The Democratic upset in Jacksonville is a product of the GOP's war on cities

[In It to Win It]

Public Notice

Last week, Democrat Donna Deegan won an upset mayoral election victory in Jacksonville, Florida — up to then the largest city in the country governed by a Republican mayor. Democrats also scored a shocking win in Colorado Springs, where independent, Democrat-aligned Yemi Mobolade won the mayorship. Colorado Springs has had Republican mayors since residents began directly electing the office in 1979. Currently, Republicans hold the mayor’s office in only two of the thirty most populated cities in America.

Why do Republicans have such trouble winning mayoral races? The answer is fairly obvious — Republicans hate cities. More, the party is increasingly defined by its hatred of cities. That anti-urban animus hasn’t torched the party’s national electoral fortunes yet. But if you’re a Republican, there are worrying signs.

Cities don’t matter, right?

There’s a clear double standard here. When Democrats cast even a shadow of an aspersion on rural or white voters, the political press reacts as if the party has made a huge strategic and moral error. In 2008, while running for the Democratic nomination, Obama said that after small town midwestern voters experienced major job losses, “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.”

This was obviously an effort (however clumsy) to express empathy, not a smear along the lines of Cruz’s “New York values.” But Obama’s Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, said the remarks were “demeaning” and showed that Obama was an “elitist.”

Along those lines, there’s a steady drumbeat of articles in the press about how Democrats need to do better in appealing to rural voters. And it’s certainly true that Democrats could do better on many rural issues. At the same time, no national Democrat officeholder in my lifetime has ever said anything about “rural Iowa values,” or called rural Texas, or North Dakota, or rural anywhere a “hellhole” or an embarrassment to the nation. Democratic rhetoric on rural areas is virtually always focused on how to do better with voters in those places. Meanwhile, Republicans talk as if they’d like to light cities, and all their inhabitants, on fire. Why aren’t political pundits, and just everyone in general, scolding them for that?

Link to tweet

[regnaD kciN]

1. Because "urban" is shorthand for "dark-skinned people"...

[Initech]

2. People live in big cities.

Nobody lives in the bumfuck middle of nowhere counties that Trump attracts. I'll never understand why conservatives think that a town with 500 people gets the same representation as a major city like Los Angeles with 34 million people.