The day that Chicago died

Okay, okay; that might be a little strong, but the city has been rushed into the ICU. And that's what a small majority of Chicago voters want.

Brandon Johnson, Chicago mayor-elect and Chicago Teachers’ Union puppet. (Campaign Photo)

They decided Chicago can be run better by someone who is so inexperienced, so controlled by special interests. Someone who can’t seem to pay his own personal debts. A complete unknown. Never ran anything; certainly not something having a multi-billion-dollar budget. Will likely be the puppet of the teachers and government employe unions.

But someone who had the right color skin. That’s apparently all that mattered.

That someone is Brandon Johnson, who is black.

Is it racist to point that out? Not when that seems to have been the most important reason Johnson was elected on April 4.

Think not? Then take a look at the ward and precinct results as compiled by Block Club Chicago in an interactive map. There you see solid majorities in the black and minority neighborhoods.

And in the mostly white north lakefront . The “progressive” lakefront. How unsurprising.

For them, skin color is more important than the kind of competence that Paul Vallas, the defeated mayoral candidate, would bring to the office. Ideology first, problem solving last.

Then there’s Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker who hailed new voters for this smashup:

I do believe that this is a change for the city, something new. But you know what? It’s a new generation of voters that came to the polls. I think he’s part of a kind of a sea change that’s going on in what I guess politically we’d all call ‘the Blue Wall.

New voters. How many are college educated? Products of the America’s dysfunctional higher education system whose purpose now seems to churn out dysfunctionally, ideologically driven sheeple. The kind of white progressives who marched in the sometimes violent aftermath of the death of George Floyd. Because they assuredly are smarter and more knowledgeable about systemic racism and white privilege. No disagreement allowed.

Years ago, they were called “limousine liberals.” Back then, they were fans of “black power.” It’s where most of the anti-Machine, independent-minded voters lived. They were “tree nuggers,” one of whom chained herself to a Jackson Park tree to prevent their removal for a road. (Now they can’t bring themselves to utter a word against the chopping down of a reported 600 Jackson Park trees to make way for the Obama Center.) Some of the best state legislators came from there.

But they aways a minority, voices crying in the wilderness. Unable to dent the Richard J. Daley Machine.

Now they are part of the new machine—a coalition of blacks and other. They now will hold power.

Now we’re apt to see more of the very policies that have crippled Chicago—crime, outmigration of people and business, indebtedness, broken budgets and corruption.

A footnote: As a reporter and columnist, I’ve known Paul Vallas for years. He is a Democrat through and through; not a closet Republican as the Johnson campaign falsely claimed. He’s a liberal and would have instituted neighborhood revitalization and economic development plans that would have been workable and affordable.

He was Chicago’s last chance to rescue itself.