It was the summer of 1996. Chicago was on a high.
Michael Jordan had come out of his brief retirement to lead the Bulls to the best-ever season at the time, winning the first of what would be a “three-peat” of NBA championships.
Crime was down. The economy was soaring. Notorious slums were being cleared, hopefully to be replaced by mixed-income developments.
A guy named Daley was the mayor. A guy named Obama had yet to be elected to anything.
I was 19 years old, and I was covering the Democratic National Convention for Harvard’s college radio station. It was easy to commute to the United Center — the House That Michael Built — from my parents’ home in the Near North suburb of Skokie.
I interviewed Al Franken and Ariana Huffington. I bumped into one of the Baldwin brothers, who mistook me for someone else and invited me to a party. I tried to hang out with Bill Maher, who made fun of me.
Chicago had never been better.
Perhaps everyone remembers their youth that way. I had great summer jobs, dividing my time between an internship for Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun (D-IL), and an internship for National Public Radio’s local affiliate. I dated a girl from the office; we made out on the beach all night.
But teenage nostalgia aside, Chicago really was better then. There were problems — poverty, gangs, bad schools — but things seemed to be getting better.
There were a couple of shadows. One was 1968, the last time Democrats had held a convention in Chicago. That had been a disaster, as anti-war protesters clashed with police outside. Party bigwigs — none bigger than Daley Sr. — shut down the activists, who had seen one of their heroes, Sen. Robert Kennedy (D-NY), assassinated in L.A. Radicals hoisted a Viet Cong flag in Grant Park.
Voters saw the chaos in Chicago and turned to Republican Richard Nixon.
The other shadow was in my office — or, rather, the Senator’s office. She had disappeared on an unannounced trip to Nigeria, which was then run by a murderous dictator. When she returned to Chicago, she was hounded by the media. No one wanted to be seen with her onstage — least of all President Bill Clinton. He had survived Whitewater, thus far; the Lewinsky affair had not yet come to light. He was on top of the polls; the Senator could only bring him down.
The convention was smooth, and easy. It had its moments of drama: a wheelchair-bound Christopher Reeve speaking to the delegates; the grand balloon drop at the end. And it was a triumph for the Democratic Party, and for the City of Chicago.
Daley was following Clinton’s “new Democrat” policy formula: a focus on economic growth, with a strong social safety net. The old welfare state, like the housing projects, was being dismantled. A bright new future beckoned.
Nearly thirty years later, Democrats seem to think they can coast on Chicago’s past glory. Its skyline remains magical; Lake Michigan is still a brilliant, inviting blue.
But everything else has changed.
Crime is out of control; Chicago is the murder capital of America. The infrastructure is crumbling; the schools are worse than they have ever been. Taxes keep rising, but they can never hope to cover the city’s unfunded pension liabilities. Anyone who can move is leaving.
What changed? Daley ran a corrupt regime, but understood voters would overlook corruption if services were good. Enter Rahm Emanuel, who brought an air of suburban entitlement and could not get along with the city’s fractious constituencies.
He was replaced by the atrocious Lori Lightfoot, who let the Black Lives Matter riots run wild. Voters rejected her last year — only to elect Brandon Johnson, who is even more radical.
There is no hope for change.
Chicago is in a political death spiral, common to one-party systems throughout the Third World. One failed left-wing politician is followed by another; the idea of electing a Republican, or even a moderate Democrat, is unthinkable.
Free speech does not exist: Donald Trump was prevented from speaking in the city in 2016 by a left-wing riot that had the support of local leaders. Pro-Palestinian mobs threaten to turn the city upside down when the Democrats arrive.
Biden personally chose Chicago as the city in which he would accept the Democratic nomination. No one is quite sure why.
Illinois’ votes in the Electoral College are a foregone conclusion. Obama came out of Chicago — sort of — but now he lives among the elite on Martha’s Vineyard.
Boeing left. Billionaire Ken Griffin left and took his company with him. Even the Chicago Bears are thinking of leaving — for the suburbs. And Biden has left — the 2024 race, not Chicago.
Chicago is the perfect backdrop to the Democratic National Convention — if the goal is to warn of the tragic results of rule by the Democrats.
There is no turning back; not even repeated federal bailouts can save the city. A fiscal Great Chicago Fire looms — and bankruptcy may be the only solution for the city, and the state, cutting out the cronies and starting over.
I’ll still make time for the beach. But good luck to Kamala Harris in making her case in Chicago.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of “”The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days,” available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of “The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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