I live in Wheeling, Illinois. Why do so many Chicago voters vote for liberal Democrats, although, during most of the time that the Democrats have been in power, the city has had high tax rates, high crime rates, and high unemployment rates?
“Why do so many Chicago voters vote for liberal Democrats . . .”
For what it’s worth, my theories - there’s no single factor, but a combination of many factors:
1) There’s no viable opposition - the GOP in the city has been effectively destroyed (every member of the city council is a donkey) - that’s Madigan’s vision for Illinois, and Obama’s vision for the country: no opposition.
2) Machine organization. You want anything done at street level, you support the Dems. My dad lived in the city - 40 years ago he refused to put a sign for an aldermanic candidate on our lawn; the next week, our garbage wasn’t collected (and that continued for months).
3) Minorities. Too many blacks and hispanics just blindly follow the lead of their local precinct captains, ministers and activists, all of whom get table scraps from the scum at the top of the machine.
4) Affluent whites. They vote democrat because they’re better than everybody else and they’re smarter than everybody else, don’t you know, and of course anyone who’s not liberal is one step removed from being a Nazi. The city’s falling apart around them, but liberalism is their religion, and no way they’ll buck the democrats.
5) An evaporating middle class (both white and black): they’ve got enough sense to care about there families above all else, and rather than fight a rigged game in the city, they’ll head out to DuPage or Lake County (Indiana or Wisconsin if they can swing it). They can see through the donkey bull-pucky, but it makes more sense to just clear out.
6) The unions The union leadership is totally in bed with the machine, and as a result, most of the rank-and-file goes along as well, even as their neighborhoods turn to donkey-dung.
7) A short-sighted and selfish business community; you want anything done in the city (permitting, variances, utility upkeep. etc), you kiss the behind of the party. No clout, no profits; cronyism reigns, another tactic Obama has imported.
I hate to pessimistic (I loved the city when I lived there), but it’s gotten so out-of-hand, I think it will just have to degenerate to Detroit, and then maybe we can start all over again.
By the way, just because the teacher’s unions and the blacks despise Emanuel doesn’t mean they’d vote for somebody better - they’d just vote somebody different, in the donkey primary. The hispanic Rahm took out in the last primary was enough of a lefty to rival Hugo Chavez - if the primary was held today, I bet he’d have a good chance of knocking Tiny Dancer off, even with all the money Rahm would be able to round up.