I think that Daniel Henninger is simultaneously right and wrong in his predictions for the implications of the one-two-three punch of COVID-19, the response to COVID-19, and urban rioting on cities, made in his latest Wall Street Journal column:
In two recent, overlooked articles, demographer William Frey of the Brookings Institution reports that the well-noted migration into large metropolitan areas that occurred from 2010 to 2015—predicting “the decade of the cityâ€â€”has in fact reversed sharply in the past five years.
Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco and Washington are all leaking people. Meanwhile the presumably disdained suburbs and exurbs, distant from these city centers, are gaining residents.
Then came the pandemic and the protests of 2020.
Hardly anyone disputes that the coronarivus pandemic was going to affect individuals’ trust in the human density of urban living. Many were already daunted by the possibility of again enduring a shutdown of every aspect of city life while quarantined in small living quarters.
Late May witnessed the killing of George Floyd, followed by nonstop street marches and significant looting in multiple city centers—the ones already losing population: New York (as always), Philadelphia, Chicago, Cleveland, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Seattle, Los Angeles, Portland, Ore., on and on.
Urban dwellers are resilient, but these simultaneous events have forced people to face a hard reality. In just three months it has become clear that modern urban progressivism is politically incompetent and intellectually incoherent.
Said another way, trends that preceded those three precipitating events will receive additional impetus from them. More will move to the suburbs and to smaller towns, particularly in Texas and the Southeast.
Where he’s wrong is in his implication that those who move will become more conservative. The problem is that modern conservativsm is intellectually, politically, and morally bankrupt. “Urban progressivism” has little actual competition. Trump is no conservative and there is no Trumpism—the president’s approach is completely transactional in nature.
People presently living in lily white apartment buildings or condominiums will move to equally lily white suburbs or towns, presumably for “better schools”, continuing to proclaim their support for diversity. When they flee the cities of the Northeast and the Midwest, they will bring their political views with them. Urban areas will lose seats in Congress. And solidly red states and areas will become purple.
I can only give you anecdotal evidence from businesses we own in the areas people are migrating to, personal experience, relatives and real estate contacts.
“Blue” states are not monolithic. They may go liberal to the degree of 51% to 60%. The opposite is true for “red” states. Our impression is that those people leaving are disproportionately more conservative. They are the first to get fed up. As such, I see the blue states becoming bluer, but red states not necessarily becoming purple, just more populous. And therefore with a growing number of House seats etc.
I suspect that most of the blacks leaving Chicago and Illinois for Texas, Louisiana, North Carolina, or Georgia will probably still vote Democratic when they resettle in their new homes. Do I need to produce evidence that those states are not as “red” as they used to be? It’s well known.
Here’s a little dealing with Texas. Scan down for the graphic illustrating the changes in the Texas legislature over the last 20 years.
I have no doubt that is true for migrating blacks. But I suspect that TX is more about Mexican and Latin America immigration. Surely no one kids themselves that Pelosi and Schumer’s fawning over immigration is more about votes than Mexican Horatio Alger stories.
I can speak more directly to Florida. The mass influx from the usual prime suspects (IL, NY, MA, NJ) is white, and they don’t speak well of liberal politicians.
Here in the 1st congressional district of SC you will have a bellwether race. A Dem won for the first time in forever in the last election. But was it is thought to have been due to a weak candidate. The Republican running is a woman named Mace. One to watch.
I recognize that lots of people disagree with me on this but I continue to believe that all politics is local and a good candidate will prevail over a weak one.
That just highlights the challenge of fielding good candidates.
Politics is entertainment.
A flamboyant, dishonest candidate will always prevail over a circumspect, honest one. IMO.
“all politics is local and a good candidate will prevail over a weak one.”
Not in deep blue or deep red areas.
Steve
‘“all politics is local and a good candidate will prevail over a weak one.â€
Not in deep blue or deep red areas.’
Or in gerrymandered districts. Which is both a good reason and a bad reason to adopt Britain’s method of being able to switch powerful or ‘able’ politicians from at-risk seats to safe ones. Good in that you can keep the people you want in government, bad in that you have greater difficulty getting rid of powerful but bad politicians.
‘I suspect that most of the blacks leaving Chicago and Illinois for Texas, Louisiana, North Carolina, or Georgia will probably still vote Democratic when they resettle in their new homes.’
I suspect that most of the blacks leaving Chicago are more or less fed up with the Democratic machines that have in many cases literally helped burn them out of their jobs and homes. I don’t see them voting ‘D’ in the near future anywhere near as monolithically as they might have in the past, especially considering that they might for the first time in their lives actually have a real choice to make with their vote in the November election (unlike in machine politics country, where the choice is usually between retch and vomit).
I have no idea what the future holds, let alone how the 2020 election will turn out. Personally, though, I am fed up with political hypocrisy – from the right and especially from the left. Most of the disruption felt today – defunding the police, open borders, taking over blocks of a major city, tearing down statues, stupid spending bills – are confined to and sanctioned by democrats. So, I’m beyond being done with democrats. What I would really like is for an entirely new party to emerge, centrist in it’s policies and not rooted in the division that seems to be the mother’s milk of the increasingly leftist democrats.
Goodbye Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, you there, the Black chef on the cream of wheat package, so long. Goodbye Mrs. Butterworth, goodbye historic Confederate statues. It’s far too late to save comity, I hope Mount Rushmore can be saved, but the historical purge is on, and the leaders and authorities across the nation are kneeling to the local Taliban.
What incident, action, or affront would stiffen their spines? Nothing will do if there’s no spine to stiffen, and so it appears to be.
MSNBC this morning reminded us of the burning of a Black Oklahoma town 99 years ago that killed 300 people, great time to bring it up. Must be trying to calm the atmosphere.
They skillfully linked the savage attack by whites to Donald Trump, who possibly produced and directed “Birth Of A Nation”. Or not, but he would have, wouldn’t he? Just like him.
Anyway in the spirit of the day, happy Juneteenth, racists.
‘They skillfully linked the savage attack by whites to Donald Trump, who possibly produced and directed “Birth Of A Nationâ€.’
And who put on a showing of BOAN on the White House? None other than Mr. Re-segregator himself, Woodrow Wilson, A Democrat.
I’m sure everyone here already knows how BOAN reversed social gains of 50 years by freed slaves, and how it revived the KKK. I know it was produced in 1915, but I’m still wondering if the reinvigorated anger against Blacks might have been largely or in part because of the plague sweeping America in 1918-1919 causing people to seek someone to blame for the deaths of loved ones. Possibly itinerant American African workers moving north to look for jobs.
Whenever a plague hits, we look for reasons, and people different from us are a prime target.