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I think it would also be fair to say that the US has moved to the right. Part of this was because of failures on the left but I also say Musks buying twitter was a big boost and COVID had a great deal of just be nice to the crazies thru the pandemic. It’s not just Motte going right. Maybe I’m in a bubble but I’m basically expecting as close to a landslide for Trump as possible for tribal America.
A second point for violent crime isn’t a real risks is it negates all of the costs society bares to mitigate violence in the US. We spend a lot of money on prisons. And a lot of money trying to boost black schools. Chicago’s economics would be a lot different without these costs. You also would not have had the ghettoization of the southside of Chicago. More urbanization does increase agglomeration effects. If America never had slavery I am fairly certain we would have universal health care. I don’t know if on net this would be a good thing because I think we would be less FU capitalist which probably hurts growth in other ways. Without black people American politics would be a lot more like Canada, but a super power.
Violent crime is the biggest converter from lib to con because it disproportionately affects affluent urban liberals (who are more likely to live in big cities, donate to political parties, be involved in politics, be involved in media etc).
If you live in a distant outer suburb of Dallas or Phoenix it’s unlikely that the Summer of Floyd had much personal effect on your neighborhood, which had no homeless people or significant crime before and after 2020.
If you live in Manhattan, or Georgetown, or Santa Monica, or the Mission, or in the Loop, you will 100% have seen a significant decline in the ‘social fabric’ / urban quality of life since 2020. There are many reasons for Reagan’s landslide victories but a part of them were that rich urban Democrats had gotten very fucking tired of decay. Sure, Mondale still won NYC (although not the state), but Reagan got 40% of the vote in the city.
Even in Manhattan Reagan got close to 30%, Donald Trump got 9%. And Reagan wasn’t merely charting the decline of the GOP in NYC; he got like 50% more of the vote in Manhattan than the several previous Republican candidates. And that discounts the big shifts the Dems made on crime too.
Hanania has written about this, but big cities becoming shitholes is one of the surest ways to shift the country to the right.
Yet, Biden won the 2020 election, did much better in the midterms, the Democrat's have continually won special elections, and so on.
Now, it's true cities have shifted to the right some (even though that's somewhat overindexed by people online). Eric Adams replaced DeBlasio in NY, various other more center-left/centrist Mayor's got elected in Phiadelphia and other major cities. All these people won fairly easy - it was a little tougher for Adams, but RCV is made to create a close final round. In a typical two round system with an actual campaign, he probably wins 55-60% initially.
But, any politicians rightly or wrongly, actually perceived as just Republican's in sheep's clothing will lose. Eric Adams, the woman in Philadelphia who won, etc. were all able to basically run as "Democrat's who understood crime was bad," and had progressive policy positions other than that. Like, Eric Adams has had some wacky ideas and endorsed Bernie in 2016 after all!
On the other hand, in Los Angeles, Rick Caruso was basically a rich centrist who got coded as Republican be he was a developer, was white, and went a little too far on some issues, and also, his opponent, Karen Bass was a normie center-left Democratic congresswoman, which mean she got massive support from every elected Democrat in California.
Then, in Chicago, it was even worse, because Paul Vallas, who worked under Obama and whatever, seemingly got deep in the same pool of stuff that shifted formerly centrist people right, and said a bunch of dumb things on radio shows and in campaigns, that allowed a black self-described socialist to beat him, despite the crime issue htere.
The actual problem for this idea of a right turn in the cities overall is things are worse than say, 2015 by some measures, but in many cities, things are already better than they were in 2020, and nowhere got close to the 80's and 90's numbers that allowed right-leaning Mayor's to actually win power. In 2024, even our criminals are lazy and don't do their jobs.
Plus, there are other factors - the Republican Party is a more conservative party socially, and it's more of a nationalized political space. In 1989, you could be a fairly liberal New Yorker, but throw a vote to Rudy, because hey, he's a prosecutor, but he's socially liberal, etc. Now, any right-leaning candidate has to deal with the fact that his base base of 10-20% Republican's in a major city have been radicalized, the median urban voter simply does not trust Republican's and has never voted for one in their lives, and you not only have to answer for whatever wacky things Republican's do in Alabama or Texas, you have to denounce it, or lose those votes.
So yeah, in 2022, there was a shift in NY & CA, especially among Asian & Latino voters for two reasons - the abortion issue was strongly off the table, and crime was a major issue. In 2024, I question whether we'll see the same shift. Yes, Trump will do better than he did in 2020 because of electoral polarization, but I simply don't buy the polls showing the greatest racial realignment since Civil Rights (I also don't believe Biden is suddenly winning older whites either).
Racial realignment is often swamped statistically by how Hispanics vote, and many Hispanics seem to be swing voters (see huge bush gains between 2000 and 2004, Trump’s fluctuating polling among Hispanics etc).
I don’t anticipate a black-white realignment for the same reason I don’t anticipate white South Africans suddenly voting for the ANC instead of the DA. Black voters (disproportionately middle aged and older women who are part of established Christian communities in the South) have their political machine, like many other American tribes historically, and it’s part of the Democratic Party. Some edgy black podcast hosts might entertain Trumpism, but young black men are the least likely to vote of any demographic in the US (iirc) and they’re unlikely to start doing so in great numbers soon.
That's the other thing - the most movement is among basically, the exact profile of people most likely to not vote.
As I said, according to Catalist, which is the best voter database showed Biden got 62% in 2020 and Democratic candidates got 62% in 2022 among Hispanics - if that number is 55% or 57% in 2024, would not be a huge shock. I just don't think the polling showing Trump winning Hispanics by 15 or 20 pass the smell test.
But, as been pointed out by many, because of the actual demographic makeup of voters, if Biden does a point better among white voters because college educated whites move even more in his favor as a result of Dobbs and Trump focusing on 1/6 and 2020, that basically evens out, and ironically, probably helps Biden more in the blue wall states of WI, MI, and PA.
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