ elites as quickly as they can get their mitts on it. And for goodness sake we shouldn’t fund their militaries. The militaries function primarily as a means of repressing the people and imposing authoritarian governments. We should be encouraging those countries to eliminate their militaries entirely. One of the reasons that Costa Rica is so stable is that it eliminated its military 70 years ago.

U. S. aid should be in the form of micro-loans to individuals or, possibly, small municipalities. If the State Department is incapable of administering that in a fair and non-corrupt manner, we should be giving grants to NGOs that can to do it.

The story of a Nevada state legislator who says that former Vice President Joe Biden touched her and kissed her inappropriately at a Las Vegas campaign rally may well have legs. It is presently being repeated by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and is a prime topic on the Sunday morning talking heads programs of all four broadcast networks.

It is not news that Joe Biden is, to put the nicest possible coloring on it, an affectionate guy. The word “handsy” is frequently encountered in descriptions. That has been the case for decades. It hasn’t seemed to have made much difference until now. He was elected to the U. S. Senate six times and elected vice president twice, most recently just six years ago.

The story has so many angles one doesn’t know where to start. There’s #MeToo, generational differences, and political infighting. As might be expected the Trump White House is jumping on the story with both feet. The Washington Post reports:

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway is criticizing former Vice President Joe Biden after a former Nevada state legislator alleged he inappropriately kissed her on the back of her head in 2014.

Conway described the woman, Lucy Flores, as “quite bold” to “go against the highest levels of her political party” with the allegations and said Biden now has a “big problem.” Biden, a Democrat, is considering running for president in 2020.

Conway tells “Fox News Sunday” that quote, “He calls it affection and handshakes. His party calls it completely inappropriate.”

Conway suggested that Biden should consider apologizing to Flores.

Flores, who was Nevada’s Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor in 2014, wrote in New York Magazine that she felt uncomfortable with her interactions with Biden.

And what is one to make of people who remain silent when it’s to their advantage but speak up when that’s to their advantage? Ms. Flores is a Sanders supporter. I realize those last sentences will be condemned by some as sexist, racist, and just plain heinous. If we are to make sense of the world around us we must look at events unflinchingly, considering people as they are and not just as we would wish them to be.

Joe Biden is or at least was the presumed Democratic presidential candidate with the brightest prospects in the general election. As I’ve said previously I would vote for him in 2020.

I return to the question I implicitly asked yesterday. Is any candidate capable of winning the Democratic primaries also capable of winning in the general election?

I would be the first person to suggest that I’m out of touch. I don’t see how anyone could support some of the candidates stepping forward but, then, I don’t understand how people voted for Trump, either.

Maybe it’s just me but the field of candidates who’ve announced they’re running for the presidency as Democrats in 2020 appear to me to present problems. Each would require the balance of the party to abandon some closely-held value or major constituency. White males are seen as a rejection of women and non-whites. Old white males are even worse.

There is a plethora of candidates for whom any claim to authenticity is something between fantastical and surreal.

It seems to me that this is the logical endpoint of the heavy emphasis on identity politics that has emerged. Can the party compromise? And what or who will be thrown over the side in the process?

I encourage you to read Andrew Bacevich’s latest piece at The American Conservative, especially if you enjoy polemic. In it he takes on Thomas Friedman but most especially Robert Kagan. Here’s a snippet:

…Kagan’s insistence on assigning a common label to the regimes of Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Nicolas Maduro, Mohammed bin Salman, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, et al‚—suggesting that they are devoted to a common cause and subscribe to a common worldview—is sheer nonsense. Contemporary authoritarianism does not derive from or express anything remotely like an ideology. Its origins are as disparate as its manifestations. It is not one thing, but many things.

I have a question. Why do all of Mr. Kagan’s prescriptions rely on force of arms? However politically expedient it may be it’s a violation of both basic moral and basic liberal democratic principles. How can one coherently condemn authoritarianism and espouse it in the same breath?

In his most recent column Washington Post columnist David Von Drehle comes out in support of leggings:

Today’s sleek young women are part of a righteous tradition that goes back to the suffragists more than a century ago. They traded their corsets for cotton blouses and their hoops for unstructured skirts. The right to vote and the right to move freely were of a piece. From that day to this, everyday fashion has trended away from imprisoning and concealing women toward liberating and acknowledging them.

“If some boy can’t handle my clothing choices, that’s his problem,” my daughter summarized. I’d say she’s exactly right.

I think she’s exactly wrong for several reasons. First of all private institutions like Notre Dame have significant leeway in defining what is or is not appropriate dress. Religious institutions like Notre Dame have even more leeway. And educational institutions like Notre Dame place themselves in jeopardy of suits claiming a hostile environment under Title IX.

Leggings are different than corsets (his example). Corsets actually impeded women’s ability to breathe—they’re the reasons that fainting couches existed. They were unhealthful, even dangerous. A dress code requiring that secondary sex characteristics be covered modestly is not unreasonable.

Besides, speaking as a former theatrical costumer, leggings are becoming to practically nobody. Nearly two-thirds of teenage girls in the United States two are overweight. AT the top of the column there’s a picture illustrating a row of mannequins wearing leggings. Very few young women today are built like mannequins. Leggings are a fad that can’t be passé too soon.

I don’t think that the editors of the Washington Post realize it but in their proposal for raising the minimum wage they are making the case for federalism:

The Third Way think tank has a plan that deals with these realities by setting the federal minimum wage on a regional basis. Each year, the national minimum wage would be set at “one-half of the hourly wage for nonsupervisory workers.” (The figure, in 2019, would be $11.55.) Then local minimums either above or below that would be calculated for metro areas and rural communities based on their living costs. Rep. Terri A. Sewell (D-Ala.) has offered a bill based on this plan, which would end years of minimum-wage stagnation without undue disruptions. Gov. Larry Hogan (R) of Maryland advocated something similar for his economically diverse state in vetoing an across-the-board raise to $15, but the General Assembly overrode his move on Thursday.

The deficiencies of this plan are obvious. Consider Illinois. Chicago’s median wage is significantly higher than in the rest of the state. Wages that may work in Chicago are unlikely to in Cairo or Mattoon.

The formula would require a federal bureaucracy to administer it and we already have institutions well-positioned to do so called “states” and “counties”.

Rather than trying to work out complex but equitable formulae for the minimum wage we would be better served by deciding why we have a minimum wage. Just as a modest proposal why dictate minimum wages at all? Why not dictate a maximum rent? Or the maximum price of a good or service?