It can be frustrating that progressives condemn Trump (rightly!) for being for corrupt and incompetent but then support many people like Brandon Johnson of people clearly unsuited on every level for positions of huge responsibility. It was clear from the beginning that Johnson was far out of his depth. You can’t condemn Trump as unfit to govern based on norms but then support Johnson. And it’s not like this is an isolated case.
If you put Brandon and Trump side by side, even ignoring differences of ideology or temperament, Trump is far more ignorant about the world in general and far more objectively incompetent. Johnson is as wonky as Matt compared to Trump.
I don’t agree with that. I don’t even see how you would make the case that Johnson understands any particular issue at all, much less better than Trump.
Ok, so then you're not seriously engaging. It's pure posturing. Anyone with a basic understanding of the world or even of English grammar can put them side-by-side and see the contrast. Take almost any one sentence uttered in public by either, in isolation, and you will see that Brandon has a basic command of syntax and a broader vocabulary. The way he speaks about the world and references basic local and global events shows that he is generally more widely-read. I dare you to listen to 3 minutes of any public utterance from each of them and come back and say with a straight face that they are equivalent in their general erudition. One could be the most implacable opponent of Johnson's style of politics or tenure or original campaign and easily concede this, because it's as inescapable a reality as anthropogenic climate change. The only difference is that it's palpably, empirically observable by anyone, and doesn't require specialized climatological equipment or expertise gained by years of additional schooling. Any idiot can tell.
This is exactly the issue I’m talking about. Clearly neither Johnson nor Trump is qualified for their positions, but trying to argue that Johnson is better than Trump is just dumb. At best you could make a case that Trump is 3% qualified while Johnson is 6% qualified, so while by that standard Johnson is twice as qualified as Trump the overall point still stands. Democrats need to demand better from both their politicians and their activist class and trying to pretend like there aren’t huge issues with both isn’t going to build popularity.
Red herring - his qualification in terms of executing his job has exactly nothing to do with his comportment in sexual relations, nice, predatory, bungled or otherwise.
You can have a moral position about such things (as in the moral scold position about qualification being tied to the morality of the person, Good Person etc - it's certainly an option although quite competent people in getting things done, qualified in execution doesn't seem particularly associated with being a good person as such (see Clinton). For avoidance of doubt, I have no problem being politically against voting for a competent person who is also a sexual predator, but that does not mean the competent person is not qualified in execution which was the obvious focus of the Article as well as Calvin Blick's comment.
Not understanding the issues is only one of many problems with Trump. If that was Trump's only problem, and the stakes were city-wide instead of global, I could see treating Trump and Brandon Johnson as equally bad.
Matt has (wisely) never run for elective office. He knows where his lane is. But as for Brandon and Trump, it may be that running a city is the absolute worst position for a union/organizer/activist. Mayor is one position that a successful businessman (i.e., not Trump) is better qualified for than most political offices, since management skills are ultimately the most important qualification.
I'm not sure about that. I agree that management competence is one of the most important things, but a lot of business owners wouldn't know how to deal with something as messy and constrained as large city government. Experience running a large organization with a lot of conflicting demands and difficulty pleasing stakeholders is probably where you want experience. Maybe CEO of a large, heavily unionized company that's struggling in a declining market would be good.
I would say it depends - some labor union organisers also have managerial experience so Organiser is not really the contrast point.
Activist, yes, absolutely as my expeirence is that the Activist profile are typically not particularly of the personality nor the experience in real stakeholder management
(equally "successful businessman" should be qualified - someone who has been successful in running a proper corporate structure - example say Bloomberg - certainly has a likely skill set for such jobs as so long as one is in a context of managerial structures as well as outside owners (shareholders that is, even if one is oneself a shareholder) is rather more suited to developing mayoral skills than someone running a poorly structure family business where personal whim runs rampent (see Trump). Unfortunately few people understand the difference.
It's the one position that hits you right in the face with the reality that everything you believe is wrong, and that the magic wand you were so excited to acquire is just a stick that does not work.
I agree, running a city is more similar to a business than higher levels of government. You deliver concrete services, often with pretty measurable outcomes. Businesses and residents also often have a greater ability to defect over the border if unhappy with services or the cost than higher levels.
This is cope. Brandon Johnson is probably a better person with more noble intentions than Trump, but they're intellectually on the same level. Progressive shibboleths tend to be long-winded which can give the impression of wonkishness, but I promise you Johnson wields them like a mediocre student trying to pad out an essay to hit a word count. He struggles to answer any policy question directly and mostly just pivoted to attacking Vallas for being a Republican during the debates.
Of course you can (although I wouldn’t, Johnson is bad). There is no comparison between the ordinary ideologically-driven incompetence of Johnson and the insane criminality of Trump.
A more apt republican comparison is someone like Sam Brownback or Bobbie Jindal.
When he's poling so low, the idea that progressives (or anyone) supports Johnson is silly. He's polling at levels so low, he just has the support of people who don't follow any news and only base their choices on the vague information they used to vote with.
😂 😂 😂 “Can the teachers’ union temper its budget demands and embrace higher standards to improve student outcomes?”
As Lori Lightfoot said about CTU while mayor, “when you have unions that have other aspirations beyond being a union, and maybe being something akin to a political party, then there’s always going to be conflict.”
The CTU has very specific toxicity and cultural problems, but it's extremely-important that citizens of good will, whatever their political persuasion, avoid generalizing this to other contexts. In general, teachers' unions are deserving of a lot more respect and even deference than they tend to get, especially in right-of-center circles, but also often in liberal circles. My parents and most of their social circle are public school teachers in Chicago and the suburbs, and none of them are particularly involved in union politics, which they regard as exhausting and toxic. Yet, for decades, they have faced ignorant public sentiment about teachers and unions, and severe disrespect. They work hard for insufficient pay, except for in a few suburban districts, and still face vicious sentiment that they should be paid far less than they already are. There are (sub)urban myths that all they do is sit in the teacher's lounge and tell jokes all day while students cause chaos. This could not be farther from the truth, and yet the myth persists even among some people whose political views are generally left of center. When I was growing up, my parents barely had time to do anything for or with me because they were always grading student work or making other preparations, on their own time, without pay, of educational materials. They and others like them were so dedicated to their students' wellbeing and quality of education that they did extra, unpaid physical and mental and emotional labor. They were going to keep doing it no matter what, because students came first, even if their efforts to be better recognized and better compensated failed. There was no mindset of "well, I'm not paid for this, so f*** it." Maybe younger generations of teachers than my boomer parents have less of a selfless attitude, but I don't have good evidence for that, and even if true, it doesn't mean they shouldn't be respected more or paid more.
I remember when you made a comment about the poor recompense (and poor job security) of a Florida teacher, and I was like, "That does not comport with my understanding of the situation," so I had a back and forth with you and looked up some sources and came to the conclusion that, indeed, you were correct, and that Florida teachers were almost uniquely badly off.
And? That's a non-sequitur without context of the cost of living in the relevant areas. The top of the pay scale isn't so terrible, even with the cost of living. But teachers are usually raising children and needing to rent or buy larger living spaces, pay taxes, etc. when they're closer to the bottom of the pay scale. My parents were ok when they were nearing retirement, just after I graduated college. They were quite strapped when they were in their 30s, 40s, and early 50s.
If you make claims about teacher pay and then refer to the teacher pay scale, without comment, as a "non-sequitur," I really think that should prompt you to look inside.
Okay. The starting salary (for a "228 day teacher" - they get more if they actually work summers, I guess) is 119% of the median Chicago salary, and the highest salary is 191% of median. Chicago's cost of living index appears to be 0.1% above the national average. Plus good benefits and extremely strong job security. Can you explain how that is "insufficient pay"?
The median income in Chicago for a person with a bachelor’s degree or higher is $1,729 weekly, which is $89,908 yearly (1729x52). This includes people of all career levels. Given that the 2024 base salary for a teacher exceeds this after 14 years (not counting the pension), I think teachers are paid reasonably.
I have sometimes seen similar sentiments about teachers in this space, and I don't understand it. I am not a teacher, but I have spent enough time in schools to know that the job is a very difficult one. I don't think that it is primarily low pay that is driving people out of the profession, but other factors.
I feel like the money has more effect on who comes in and the other shit effects so much of the flow out.
Like we have a pretty transient workforce in Florida with a lot of people who leave and it's not never the money but usually it's the bullshit isn't worth the money.
As a part of a larger family with many teachers I can say that student behavior is appalling, driven by lack of parental discipline. And, social media/cell phones---why in God's name do any schools allow this disruptive influence is beyond me.
Johnson has been terrible. (I voted for him in the runoff, FWIW, as the lesser of two evils)
I don’t think it’s right to analogize him to eg Zohran Mamdani. BJ is much more of an old school machine politician albeit cloaked in a certain kind of progressive language. The school board shenanigans are a good example of this, but an equally bad one is his attempt to appoint an unqualified pastor to the CTA board. It’s even worse that he is so utterly unabashed about it, opening him up to things like the DOJ investigation.
So I’m not really sure I agree that there is some broader lesson for the progressive movement, at least not on messaging.
They’re not equals, but from my understanding of Mamdani’s campaign, he’s committing himself to many financially untenable proposals and isn’t focusing on some of NYC’s core problems around public disorder and housing affordability.
Free busses, city run grocery stores, and solving the housing shortage with only affordable housing construction and zero stipulations about how to make them cheaper is just la la land stuff.
The difference in that Johnson is rewarding clients, while Mamdani is spending money on causes he believes in. It doesn't matter at the end because both are wasting money they don't have but the psychology and politics are different.
But this is getting wrong why we hate BJ. It’s not big promises, little results. Lots of mayors have done that without being as hated! It’s about naked giving out of favors to his buddies. Like Mamdani or not, he’s not nearly as committed to an entity like the CTU or the church.
"BJ is much more of an old school machine politician albeit cloaked in a certain kind of progressive language." I think this is pretty unfair to the old school machines! Say what you will about them but they were built on their practical ability to deliver results and thus win elections. After all, their members and bosses saw politics very much as a business and treated it with the same cold eyed realism that you see in the business world.
Johnson is the opposite, he seems driven by ideology not the sort of practical considerations of "how can I stay popular?" that dudes like Daley the Elder (or Younger for that matter) always put first. Never in a million years would a real machine pol alienate their core constituency, for Johnson working class black voters on the South and West sides, out of some commitment to helping people who literally couldn't vote for him. A machine pol would have done the exact opposite.
The difference between Brandon and "Big Bill" Thompson is Johnson just seems to want to keep people in his ideological movement happy, while Big Bill wanted to keep the working class voters who put him in office happy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hale_Thompson
There is really no necessary contrast between ideological and cronyism (as anyone who has lived under Soviet or ex-Soviet systems can tell you). Ideoligcal can quite easily simply channel the cronyism form.
I think the broader lesson for the progressive movement, if there even is one progressive movement anymore, is that neoliberals are right about effective executives needing to have a certain kind of competence and well-roundedness. This is not *inherently* incompatible with the romantic ideal of the affable "outsider" or "citizen politician," but it complicates it to a degree. People like Zohran, whom I have met and greatly impresses me in many ways, need to learn from this that if they really want to pull something like this off at their age, they need to *immediately* surround themselves with credentialed expertise with teeth cut under older regimes, and absorb institutional knowledge. Not every centrist is a malicious devil, and any who would be willing to cooperate on an advisory basis with a progressive remix would be valuable sources of balance. This is part of the difference between Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren and younger progressives--the older ones know how to seek diverse counsel and consider it valuable. My generation of progressives tends instead to have a "germ theory" that any piece of advice from a "boomer" or someone from a more establishment ecosystem is inherently tainted and not to be trusted. That's not how reality works. It leads to genetic logical fallacy very often. That being said, I think the time has come for the old guard to forever cease having ultimate executive authority. The magic combination is idealistic, young progressivism calling the ultimate shots, but being open to a continuity produced by absorbing useful knowledge form the old guard. It's lived Hegelian synthesis.
The CTU is toxic and dysfunctional. I don't think it could have given him what he really needed. At the very least, the center-left and left should be able to agree that the CTU is not amazing lately.
Everything you need to know about the Vallas campaign is how many Matt Yglesias fans are in this thread admitting they voted for Brandon Johnson instead of him (I did too).
He did zero to reassure the city's healthy majority of normie Dems that he wasn't Wonk-coded Rudy Giuliani.
No offense to Ben's work on that effort, but I'd be interested to hear his retort if he has one.
Edit: sorry didn't read your full comment, it didn't populate on my phone. Was just responding to the top line about how Yglesias fans reluctantly voted for Johnson.
I was a junior staffer on a comms firm that assisted Vallas, so definitely did not make any high-level decisions — just observed and occasionally offered my opinion, while executing orders.
But I think the campaign just thought they could win on the issues of crime and city management. And this was true, Vallas outperformed what anyone thought he could do at the beginning of the race. But baggage is baggage and Vallas didn't do enough to overcome it.
"Baggage is baggage" stops short at understanding why Vallas lost to a novice candidate who was attached to the unpopular CTU. His baggage was his record, which was also what he was running on and how he got into the run-off. Ultimately, if moderates want to win, they have to learn to be better when in office, just like everyone else.
Everything you need to know about human nature is how so many will externalize blame onto an imperfectly run campaign rather than just fess up and admit that they made an intellectually lazy decision. What exactly is critiquing the Vallas campaign going to do for you? Most of us will never be in a position to make those calls, but we'll all vote in a lot of future elections where presumably candidates and their campaign strategists will still be flawed human beings who fuck up a lot.
If you want to know the origin of the left's proceduralism fetish, this is it right here. People who are so afraid of admitting fault, they recoil from responsibility and attempt to devise processes immune from their own judgement. It's not that the left is wrong about most societal harms being systemic, but much like frustrated drivers negotiating rush hour, they fail to comprehend YOU are the traffic/system. The "system" is a collection of individuals making their own choices.
I can name high-profile, big city progressive politicians that have failed, but not any that have succeeded. That may just because the media doesn’t cover them, honestly.
Are there some good examples of them succeeded? It seems like the failing ones share the feature of letting ideology get out of step with public’s interest in public safety, in particular
Interesting on people’s take on Michelle Wu, including Matt’s and Ben’s. She has a strong challenger in Kraft, but I don’t think she is currently polling to lose. Bike lanes hurt her.
You touch on one of the things that pisses me off the most about Johnson and his band of sycophants. They (correctly) bitched for years about the abuses of the machine and the costs borne by taxpayers that were downstream of our structural corruption. However, as soon as they got elected, instead of making any attempt to reform, they just picked up the those same old tools of the machine....yet they still couldn't get anything done. Now I fear for our park district with Carlos Rosa failing up into the CEO job.
Yes exactly. This is what I hate most about him. If you want to play this game you need to actually justify why we should tolerate corruption! You need to toss some red meat to the people!
This is more of a general frustration, but I don't think classifying candidates on a left-right spectrum is all that helpful when it comes to elections where one party is dominant. Rather, it'd be helpful if people talked more about the various entities with political power, and how their perspectives reveal contradictions on the big questions that divide it (principally taxes and spending, but other things as well, like whether you value long-time residents or new residents). This is one of many reasons why I find the YIMBY/NIMBY frame useful, as it forces people who agree on a lot of the big issues to pick a side on something that's much more important in municipal government.
I’m a Chicago resident and the runoff between Brandon Johnson and Paul Vallas is the first election I intentionally sat out. As a moderate, I wanted to support Vallas, but he also sucked. His vision for fighting crime seemed primarily to be blind support for the police union. He opposed speed and red light cameras. He seemed to dislike the city and kept describing it in dystopian ways. He was caught liking racist posts on social media.
"He seemed to dislike the city." Thanks for putting a finger on that. There are currently 4 Democratic candidates for mayor in my city. (I have no idea if there are any Republican candidates, because, like Chicago, one will not win.) I am struggling over who to vote for. There is a candidate that has some good ideas. People are accusing him of being a closet Republican, and I am not sure if that is true. But something about him makes me reluctant to vote for him, and that is precisely it - he seems to dislike our city. I am not sure if that should matter in my vote, but now that you have named it, it will help me decide.
1. The fact that it was a contest between the CTU and the FOP was a real downer. Neither Stacy Davis Gates or John Catanzara should be within sniffing distance of any real power.
2. The moronic suburban idea that “we have nothing to do with the urban core or its issues” needs to die in the fiery pits of hell.
I’ve seen similar in Detroit where some suburbanites will say “fuck Detroit, let it rot, let’s burn it” and I have to point out that without Detroit, Allen Park/Farmington/Troy/Sterling Heights would be as vibrant as Midland.
Johnson is a terrible disappointment, but 80% of the problem is mismanagement that comes from lack of consulting relevant expertise, not from his positionality on the spectrum. 20% comes from inappropriately applying good values to concrete situations. Rational actors attempting to flatten inequality and improve standards of living and general wellbeing and flourishing for vulnerable populations would take public safety more seriously, and not wish away problems that are best addressed through something resembling traditional policing. The left has always been right that serious reforms needed to happen decades ago, and more hippy-dippy emotional intelligence training from lefty mental health professionals should be integrated into police training. Maybe budget should be reallocated to a degree, but in targeted ways. The post-George Floyd hypercorrection is still with us and hasn't lost steam as fast as I hoped it might.
Chicago could benefit immensely even from a mayor a few clicks to Johnson's left on some issues, but mismanagement such as the tents on chemically-hazardous grounds is an unfortunate bug of modern progressive politics, because the "new" left is driven by people educated during a period in which well-roundedness is less prized, and people graduate from high school, college, and even many graduate programs simply knowing less about the world and having less broad knowledge or ability to quickly get up to speed on issues outside their main wheelhouse than people who went through an equivalent kind and amount of credentialing just a few decades ago. Brandon isn't too far left, he's too young. Obviously, boomers and gen X can't do everything forever--we need to fix the education system. And within lefty circles, we need to reverse the idiotic cultural idea that such things as classical education and "Great Books" are inherently tied to white supremacy. Different styles of education really impact people's formation as critically-thinking people, and the best of the "old" left was a product of educational modalities that are now inappropriately conservative-coded in millennial and gen Z circles. And I say the same of the kind of wonky neoliberals for whom Slow Boring is supposed to serve as catnip. They lack the virtue instilled by a more classical education that might otherwise have prevented them from being able to rationalize the cruelty inherent in their preferred style of politics.
At a very high level of abstraction you can say that if "left wing" means "prioritizing equality" then left wing politicians ought to consider that crime disproportionately affects the poor. But at some point you need to need to consider the accompanying premises and prejudices that inevitably accompany certain beliefs. The left to far left has a very strong distrust of police, for a combination of ideological reasons ("resist state power"), historical reasons (cultural memories of the Pinkertons) and psychological ones ("no Mom, I *won't* clean my room!"). And I think trying to completely separate a single "core" commitment from others falls flat.
To take an example on the other side, the core right wing belief is sometimes expressed as "acknowledge hierarchy" or "respect tradition." Does this mean that Trump's war on the - very hierarchical and established - Ivies isn't right wing?
I have a somewhat controversial hobbesian theory (and albeit extremely cynical view of humans and politics at large_ which will go to your point--that human nature and democracy and democratic norms are incompatible. I think left(meaning prioritizing equality) and classic liberalism (which is the prioritization of the individual, distrust of state power, institutions and traditional hierarchies) are foundational to America. I actually think for the most part the fundamental system of America is liberal and left-wing, and Trump is actively trying to break that system and dislikes as Jefferson would say "a natural aristocracy" based on talent and virtue vs an "artificial aristocracy" based on wealth and birth, and that is the heart of right-wing thing thought. Trump has no real ideology beyond his personal grievances but the people around him are not conservatives (in terms of Burke, respect for institutions but not really opposed to democracy, Burke was not altogether opposed to the American revolution but hated the chaos and the methods of the French Revolution) but are much older form of conservatism based on the divine right of kings and the aristocracy based on wealth and birth. The problem is the world is not equal and people are not the same, and in a "natural aristocracy" the cream rises to the top and the top 20 percent will naturally gain most of the rewards of the system. Most people are absolutely not part of that elite. What this means in practice is that often the skills that make a good politician are the same that make a person a bad economic manager. People are more interested in their own personal status and their desire to as Tears for Fears for said "everyone wants to rule the world" essentially means groups that benefit from the current system will only ever vote for that system, and people who don't benefit will vote to topple it but at a concrete level they don't care about policy or technical details that will make the change good in the long-term but rather how they can dominate everyone else in their vicinity. Good politics is recognizing people are not rational and often want things that may impossible to deliver(lower taxes and more services, without blowing up the deficit while not having to feel bad about it) and the only way to get elected is to promise voters things that are incompatible with each other and good policy means recognizing trade-offs but in tight elections voters are never going to vote for things that are good in the aggregate but bad for them and a huge amount of policy that is good in aggregate comes at a cost to the individual.
Basically my point is a fundamental level, when it comes to what voters want it isn't actually to solve problems in the aggregate which may involve trade-offs personal but as Steinbeck said to "believe themselves temporary embarrassed millionaires" and votes for policy that in the short-term make them feel good about themselves(in terms of morality, democratic norms, anti-state power) and policies that enrich themselves in the short-term which in effect is "fuck you, I got mine" and pull the ladder-up behind them. Voters are selfish and corrupt and politicians on both sides seem to reflect that.
The thing is, progressives already had a successful big city mayor who did reckon with tradeoffs and had more tangible accomplishments than most left-leaning executives in America. His name was Bill de Blasio. Now that time has passed, I think he will be viewed more warmly. If I recall Matt was a BdB truther as well.
I think the situation De Blasio inherited in NY was a lot better suited for his agenda than Chicago's was for Brandon Johnson. And left candidates need to think about how they can alter their agenda to fit the world where policy trade offs are bigger.
A couple of years ago I read an article where the reporter asked New Yorkers if they approved of various policies that were initiated by deBlasio, although they were not identified as deBlasio policies. The answer was a resounding "yes." The same people were asked what they thought of deBlasio, and pretty much everyone hated him. I think about this often - the difference between policy and personality and how a politician has to have more than policies people approve of.
He lost a billion dollars through his wife's mental health campaign or whatever it was. Plus he eats pizza with a fork, roots for the Red Sox and killed Charlotte the groundhog on Groundhog Day. I'm surprised he's as popular as he was.
If you understand politics is really just a high school popularity contest, and people often vote on what sounds good and how much you appeal to their ego, vs the nerds who look at technical details, trade-offs and what is actually good policy vs what sounds good, then having a personality that makes you seem like a strong leader or is likeable beats having good policies. It's rare that you get a jock that also a nerd, and is willing to people hard truths vs what they want to hear. People like BdB fail because the electorate isn't actually as interested in good policy in the aggregate than making themselves feel better about themselves. I'm becoming a black pilled Carlinite who fundamentally believes the voters are selfish, corrupt and ignorant and so much of our problems are downstream of that. Politicians with good policies can't win in that environment. Often the personalities of politicians who have good policies have harder time than politicians who realize that voters are not rational and the skills that win people elections in Modern America are incompatible with the type of politician who can actual propose and deliver good policies.
My hottake: New Yorkers' standards are just too high "Guy with annoying mannerism and habits but does a decent job running the circus"* should clear the bar (and BdB is a great example of why term limits are bad)
I'm a Chicagoan who voted very reluctantly for Johnson. There was always more rhetoric than substance in his campaign, and things worked out pretty much as I expected them to.
I'm glad, Ben, that you mentioned the problems with the Vallas campaign: IMHO his communication strategy was terrible. After his "I'm more of a Republican than a Democrat" statement there was no way I could vote for him. But his communications strategy never, as I recall, directly addressed any of his vulnerabilities—and never effectively promoted his so-called "moderate" position on issues. Again moderate messaging not backed by credible substance. So I'd say Vallas' vulnerability was on the issues and his messaging never picked up on that.
As a result, as you note, people just stayed home. Sound familiar? Remind you of the 2024 election?
Both Vallas and Johnson are remarkably poor communicators for someone trying to become Mayor. Just fundamentally not A-list political talents.
And Vallas was a poor choice to be the champion of the city's conservative business elite given the things he'd said about his partisan allegiance since leaving CPS.
Ultimately I find something a bit silly about the "progressives need to be different" narrative in this context, since in a city like Chicago (or SF or NYC) there is always going to be a healthy slice of commie cosplay lefty whackos, who contribute a great deal to the culture of the city.
If you don't want their candidate to be Mayor (and you shouldn't), it is incumbent upon the other political currents in the city, which are the overwhelming majority, to recruit a winning candidate and run a winning campaign. The business community's last two champions have been Vallas and Bill Daley, both fatally flawed with the citywide electorate.
Johnson won't sniff the runoff in 2027, might not even run, but the field and electorate stands ready to embrace Chicago's Daniel Lurie-type figure. MODERATES need to reckon with their failure to have yet produced that person.
“If you don't want their candidate to be Mayor (and you shouldn't), it is incumbent upon the other political currents in the city, which are the overwhelming majority, to recruit a winning candidate and run a winning campaign. The business community's last two champions have been Vallas and Bill Daley, both fatally flawed with the citywide electorate.”
Yep.
The lane is WIDE open for a normal mainline Democrat (without Cuomo’s scandals and inability to work with others) in New York City’s current election.
I totally believe that ... but that was an impossible dream given the overall political climate in 2023. The trouble with polarization is that it being non-partisan isn't really an option. One of the reasons I read Slow Boring and The Bulwark (among others) is to help me think through whether there really is a politically viable "center"—or how it would work. The question remains open for me at least. So please keep sharing your thinking, Ben.
It felt like he wanted to be a Republican policywise (focus on being unforgiving on crime, especially), but wanted the Democrats to go along with him. In his mind, maybe that's non-partisan.
Well, in Chicago there isn't really a viable Republic party (for local non-judicial offices). Plenty of Old-Style (perhaps in more ways than one) Republicans, tho. And also plenty of MAGA Republicans. If anyone doubts this, just look at the returns from the 2024 election. IMO in many ways Rahm was a DINO with a great deal of appeal to those who wanted to vote Republican. For that matter so was Daley.
As a Chicago resident, this article pretty well captures the major issues with Johnson's tenure.
I'll admit, I voted for him over Vallas. He made reducing homelessness, providing services (including mental health, in addition to housing/shelters), etc. a big part of his campaign. (The various issues with the Vallas campaign have already been discussed.) Despite my qualms about someone so embedded in CTU (I voted for Chuy in the primary), this convinced me to give him a shot.
He has completely failed at this. The overall migrant crisis isn't fundamentally his fault (I live close enough to Union Station that I've personally witnessed the buses from Texas dropping off migrants wearing shorts in December), but part of governing is handling unexpected issues. Johnson can't even handle the expected ones.
As a Chicago resident for the last 25 years, I don't consider Brandon Johnson to be a disappointment because this is exactly what I thought would happen. As noted by many here, he's not a good politician, he is just a tool of the teacher's union. He's always been that. He is a charismatic speaker and very enthusiastic, but he doesn't come across as a deep thinker and he puts his foot in his mouth all the time by just regurgitating his talking points about race and disinvestment no matter what the problem is.
He inherited an experienced staff and proceeded to fire them all and replace them with young, inexperienced members of the activist class in Chicago. Kennedy "all cops are pigs" Brantley anyone? They proceeded to alienate everyone and could not make necessary political coalitions with stakeholders like the Governor. This was not a surprise.
While he inherited a no-win situation with the influx of migrants, he handled it as poorly as possible. Since that time - and even during that time - he has reverted again and again to racial politics and calling everyone who disagreed with him everything from racists to confederate sympathizers.
With all that said, I think he is still the favorite to win the next election. If he can get to the run off and he's matched up with a white candidate he will win again, just like last time. Black voters will vote for him and white liberals from the North Side like nothing better than to vote for a black progressive. So be careful before throwing dirt on Johnson's grave.
I think even the north side white liberals are going to drop him due to the litany of missteps you post. I was certainly one of that crowd before I moved away about 5 years ago 😎
The Math is interesting. If you can purchase a home for half what you can build for then why build? Could Chicago not just buy existing homes, remodel them and then figure out a simple program to sell the homes people that need them?
Isn’t repurposing better than new in the environmental hierarchy?
My guess - and it's only a guess - is that if the city were to buy up old stock, they'd have to bring those units up to standards that meet Chicago's standards for officially sanctioned affordable housing. The construction/renovation costs and the supervision costs (customized to each unit) would probably be really expensive.
I mean, speaking as someone with a libertarian bent, this is why getting the government involved where it's not absolutely needed is basically always a problem.
The $740,000 per unit refers specifically to government assisted (LIHTC etc) big-a Affordable housing, not typical market rate housing. Those numbers are in the $300k per unit in multi-family.
They could put the rehabs on YouTube and make some money for additional funding and show that government can work. A City could have its own crews to do the work. There are lots of possibilities. This would be a housing department getting things done.
Where is your "progressive need to reckon with Eric Adams" piece, a right-wing Democrat who did everything you and Yglesias want Democrats to do and who has an even worse approval rating? Could it be because that would disprove your narrative?
I would love to read Freddie dB make an argument of how he plans to achieve his goals in a world of scarce resources and current political realities. I admire the man’s passion and would love to see how he would approach these types of situations.
But seriously, BranJo is a hack elected by and for the CTU. That enormous sucking sound you hear is him extracting as much value as he can for his favored constituents, and everyone else be damned.
I found a really nice place in the South Loop, but am wary of pulling the trigger as I don't want my taxes to potentially spike to pay off one interest group or another.
It can be frustrating that progressives condemn Trump (rightly!) for being for corrupt and incompetent but then support many people like Brandon Johnson of people clearly unsuited on every level for positions of huge responsibility. It was clear from the beginning that Johnson was far out of his depth. You can’t condemn Trump as unfit to govern based on norms but then support Johnson. And it’s not like this is an isolated case.
If you put Brandon and Trump side by side, even ignoring differences of ideology or temperament, Trump is far more ignorant about the world in general and far more objectively incompetent. Johnson is as wonky as Matt compared to Trump.
I don’t agree with that. I don’t even see how you would make the case that Johnson understands any particular issue at all, much less better than Trump.
Ok, so then you're not seriously engaging. It's pure posturing. Anyone with a basic understanding of the world or even of English grammar can put them side-by-side and see the contrast. Take almost any one sentence uttered in public by either, in isolation, and you will see that Brandon has a basic command of syntax and a broader vocabulary. The way he speaks about the world and references basic local and global events shows that he is generally more widely-read. I dare you to listen to 3 minutes of any public utterance from each of them and come back and say with a straight face that they are equivalent in their general erudition. One could be the most implacable opponent of Johnson's style of politics or tenure or original campaign and easily concede this, because it's as inescapable a reality as anthropogenic climate change. The only difference is that it's palpably, empirically observable by anyone, and doesn't require specialized climatological equipment or expertise gained by years of additional schooling. Any idiot can tell.
This is exactly the issue I’m talking about. Clearly neither Johnson nor Trump is qualified for their positions, but trying to argue that Johnson is better than Trump is just dumb. At best you could make a case that Trump is 3% qualified while Johnson is 6% qualified, so while by that standard Johnson is twice as qualified as Trump the overall point still stands. Democrats need to demand better from both their politicians and their activist class and trying to pretend like there aren’t huge issues with both isn’t going to build popularity.
Is Johnson a serial rapist?
Red herring - his qualification in terms of executing his job has exactly nothing to do with his comportment in sexual relations, nice, predatory, bungled or otherwise.
You can have a moral position about such things (as in the moral scold position about qualification being tied to the morality of the person, Good Person etc - it's certainly an option although quite competent people in getting things done, qualified in execution doesn't seem particularly associated with being a good person as such (see Clinton). For avoidance of doubt, I have no problem being politically against voting for a competent person who is also a sexual predator, but that does not mean the competent person is not qualified in execution which was the obvious focus of the Article as well as Calvin Blick's comment.
Not understanding the issues is only one of many problems with Trump. If that was Trump's only problem, and the stakes were city-wide instead of global, I could see treating Trump and Brandon Johnson as equally bad.
Matt has (wisely) never run for elective office. He knows where his lane is. But as for Brandon and Trump, it may be that running a city is the absolute worst position for a union/organizer/activist. Mayor is one position that a successful businessman (i.e., not Trump) is better qualified for than most political offices, since management skills are ultimately the most important qualification.
I'm not sure about that. I agree that management competence is one of the most important things, but a lot of business owners wouldn't know how to deal with something as messy and constrained as large city government. Experience running a large organization with a lot of conflicting demands and difficulty pleasing stakeholders is probably where you want experience. Maybe CEO of a large, heavily unionized company that's struggling in a declining market would be good.
Ah yes this I wrote independently and less clearly.
A CEO of a proper corporation with signficant outside shareholders and reasonably large workforce is normally something approximating this.
A family business, not so much.
I would say it depends - some labor union organisers also have managerial experience so Organiser is not really the contrast point.
Activist, yes, absolutely as my expeirence is that the Activist profile are typically not particularly of the personality nor the experience in real stakeholder management
(equally "successful businessman" should be qualified - someone who has been successful in running a proper corporate structure - example say Bloomberg - certainly has a likely skill set for such jobs as so long as one is in a context of managerial structures as well as outside owners (shareholders that is, even if one is oneself a shareholder) is rather more suited to developing mayoral skills than someone running a poorly structure family business where personal whim runs rampent (see Trump). Unfortunately few people understand the difference.
It's the one position that hits you right in the face with the reality that everything you believe is wrong, and that the magic wand you were so excited to acquire is just a stick that does not work.
I agree, running a city is more similar to a business than higher levels of government. You deliver concrete services, often with pretty measurable outcomes. Businesses and residents also often have a greater ability to defect over the border if unhappy with services or the cost than higher levels.
This is cope. Brandon Johnson is probably a better person with more noble intentions than Trump, but they're intellectually on the same level. Progressive shibboleths tend to be long-winded which can give the impression of wonkishness, but I promise you Johnson wields them like a mediocre student trying to pad out an essay to hit a word count. He struggles to answer any policy question directly and mostly just pivoted to attacking Vallas for being a Republican during the debates.
Of course you can (although I wouldn’t, Johnson is bad). There is no comparison between the ordinary ideologically-driven incompetence of Johnson and the insane criminality of Trump.
A more apt republican comparison is someone like Sam Brownback or Bobbie Jindal.
When he's poling so low, the idea that progressives (or anyone) supports Johnson is silly. He's polling at levels so low, he just has the support of people who don't follow any news and only base their choices on the vague information they used to vote with.
Woot another rare Ben Writing Sighting!
Happy to be back on the sticks!
Best intern article yet. Sorry, previous interns 😎
😔
In this era of partisan polarization, a 14% approval rating is genuinely impressive, in a Ron Burgundy not-even-mad kind of way.
😂 😂 😂 “Can the teachers’ union temper its budget demands and embrace higher standards to improve student outcomes?”
As Lori Lightfoot said about CTU while mayor, “when you have unions that have other aspirations beyond being a union, and maybe being something akin to a political party, then there’s always going to be conflict.”
The CTU has very specific toxicity and cultural problems, but it's extremely-important that citizens of good will, whatever their political persuasion, avoid generalizing this to other contexts. In general, teachers' unions are deserving of a lot more respect and even deference than they tend to get, especially in right-of-center circles, but also often in liberal circles. My parents and most of their social circle are public school teachers in Chicago and the suburbs, and none of them are particularly involved in union politics, which they regard as exhausting and toxic. Yet, for decades, they have faced ignorant public sentiment about teachers and unions, and severe disrespect. They work hard for insufficient pay, except for in a few suburban districts, and still face vicious sentiment that they should be paid far less than they already are. There are (sub)urban myths that all they do is sit in the teacher's lounge and tell jokes all day while students cause chaos. This could not be farther from the truth, and yet the myth persists even among some people whose political views are generally left of center. When I was growing up, my parents barely had time to do anything for or with me because they were always grading student work or making other preparations, on their own time, without pay, of educational materials. They and others like them were so dedicated to their students' wellbeing and quality of education that they did extra, unpaid physical and mental and emotional labor. They were going to keep doing it no matter what, because students came first, even if their efforts to be better recognized and better compensated failed. There was no mindset of "well, I'm not paid for this, so f*** it." Maybe younger generations of teachers than my boomer parents have less of a selfless attitude, but I don't have good evidence for that, and even if true, it doesn't mean they shouldn't be respected more or paid more.
Here's the pay schedule for Chicago public schools:
https://ctulocal1.github.io/salaries/20200724_finalized_Teacher_Pay_Schedule.html
The level of envy I have as a 15th year teacher in a red right to work state is astronomical.
I remember when you made a comment about the poor recompense (and poor job security) of a Florida teacher, and I was like, "That does not comport with my understanding of the situation," so I had a back and forth with you and looked up some sources and came to the conclusion that, indeed, you were correct, and that Florida teachers were almost uniquely badly off.
Come to Chicago! We need you.
And? That's a non-sequitur without context of the cost of living in the relevant areas. The top of the pay scale isn't so terrible, even with the cost of living. But teachers are usually raising children and needing to rent or buy larger living spaces, pay taxes, etc. when they're closer to the bottom of the pay scale. My parents were ok when they were nearing retirement, just after I graduated college. They were quite strapped when they were in their 30s, 40s, and early 50s.
If you make claims about teacher pay and then refer to the teacher pay scale, without comment, as a "non-sequitur," I really think that should prompt you to look inside.
Okay. The starting salary (for a "228 day teacher" - they get more if they actually work summers, I guess) is 119% of the median Chicago salary, and the highest salary is 191% of median. Chicago's cost of living index appears to be 0.1% above the national average. Plus good benefits and extremely strong job security. Can you explain how that is "insufficient pay"?
The median income in Chicago for a person with a bachelor’s degree or higher is $1,729 weekly, which is $89,908 yearly (1729x52). This includes people of all career levels. Given that the 2024 base salary for a teacher exceeds this after 14 years (not counting the pension), I think teachers are paid reasonably.
https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat54.htm
Don’t most teachers have Master’s degrees?
I have sometimes seen similar sentiments about teachers in this space, and I don't understand it. I am not a teacher, but I have spent enough time in schools to know that the job is a very difficult one. I don't think that it is primarily low pay that is driving people out of the profession, but other factors.
I feel like the money has more effect on who comes in and the other shit effects so much of the flow out.
Like we have a pretty transient workforce in Florida with a lot of people who leave and it's not never the money but usually it's the bullshit isn't worth the money.
As a part of a larger family with many teachers I can say that student behavior is appalling, driven by lack of parental discipline. And, social media/cell phones---why in God's name do any schools allow this disruptive influence is beyond me.
Teachers may indeed merit more respect
Teacher's labor unions, no, absolutely not.
Johnson has been terrible. (I voted for him in the runoff, FWIW, as the lesser of two evils)
I don’t think it’s right to analogize him to eg Zohran Mamdani. BJ is much more of an old school machine politician albeit cloaked in a certain kind of progressive language. The school board shenanigans are a good example of this, but an equally bad one is his attempt to appoint an unqualified pastor to the CTA board. It’s even worse that he is so utterly unabashed about it, opening him up to things like the DOJ investigation.
So I’m not really sure I agree that there is some broader lesson for the progressive movement, at least not on messaging.
They’re not equals, but from my understanding of Mamdani’s campaign, he’s committing himself to many financially untenable proposals and isn’t focusing on some of NYC’s core problems around public disorder and housing affordability.
Free busses, city run grocery stores, and solving the housing shortage with only affordable housing construction and zero stipulations about how to make them cheaper is just la la land stuff.
It’s “I give up” urbanism, as Matt said yesterday.
The difference in that Johnson is rewarding clients, while Mamdani is spending money on causes he believes in. It doesn't matter at the end because both are wasting money they don't have but the psychology and politics are different.
But this is getting wrong why we hate BJ. It’s not big promises, little results. Lots of mayors have done that without being as hated! It’s about naked giving out of favors to his buddies. Like Mamdani or not, he’s not nearly as committed to an entity like the CTU or the church.
Just take out a large loan and don't pay on the principal for 20 years.
I don’t think he will win 😎
"BJ is much more of an old school machine politician albeit cloaked in a certain kind of progressive language." I think this is pretty unfair to the old school machines! Say what you will about them but they were built on their practical ability to deliver results and thus win elections. After all, their members and bosses saw politics very much as a business and treated it with the same cold eyed realism that you see in the business world.
Johnson is the opposite, he seems driven by ideology not the sort of practical considerations of "how can I stay popular?" that dudes like Daley the Elder (or Younger for that matter) always put first. Never in a million years would a real machine pol alienate their core constituency, for Johnson working class black voters on the South and West sides, out of some commitment to helping people who literally couldn't vote for him. A machine pol would have done the exact opposite.
Fair point! I think he’s in the mold but significantly less competent.
That doesn't explain the cronyism very well. If Johnson operates from an ideological perspective, it doesn't show up in his actions very often.
Ideological systems aren't immune from cronyism and patronage. See here ect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparatchik
The difference between Brandon and "Big Bill" Thompson is Johnson just seems to want to keep people in his ideological movement happy, while Big Bill wanted to keep the working class voters who put him in office happy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hale_Thompson
He has a 14% approval rate. He's not keeping anyone happy. And certainly it's not the progressives he's trying to appease by appointing cronies
There is really no necessary contrast between ideological and cronyism (as anyone who has lived under Soviet or ex-Soviet systems can tell you). Ideoligcal can quite easily simply channel the cronyism form.
I think the broader lesson for the progressive movement, if there even is one progressive movement anymore, is that neoliberals are right about effective executives needing to have a certain kind of competence and well-roundedness. This is not *inherently* incompatible with the romantic ideal of the affable "outsider" or "citizen politician," but it complicates it to a degree. People like Zohran, whom I have met and greatly impresses me in many ways, need to learn from this that if they really want to pull something like this off at their age, they need to *immediately* surround themselves with credentialed expertise with teeth cut under older regimes, and absorb institutional knowledge. Not every centrist is a malicious devil, and any who would be willing to cooperate on an advisory basis with a progressive remix would be valuable sources of balance. This is part of the difference between Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren and younger progressives--the older ones know how to seek diverse counsel and consider it valuable. My generation of progressives tends instead to have a "germ theory" that any piece of advice from a "boomer" or someone from a more establishment ecosystem is inherently tainted and not to be trusted. That's not how reality works. It leads to genetic logical fallacy very often. That being said, I think the time has come for the old guard to forever cease having ultimate executive authority. The magic combination is idealistic, young progressivism calling the ultimate shots, but being open to a continuity produced by absorbing useful knowledge form the old guard. It's lived Hegelian synthesis.
I guess, but in some sense that is what BJ did by coming up through the CTU! It’s just that he’s part of a particular unproductive machine.
The CTU is toxic and dysfunctional. I don't think it could have given him what he really needed. At the very least, the center-left and left should be able to agree that the CTU is not amazing lately.
Everything you need to know about the Vallas campaign is how many Matt Yglesias fans are in this thread admitting they voted for Brandon Johnson instead of him (I did too).
He did zero to reassure the city's healthy majority of normie Dems that he wasn't Wonk-coded Rudy Giuliani.
No offense to Ben's work on that effort, but I'd be interested to hear his retort if he has one.
lol this so true
Edit: sorry didn't read your full comment, it didn't populate on my phone. Was just responding to the top line about how Yglesias fans reluctantly voted for Johnson.
I was a junior staffer on a comms firm that assisted Vallas, so definitely did not make any high-level decisions — just observed and occasionally offered my opinion, while executing orders.
But I think the campaign just thought they could win on the issues of crime and city management. And this was true, Vallas outperformed what anyone thought he could do at the beginning of the race. But baggage is baggage and Vallas didn't do enough to overcome it.
"Baggage is baggage" stops short at understanding why Vallas lost to a novice candidate who was attached to the unpopular CTU. His baggage was his record, which was also what he was running on and how he got into the run-off. Ultimately, if moderates want to win, they have to learn to be better when in office, just like everyone else.
I agree, I think his tenure as ceo of Chicago public schools was not as well received as he thought it was
This is way overcomplicating it. My view is that the election was “teachers union vs police union” and I (and others) picked my poison.
Everything you need to know about human nature is how so many will externalize blame onto an imperfectly run campaign rather than just fess up and admit that they made an intellectually lazy decision. What exactly is critiquing the Vallas campaign going to do for you? Most of us will never be in a position to make those calls, but we'll all vote in a lot of future elections where presumably candidates and their campaign strategists will still be flawed human beings who fuck up a lot.
If you want to know the origin of the left's proceduralism fetish, this is it right here. People who are so afraid of admitting fault, they recoil from responsibility and attempt to devise processes immune from their own judgement. It's not that the left is wrong about most societal harms being systemic, but much like frustrated drivers negotiating rush hour, they fail to comprehend YOU are the traffic/system. The "system" is a collection of individuals making their own choices.
I voted for Vallas, it felt gross.
I can name high-profile, big city progressive politicians that have failed, but not any that have succeeded. That may just because the media doesn’t cover them, honestly.
Are there some good examples of them succeeded? It seems like the failing ones share the feature of letting ideology get out of step with public’s interest in public safety, in particular
I think Boston's progressive mayor seems to be doing okay?
Interesting on people’s take on Michelle Wu, including Matt’s and Ben’s. She has a strong challenger in Kraft, but I don’t think she is currently polling to lose. Bike lanes hurt her.
You touch on one of the things that pisses me off the most about Johnson and his band of sycophants. They (correctly) bitched for years about the abuses of the machine and the costs borne by taxpayers that were downstream of our structural corruption. However, as soon as they got elected, instead of making any attempt to reform, they just picked up the those same old tools of the machine....yet they still couldn't get anything done. Now I fear for our park district with Carlos Rosa failing up into the CEO job.
Yes exactly. This is what I hate most about him. If you want to play this game you need to actually justify why we should tolerate corruption! You need to toss some red meat to the people!
That’s right Johnson is not very comparable to Mandan
This is more of a general frustration, but I don't think classifying candidates on a left-right spectrum is all that helpful when it comes to elections where one party is dominant. Rather, it'd be helpful if people talked more about the various entities with political power, and how their perspectives reveal contradictions on the big questions that divide it (principally taxes and spending, but other things as well, like whether you value long-time residents or new residents). This is one of many reasons why I find the YIMBY/NIMBY frame useful, as it forces people who agree on a lot of the big issues to pick a side on something that's much more important in municipal government.
Yes Vallas would be a solid democrat outside of Chicago politics 😎
I’m a Chicago resident and the runoff between Brandon Johnson and Paul Vallas is the first election I intentionally sat out. As a moderate, I wanted to support Vallas, but he also sucked. His vision for fighting crime seemed primarily to be blind support for the police union. He opposed speed and red light cameras. He seemed to dislike the city and kept describing it in dystopian ways. He was caught liking racist posts on social media.
"He seemed to dislike the city." Thanks for putting a finger on that. There are currently 4 Democratic candidates for mayor in my city. (I have no idea if there are any Republican candidates, because, like Chicago, one will not win.) I am struggling over who to vote for. There is a candidate that has some good ideas. People are accusing him of being a closet Republican, and I am not sure if that is true. But something about him makes me reluctant to vote for him, and that is precisely it - he seems to dislike our city. I am not sure if that should matter in my vote, but now that you have named it, it will help me decide.
1. The fact that it was a contest between the CTU and the FOP was a real downer. Neither Stacy Davis Gates or John Catanzara should be within sniffing distance of any real power.
2. The moronic suburban idea that “we have nothing to do with the urban core or its issues” needs to die in the fiery pits of hell.
It seems like to 0th order it’s true that the suburbs have nothing to do with the urban core. They don’t elect its mayor, e.g.
I’ve seen similar in Detroit where some suburbanites will say “fuck Detroit, let it rot, let’s burn it” and I have to point out that without Detroit, Allen Park/Farmington/Troy/Sterling Heights would be as vibrant as Midland.
That’s why the turnout was low 😎
That was my impression even though I moved 5 years ago
Johnson is a terrible disappointment, but 80% of the problem is mismanagement that comes from lack of consulting relevant expertise, not from his positionality on the spectrum. 20% comes from inappropriately applying good values to concrete situations. Rational actors attempting to flatten inequality and improve standards of living and general wellbeing and flourishing for vulnerable populations would take public safety more seriously, and not wish away problems that are best addressed through something resembling traditional policing. The left has always been right that serious reforms needed to happen decades ago, and more hippy-dippy emotional intelligence training from lefty mental health professionals should be integrated into police training. Maybe budget should be reallocated to a degree, but in targeted ways. The post-George Floyd hypercorrection is still with us and hasn't lost steam as fast as I hoped it might.
Chicago could benefit immensely even from a mayor a few clicks to Johnson's left on some issues, but mismanagement such as the tents on chemically-hazardous grounds is an unfortunate bug of modern progressive politics, because the "new" left is driven by people educated during a period in which well-roundedness is less prized, and people graduate from high school, college, and even many graduate programs simply knowing less about the world and having less broad knowledge or ability to quickly get up to speed on issues outside their main wheelhouse than people who went through an equivalent kind and amount of credentialing just a few decades ago. Brandon isn't too far left, he's too young. Obviously, boomers and gen X can't do everything forever--we need to fix the education system. And within lefty circles, we need to reverse the idiotic cultural idea that such things as classical education and "Great Books" are inherently tied to white supremacy. Different styles of education really impact people's formation as critically-thinking people, and the best of the "old" left was a product of educational modalities that are now inappropriately conservative-coded in millennial and gen Z circles. And I say the same of the kind of wonky neoliberals for whom Slow Boring is supposed to serve as catnip. They lack the virtue instilled by a more classical education that might otherwise have prevented them from being able to rationalize the cruelty inherent in their preferred style of politics.
At a very high level of abstraction you can say that if "left wing" means "prioritizing equality" then left wing politicians ought to consider that crime disproportionately affects the poor. But at some point you need to need to consider the accompanying premises and prejudices that inevitably accompany certain beliefs. The left to far left has a very strong distrust of police, for a combination of ideological reasons ("resist state power"), historical reasons (cultural memories of the Pinkertons) and psychological ones ("no Mom, I *won't* clean my room!"). And I think trying to completely separate a single "core" commitment from others falls flat.
To take an example on the other side, the core right wing belief is sometimes expressed as "acknowledge hierarchy" or "respect tradition." Does this mean that Trump's war on the - very hierarchical and established - Ivies isn't right wing?
I have a somewhat controversial hobbesian theory (and albeit extremely cynical view of humans and politics at large_ which will go to your point--that human nature and democracy and democratic norms are incompatible. I think left(meaning prioritizing equality) and classic liberalism (which is the prioritization of the individual, distrust of state power, institutions and traditional hierarchies) are foundational to America. I actually think for the most part the fundamental system of America is liberal and left-wing, and Trump is actively trying to break that system and dislikes as Jefferson would say "a natural aristocracy" based on talent and virtue vs an "artificial aristocracy" based on wealth and birth, and that is the heart of right-wing thing thought. Trump has no real ideology beyond his personal grievances but the people around him are not conservatives (in terms of Burke, respect for institutions but not really opposed to democracy, Burke was not altogether opposed to the American revolution but hated the chaos and the methods of the French Revolution) but are much older form of conservatism based on the divine right of kings and the aristocracy based on wealth and birth. The problem is the world is not equal and people are not the same, and in a "natural aristocracy" the cream rises to the top and the top 20 percent will naturally gain most of the rewards of the system. Most people are absolutely not part of that elite. What this means in practice is that often the skills that make a good politician are the same that make a person a bad economic manager. People are more interested in their own personal status and their desire to as Tears for Fears for said "everyone wants to rule the world" essentially means groups that benefit from the current system will only ever vote for that system, and people who don't benefit will vote to topple it but at a concrete level they don't care about policy or technical details that will make the change good in the long-term but rather how they can dominate everyone else in their vicinity. Good politics is recognizing people are not rational and often want things that may impossible to deliver(lower taxes and more services, without blowing up the deficit while not having to feel bad about it) and the only way to get elected is to promise voters things that are incompatible with each other and good policy means recognizing trade-offs but in tight elections voters are never going to vote for things that are good in the aggregate but bad for them and a huge amount of policy that is good in aggregate comes at a cost to the individual.
Basically my point is a fundamental level, when it comes to what voters want it isn't actually to solve problems in the aggregate which may involve trade-offs personal but as Steinbeck said to "believe themselves temporary embarrassed millionaires" and votes for policy that in the short-term make them feel good about themselves(in terms of morality, democratic norms, anti-state power) and policies that enrich themselves in the short-term which in effect is "fuck you, I got mine" and pull the ladder-up behind them. Voters are selfish and corrupt and politicians on both sides seem to reflect that.
This is classic toxic woke behavior at its worst 😆
The thing is, progressives already had a successful big city mayor who did reckon with tradeoffs and had more tangible accomplishments than most left-leaning executives in America. His name was Bill de Blasio. Now that time has passed, I think he will be viewed more warmly. If I recall Matt was a BdB truther as well.
I think the situation De Blasio inherited in NY was a lot better suited for his agenda than Chicago's was for Brandon Johnson. And left candidates need to think about how they can alter their agenda to fit the world where policy trade offs are bigger.
A couple of years ago I read an article where the reporter asked New Yorkers if they approved of various policies that were initiated by deBlasio, although they were not identified as deBlasio policies. The answer was a resounding "yes." The same people were asked what they thought of deBlasio, and pretty much everyone hated him. I think about this often - the difference between policy and personality and how a politician has to have more than policies people approve of.
He lost a billion dollars through his wife's mental health campaign or whatever it was. Plus he eats pizza with a fork, roots for the Red Sox and killed Charlotte the groundhog on Groundhog Day. I'm surprised he's as popular as he was.
I had never heard of the Charlotte incident, so I Googled and found this story that had me laughing, no disrespect to Charlotte. https://www.cityandstateny.com/personality/2024/02/remembering-staten-island-chuck-10-years-later/393823/
“The current Mayor Eric Adams, an avowed enemy of rodents, has skipped the Groundhog Day celebrations.”
This is the way. Every NYC mayor should announce themselves as ‘an avowed enemy of rodents’, by the way. Would make a nice campaign slogan.
Also no offense to Charlotte but I feel like a groundhog should be able to survive a 4 ft drop.
What is it about consecutive New York mayors being weird about the most basic of food?
Yes he could have put ketchup on his hot dog 😆
If you understand politics is really just a high school popularity contest, and people often vote on what sounds good and how much you appeal to their ego, vs the nerds who look at technical details, trade-offs and what is actually good policy vs what sounds good, then having a personality that makes you seem like a strong leader or is likeable beats having good policies. It's rare that you get a jock that also a nerd, and is willing to people hard truths vs what they want to hear. People like BdB fail because the electorate isn't actually as interested in good policy in the aggregate than making themselves feel better about themselves. I'm becoming a black pilled Carlinite who fundamentally believes the voters are selfish, corrupt and ignorant and so much of our problems are downstream of that. Politicians with good policies can't win in that environment. Often the personalities of politicians who have good policies have harder time than politicians who realize that voters are not rational and the skills that win people elections in Modern America are incompatible with the type of politician who can actual propose and deliver good policies.
My hottake: New Yorkers' standards are just too high "Guy with annoying mannerism and habits but does a decent job running the circus"* should clear the bar (and BdB is a great example of why term limits are bad)
*you could make a similar argument about Ed Koch
The Onion had the best deBlasio headline, basically, because it’s true.
De Blasio's legacy is hurt by his presidential campaign.
I get why some New Yorkers didn't like de Blasio. Why the left in particular decided to forcefully say he of all people sucked was weird.
I'm a Chicagoan who voted very reluctantly for Johnson. There was always more rhetoric than substance in his campaign, and things worked out pretty much as I expected them to.
I'm glad, Ben, that you mentioned the problems with the Vallas campaign: IMHO his communication strategy was terrible. After his "I'm more of a Republican than a Democrat" statement there was no way I could vote for him. But his communications strategy never, as I recall, directly addressed any of his vulnerabilities—and never effectively promoted his so-called "moderate" position on issues. Again moderate messaging not backed by credible substance. So I'd say Vallas' vulnerability was on the issues and his messaging never picked up on that.
As a result, as you note, people just stayed home. Sound familiar? Remind you of the 2024 election?
Both Vallas and Johnson are remarkably poor communicators for someone trying to become Mayor. Just fundamentally not A-list political talents.
And Vallas was a poor choice to be the champion of the city's conservative business elite given the things he'd said about his partisan allegiance since leaving CPS.
Ultimately I find something a bit silly about the "progressives need to be different" narrative in this context, since in a city like Chicago (or SF or NYC) there is always going to be a healthy slice of commie cosplay lefty whackos, who contribute a great deal to the culture of the city.
If you don't want their candidate to be Mayor (and you shouldn't), it is incumbent upon the other political currents in the city, which are the overwhelming majority, to recruit a winning candidate and run a winning campaign. The business community's last two champions have been Vallas and Bill Daley, both fatally flawed with the citywide electorate.
Johnson won't sniff the runoff in 2027, might not even run, but the field and electorate stands ready to embrace Chicago's Daniel Lurie-type figure. MODERATES need to reckon with their failure to have yet produced that person.
“If you don't want their candidate to be Mayor (and you shouldn't), it is incumbent upon the other political currents in the city, which are the overwhelming majority, to recruit a winning candidate and run a winning campaign. The business community's last two champions have been Vallas and Bill Daley, both fatally flawed with the citywide electorate.”
Yep.
The lane is WIDE open for a normal mainline Democrat (without Cuomo’s scandals and inability to work with others) in New York City’s current election.
I mean, I think Cuomo is gonna win even with the baggage.
My view of Vallas is that the implicit campaign was “want to elect a republican without explicitly voting for one?”
Eh, my behind the scenes scoop on this is that Vallas really wanted to be the nonpartisan fixer.
I totally believe that ... but that was an impossible dream given the overall political climate in 2023. The trouble with polarization is that it being non-partisan isn't really an option. One of the reasons I read Slow Boring and The Bulwark (among others) is to help me think through whether there really is a politically viable "center"—or how it would work. The question remains open for me at least. So please keep sharing your thinking, Ben.
Can you comment on why his campaign strategy was as puzzling as it turned out? It seemed odd to tack heavily to the right given Chicago’s leanings.
It felt like he wanted to be a Republican policywise (focus on being unforgiving on crime, especially), but wanted the Democrats to go along with him. In his mind, maybe that's non-partisan.
Well, in Chicago there isn't really a viable Republic party (for local non-judicial offices). Plenty of Old-Style (perhaps in more ways than one) Republicans, tho. And also plenty of MAGA Republicans. If anyone doubts this, just look at the returns from the 2024 election. IMO in many ways Rahm was a DINO with a great deal of appeal to those who wanted to vote Republican. For that matter so was Daley.
Totally agree. Turnout was a real problem for Harris . Her approval ratings were better than Biden but the turnout never materialized.
As a Chicago resident, this article pretty well captures the major issues with Johnson's tenure.
I'll admit, I voted for him over Vallas. He made reducing homelessness, providing services (including mental health, in addition to housing/shelters), etc. a big part of his campaign. (The various issues with the Vallas campaign have already been discussed.) Despite my qualms about someone so embedded in CTU (I voted for Chuy in the primary), this convinced me to give him a shot.
He has completely failed at this. The overall migrant crisis isn't fundamentally his fault (I live close enough to Union Station that I've personally witnessed the buses from Texas dropping off migrants wearing shorts in December), but part of governing is handling unexpected issues. Johnson can't even handle the expected ones.
As a Chicago resident for the last 25 years, I don't consider Brandon Johnson to be a disappointment because this is exactly what I thought would happen. As noted by many here, he's not a good politician, he is just a tool of the teacher's union. He's always been that. He is a charismatic speaker and very enthusiastic, but he doesn't come across as a deep thinker and he puts his foot in his mouth all the time by just regurgitating his talking points about race and disinvestment no matter what the problem is.
He inherited an experienced staff and proceeded to fire them all and replace them with young, inexperienced members of the activist class in Chicago. Kennedy "all cops are pigs" Brantley anyone? They proceeded to alienate everyone and could not make necessary political coalitions with stakeholders like the Governor. This was not a surprise.
While he inherited a no-win situation with the influx of migrants, he handled it as poorly as possible. Since that time - and even during that time - he has reverted again and again to racial politics and calling everyone who disagreed with him everything from racists to confederate sympathizers.
With all that said, I think he is still the favorite to win the next election. If he can get to the run off and he's matched up with a white candidate he will win again, just like last time. Black voters will vote for him and white liberals from the North Side like nothing better than to vote for a black progressive. So be careful before throwing dirt on Johnson's grave.
I think even the north side white liberals are going to drop him due to the litany of missteps you post. I was certainly one of that crowd before I moved away about 5 years ago 😎
The Math is interesting. If you can purchase a home for half what you can build for then why build? Could Chicago not just buy existing homes, remodel them and then figure out a simple program to sell the homes people that need them?
Isn’t repurposing better than new in the environmental hierarchy?
My guess - and it's only a guess - is that if the city were to buy up old stock, they'd have to bring those units up to standards that meet Chicago's standards for officially sanctioned affordable housing. The construction/renovation costs and the supervision costs (customized to each unit) would probably be really expensive.
Likely true, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Abundance. That is why we need leaders.
I mean, speaking as someone with a libertarian bent, this is why getting the government involved where it's not absolutely needed is basically always a problem.
The $740,000 per unit refers specifically to government assisted (LIHTC etc) big-a Affordable housing, not typical market rate housing. Those numbers are in the $300k per unit in multi-family.
Could you elaborate on this with more detail?
Which part?
why cant they just buy market rate housing and call it Affordable Housing
As an ex Chicago resident I totally agree. There is a lot of housing that could be rehabbed fairly economically .
They could put the rehabs on YouTube and make some money for additional funding and show that government can work. A City could have its own crews to do the work. There are lots of possibilities. This would be a housing department getting things done.
“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
—Margaret Thatcher.
Says the queen of trickle down economics 😆
Where is your "progressive need to reckon with Eric Adams" piece, a right-wing Democrat who did everything you and Yglesias want Democrats to do and who has an even worse approval rating? Could it be because that would disprove your narrative?
I feel like that piece would be short. "Don't be a corrupt compulsive liar."
I also feel like Matt was clear in endorsing Kathryn Garcia from the start: https://www.slowboring.com/p/weekend-update-february-13
Good article, by the way, Ben.
It's telling that in response to an article about progressives needing to cease ignoring a difficult reality, Freddie follows up with a false claim.
Freddie cares more about policing discourse than actual policing.
I would love to read Freddie dB make an argument of how he plans to achieve his goals in a world of scarce resources and current political realities. I admire the man’s passion and would love to see how he would approach these types of situations.
"Don't be a corrupt compulsive liar."
Certainly not if you are a Black Democrat. It has worked out fairly well for certain white Republican squatters in the White House.
"Everyone should have voted for Garcia send Tweet"
Hah!
But that's the Johnson piece!
I don't think there is any evidence that Adams unpopularity is related to either the city of yes proposals, or to police funding questions.
It’s more about governance. Johnson and Adams both made tons of serious errors that are unrelated to their position on the left right spectrum.
Don't blame me; I voted for Vallas.
But seriously, BranJo is a hack elected by and for the CTU. That enormous sucking sound you hear is him extracting as much value as he can for his favored constituents, and everyone else be damned.
I found a really nice place in the South Loop, but am wary of pulling the trigger as I don't want my taxes to potentially spike to pay off one interest group or another.
Props to Ben for going into massive detail about this administrations failings and also how Vallas ran a less than great campaign.