The Dead-End Left

City Journal ^ | Winter 2024 | Steven Malanga

[Rummyfan]

In 1973, Coleman Young, an African American former labor organizer with ties to the American Communist Party, ran for mayor of Detroit. Young narrowly beat the city’s police commissioner, partly by arguing that cops targeted minorities. Once in office, Young rolled back enforcement and slashed the police force by 20 percent. Detroit’s crime exploded. Businesses and middle-class residents fled the city; polls showed a majority of whites feeling threatened. Detroit’s economy and social order collapsed during Young’s two-decade mayoralty. “He left the city a fiscal and social wreck,” as political scientist James Q. Wilson wrote. Yet he kept getting reelected by larger margins, as his black support stayed strong.

The arc of Young’s mayoral reign—a rapidly deteriorating city combined with ongoing political success—is a strange phenomenon that economists Edward Glaeser and Andrei Shleifer dubbed the Curley Effect, after the early-twentieth-century Boston mayor James Michael Curley. Curley won the mayor’s office in 1913 through “incendiary rhetoric” and “aggressive redistribution” that shifted resources from WASP communities to his political allies in Irish neighborhoods. Tightening his hold on the mayor’s office, he remained in power for more than four decades. As with Young years later, Curley’s political fortunes benefited because those most likely to vote against him had left the city.

The Curley Effect has typically applied in cities, where politics is often called “tribal” because of strong ethnic or racial ties. Today, however, a new tribal politics—an ideological kind—is influencing state fortunes. Many now say that they wish to socialize with, marry, and live near only people with similar political opinions, and these commitments are shaping state migration patterns post-pandemic. Surveys show conservative voters in blue states dissatisfied with their current environments and likely to move, and progressives in the same places intending to stay.

[Rummyfan]

Coleman Young, destroyer of Detroit.

People are acting on these sentiments. California has been hemorrhaging residents for years, but its losses have sped up. In 2010, net domestic migration out of California totaled about 130,000 residents. That climbed to nearly 200,000 in 2019, and then skyrocketed. From the start of Covid lockdowns in April 2020 to mid-2022, the Golden State lost more than 870,000 net residents. In fact, the five biggest losers in that period were all solidly Democratic states, including New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Illinois. By contrast, states that lean Republican or conservative politically dominate the Top 10 leaders of in-migration, paced by Florida and Texas, which together welcomed some 1.1 million net newcomers during the pandemic.

[Rummyfan]

[chajin]

I thought the Curley Effect was the ability of political leaders to chuckle “Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk” at the stupidity of their voters, who were all stooges.

[NohSpinZone]

Considering what happened in Zimbabwe and South Africa, this seems to be a particular skill (if you can call it that) among black politicians.

[MachIV]

America is on the threshold of becoming the next post-Rhodesia Zimbabwe.

[MachIV]

“former labor organizer with ties to the American Communist Party...”

Marx once said “Workers of the world unite”. All of that is plenty of reason in my opinion to boycott UAW garbage especially after last weekend when I saw some union goon wearing a hoodie that had the UAW lettering on it and said “EAT THE RICH” on it.

F the UAW and their America hating POS.

[MachIV]

“Yet he kept getting reelected by larger margins, as his black support stayed strong.”

This is precisely why I and others who are probably considered to be “far right” make the claim that civic nationalism is just a myth rooted in complete falsehoods.

Pat Buchanan made warnings years ago and he was trashed by the dumbass neocon globalist sell out open border schills in the GOP as a bigot.

He was right. Period.

[Organic Panic]

With few exceptions blacks run their cities and organization with the overriding goal of “get even with whitey.” They will corrupt and destroy everything in the name of “get whitey.” A successfully run black city, state, or nation is the very rare exception to the rule. If “whiteness” is the cause of all suffering in the world, Haiti would be paradise on earth.

[who_would_fardels_bear]

Very good article. Lots of good content at the City Journal.

[Ge0ffrey]

God bless Pat Buchanan.

[who_would_fardels_bear]

It's not just about get whitey.

It's also about gimmealladat cuz my ancestors were slaves.

[Mr. N. Wolfe]

My family was part of the “white flight” that left Detroit in the 1960’s. They left due to crime and other racial issues and moved to the surrounding suburbs. They remained staunch Democrats even after the move.

A lot of people who left California, New York and other left-wing states will tell you that they left because of crime, taxes, etc. But like my family, they still vote Democrat.

[T-Bird45]

The union goons can’t seem to connect cause & effect. I saw a similar photo regarding the recent Remington Arms relocation from NY to GA with the puzzled union local official wearing his UMW hat while denouncing the move.

[Reily]

UMW - United Mine Workers!

Why is UMW unionista honcho involved with this story?

Union officials never suffer if the plant/mine etc goes under they still get paid.

[bankwalker]

Locusts

[stylin19a]

dead end ?

you rang ?

[Jacquerie]

Such is the fruit of the 15th Amendment.

[joe fonebone]

Soulman Young.
I remember him, because myself and my mom and dad were among the “Hostile White Suburbanites” that fled the city. My grandfather, Sergeant Ken Sheldon of the Detroit Mounted Police, was one of the last white people to get out before the complete collapse of housing prices. He lived in his house and raised his family for over 40 years. Same house.
He got 4 grand for his house when he moved. All the white people on his street were murdered in their homes.

[AZJeep]

Mayor Young shrunk Detroit to a third of its population.
Obviously a lot of people who voted for him originally had to leave.

Interestingly, for all his “achievements”, mayor Young had been very well rewarded. He was the best (or second best) paid mayor in the whole USA for most of his tenure.

He obviously knew how to take care about somebody!

[DugwayDuke]

Mr. N. Wolfe wrote: “A lot of people who left California, New York and other left-wing states will tell you that they left because of crime, taxes, etc. But like my family, they still vote Democrat.”

Not everyone in the blue states are democrats. What you’re seeing is the repulican/conservatives leaving blue states to move to red states where those moving vote republican.