--on the analytical flaws at the heart of #Trump's assault on "Democrat-run cities," including [View all]

[riversedge]

A must-read analysis in the @nytimes
by @emilymbadger
—on the analytical flaws at the heart of the President’s assault on “Democrat-run cities,” including the limited powers of mayors and the omissions of Republican-led urban centers:

Link to tweet

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Are Democrats Alone to Blame for Urban Problems? Not Exactly

Mayors don’t have the power that the president ascribes to them.
Emily Badger

By Emily Badger

Sept. 2, 2020
Updated 9:33 a.m. ET

ImageA police officer in Portland, Ore., last month. Over the decades, the Republican Party has participated less in the conversation on solutions to urban problems.
A police officer in Portland, Ore., last month. Over the decades, the Republican Party has participated less in the conversation on solutions to urban problems. Credit...David Ryder for The New York Times

Minneapolis, Chicago, Portland, Ore., and Kenosha, Wis., are first and foremost “Democrat cities” in President Trump’s telling. They have Democratic mayors, Democratic policies, Democratic turmoil.

With this refrain, Mr. Trump has sharpened his party’s long-running antipathy toward urban America into a more specific argument for the final two months of the campaign: Cities have problems, and Democrats run them. Therefore, you don’t want Democrats running the country, either.

But that logic misconstrues the nature of challenges that cities face, and the power of mayors of any party to solve them, political scientists say. And it twists a key fact of political history: If cities have become synonymous with Democratic politics today, that is true in part because Republicans have largely given up on them.

Over the course of decades, Republicans ceased competing seriously for urban voters in presidential elections and representing them in Congress. Republican big-city mayors became rare. And along the way, the Republican Party nationally has grown muted on possible solutions to violence, inequality, poverty and segregation in cities.................................
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..........................................Cities have been faced with problems far beyond their making. Deindustrialization and globalization wiped out many middle-class factory jobs, destabilizing neighborhoods of blue-collar workers. The federal policy of highway construction enabled both taxpayers and employers to leave cities. Federal housing policies dissuaded or prevented Black residents initially from joining them, cementing patterns of racial and economic segregation that persist to this day.........................................