On Wednesday, the Washington Post website played the Trump Indictment on top, then the liberal victory in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race, then the victory of teachers union organizer Brandon Johnson in Chicago. I would have flipped the order: Chicago first, Trump last. Why?
The Chicago election poses a test for the future of the Democratic Party: whether the entropy-seeking reactionary left can revive a city on the brink of disaster. The Teachers Union now controls this municipality outright and will, in effect, be negotiating with itself when the next contract or crisis comes along. As the New York Times reported:
In a recent interview, Mr. Johnson did not provide specific examples when asked if there were areas where he expected to have to tell the union no.
One wonders if the teachers will deign to show up in school—a practice they largely abandoned, to the dismay of parents, during covid. It should be noted—and it rarely was in most national coverage of the election—that Paul Vallas, the moderate Democrat in the race, was a spectacular Chicago schools administrator. In his 1999 State of the Union speech, Bill Clinton cited the success Vallas was having—he ended social promotions and raised test scores markedly—and suggested that it should be replicated elsewhere. Vallas was, and is, a successful school reformer, a brand of liberalism Democrats should embrace, but don’t. It rarely was reported that Vallas served in the Obama Administration’s Department of Education. (Obama, you may recall, was the only recent Democratic president who did not kow-tow to the teachers—he appointed the excellent Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education. He supported charter schools.)
Obama supported charter schools? That’s right. Obama did. But you still get this sort of language from the New York Times, which did an awful job of reporting this election:
But many voters expressed concern that Mr. Vallas was too conservative for Chicago. They cited his support for charter schools, past comments that he considered himself more of a Republican than a Democrat and his endorsement from the local chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police, whose leaders frequently use brash rhetoric and support Republican politicians.
I like the “many voters” formulation; sort of like Trump’s sleazy “people are saying that…” infusion of dirt into the public square. Perhaps the Times might check with the black parents who send their kids to the Harlem Children’s Zone charter schools to great advantage, and with those who send their kids to the vastly improved charter-school system in New Orleans (which Vallas led for a time). I doubt many would describe themselves as conservatives. But this has been a major propaganda success for the Teachers: they’ve managed to portray education reform, and especially the improvement of inner city schools, as some sort of conservative enterprise. The New York Times and other mainstream outlets have been suckered into using the reactionary-left’s Orwellian formulations, calling the unions “progressive” and their opponents “conservatives,” even though the reverse is closer to the facts. And, by the way, I almost always consider myself “more a Republican than a Democrat” when I’m thinking about education. (Except when it comes to banning books and expurgating the more dreadful moments in American history, like slavery and segregation, from the curriculum.)
Yes, the Police Union supported Vallas and they’re a rough crowd. But Johnson was a fervent “defund the police” supporter. His initial budget would have cut $150 million from the police, though he sidled away from that during the campaign. We shall see how the cops react. We’ve had a major case of Blue Flu in many cities since George Floyd was murdered by the Minneapolis cops; the police may show up for work, but not do all that much policing in Brandon Johnson’s Chicago, which is outrageous—but not unexpected: police and teachers unions don’t exist to provide better public services; they exist to aggrandize their members. Johnson proposed spending a lot more money on social workers and job training programs for teenagers which sounds nice, but such programs rarely work, especially in the short term. In a best case scenario, Johnson would focus on police training and have it include a heavy dose of sociology and ethnic history, as well as a military-style physical fitness regime and advanced arrest-and-control procedures (so the cops can run after and catch a fleeing felon, rather than shooting them). But I doubt the cops will be responsive to any such reforms from Johnson, given his anti-police rhetoric in the past.
The Chicago election may play a significant role in 2024—Johnson is a caricature of what Fox Nation thinks of Democrats: soft on crime, soft on public employees unions. He will be watched very carefully. If he doesn’t turn the city around, the Republicans will saddle Joe Biden with Johnson’s failure.
(As for the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, it was very good news and not just because it provided further evidence that abortion is a significant Democratic wedge issue. In the current Trumpoid atmosphere, control of state Supreme Courts is crucial. Wisconsin will not countenance phony election fraud claims in 2024. That’s a good thing.)
Oh, I Almost Forgot: the Trump Show
It was deja vu. It was OJ’s bronco. It was hours of watching cable news crime and legal experts tell us…not very much of significance. Except that we were watching “history.” Well, I suppose it was history like the day Caligula appointed his horse to the Roman Senate. Certainly, the always delightful Christopher Buckley thinks so. My operating theory—until proven otherwise—is that lawsuits against Trump help Trump. The indictment would have been a very good day for Donald, but for one thing…
He looked awful. He looked waxy. His eyes were pink and puffy. His hair more whipped up than usual, electrified almost. We can speculate that he didn’t get much sleep the night before. We might even fantasize, as my old friend Hunter Thompson did of Edmund Muskie, that Trump was having a major ibogaine hangover. Certainly, the reality of getting booked and fingerprinted wasn’t much fun, especially since it happened behind closed doors, without cameras, without the possibility of show-biz bravado-mugging. But even when the cameras were on, Trump didn’t play to them. And his speech back at Mar-a-Lago was the same old, same old. So maybe it wasn’t a very good day.
Here’s another of my operating theories about Donald Trump: when things go bad for him, he gets worse.
And speaking of the Trump Family…
We hear ad nauseum about Hunter Biden, who is a sad case…rising, perhaps, to the embarrassing level of Billy Carter, who once tried to sign on as a lobbyist for Muammar Qaddafi’s Libya. But Hunter’s a piker compared to the Trumps. For example, this little item didn’t make many waves:
Wealth funds in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar have invested hundreds of millions of dollars with Jared Kushner’s private equity firm, according to people with knowledge of the transactions, joining Saudi Arabia in backing the venture launched by former President Donald J. Trump’s son-in-law as he left the White House.
Hundreds of millions of dollars. I’ll bet Hunter couldn’t sell a painting for a fraction of that. Trump used his presidency to enrich his family while he was in office and the payoffs are continuing now that he’s gone from it—indeed, the Arab cash may be a pay-for-play hedge against a second Trump administration. One caveat: Joe Biden should be the held to a similar standard when it comes to his son’s and his brother’s buck-raking. Biden’s implicit “I love him too much to criticize him” just doesn’t cut it if Hunter made quid pro quo deals with foreign companies.
The Israelites
One hundred members of the Columbia University faculty don’t want the school to establish a campus in Tel Aviv. Somehow, I’m not surprised:
“The state of Israel, through formal and informal law, policy and practice, refuses to abide by international human rights laws and norms both domestically and in its treatment of Palestinians,” the letter said.
Somehow, faculty members don’t raise similar protests when US universities establish overseas campus in places like Saudi Arabia—a lucrative proposition oiled by oil money—which is not exactly a human rights paradise.
My feeling is that any institution that bolsters Israel’s secular community is a good thing at this fraught moment. (Same for Saudi and the other oil states, by the way.) We need more intellectual freedom, not less.
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