It was the summer of 1996. Chicago was on a roll.
Michael Jordan returned from a brief retirement to lead the Bulls to their greatest season ever at the time, winning the first of a “three-peat” NBA championship.
Crime was down, the economy was booming, and the city’s notorious slums were expected to be cleared out and replaced with mixed-income developments.
A guy named Daley was mayor. A guy named Obama hadn’t been elected to anything yet.
I was 19 years old and covering the Democratic National Convention for Harvard University radio, and it was an easy commute from my parents’ house in Skokie, a North suburb, to the United Center (the house Michael built).
I interviewed Al Franken and Arianna Huffington, I ran into one of the Baldwin brothers and he thought I was someone else and invited me to a party, I tried to hang out with Bill Maher and he made fun of me.
Chicago was doing better than it had ever done before.
Maybe we all remember our youth in this way. I had a great summer job. I split my time between an internship for Sen. Carol Moseley Braun (D-IL) and an internship at a local NPR bureau. I dated a girl from my office and we made out all night on the beach.
But teenage nostalgia aside, Chicago really was better back then, and although it still had problems with poverty, gangs, and bad schools, things seemed to be getting better.
There were shadows. One was in 1968, when the Democrats last held their convention in Chicago. It was a disaster, with anti-war protesters clashing with police outside. Party heavyweights, especially Daley Sr., silenced activists. The activists had witnessed the assassination of one of their heroes, Sen. Robert Kennedy (D-N.Y.), in Los Angeles. Radicals had raised Viet Cong flags in Grant Park.
Voters saw the chaos in Chicago and turned to Republican Richard Nixon.
Another shadow was in my office, or rather, the Senator’s office. She disappeared during an unannounced trip to Nigeria, then led by a murderous dictator. When she returned to Chicago, she was hounded by the press. No one wanted to share the stage with her, least of all President Bill Clinton. He had survived the Whitewater scandal, and the Lewinsky affair had not yet come to light. He was leading the polls, but the Senator had no choice but to drag him down.
The convention was smooth, effortless, had some dramatic moments, like a wheelchair-bound Christopher Reeve addressing the delegates and a spectacular balloon drop at the end, and it was a victory for the Democratic Party and the city of Chicago.
Daley was following Clinton’s “New Democrat” policy formula, which emphasized economic growth with a strong social net. The old welfare state, including housing projects, was being dismantled, and a bright new future beckoned.
Nearly three decades later, Democrats seem to think they can rest on Chicago’s past glories, its skyline still mesmerizing and Lake Michigan still a vibrant, alluring blue.
But everything else has changed.
Crime is out of control. Chicago is Murderous capital An American city. The infrastructure is crumbling, the schools are worse than they’ve ever been. Taxes keep rising but never cover the city’s unfunded pension liabilities. Everyone who can move is leaving.
What changed? Daley ran a corrupt government, but understood that voters would overlook the corruption if service was good. Then along came Rahm Emanuel, who brought a suburban sense of entitlement and struggled to juggle rival constituencies in the city.
He was replaced by the violent Lori Lightfoot, who unleashed Black Lives Matter riots. Last year, voters rejected Lightfoot and elected the even more radical Brandon Johnson instead.
There is no hope for change.
Chicago is caught in the political death spiral common to third world one-party systems: When one left-wing politician fails, another one fails, and electing a Republican, or even a moderate Democrat, is unthinkable.
Freedom of speech does not exist: Donald Trump was prevented from speaking in the city in 2016 by left-wing rioters backed by local leaders, and pro-Palestinian mobs have threatened to cause chaos in the city when the Democrats arrive.
Biden personally picked Chicago to accept the Democratic nomination, and no one is quite sure why.
Illinois’s Electoral College vote is a foregone conclusion. Obama hails from Chicago (sort of), but now lives among the elite on Martha’s Vineyard.
Boeing pulled out. Billionaire Ken Griffin pulled out and took his company with him. Even the Chicago Bears are considering moving to the suburbs. And Biden pulled out of the 2024 race, not Chicago.
If the goal is to warn of the tragic consequences of Democratic rule, Chicago is the perfect setting for the Democratic National Convention.
There’s no turning back now. Even multiple federal bailouts have not saved the city of Chicago. With a financial Chicago conflagration looming, the only solution for the city and state may be to clean up and start over.
I’ll still make time to go to the beach, but good luck to Kamala Harris making her case in Chicago.
Joel B. Pollack is executive editor of Breitbart News. Breitbart News Sunday The show airs Sunday nights from 7 to 10 p.m. (4 to 7 p.m. ET) on SiriusXM Patriot. He is the author of “Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days,” which is available for preorder on Amazon. He also wrote,Trumpian virtue: The lessons and legacy of Donald Trump’s presidency” is available on Audible. He is the 2018 recipient of the Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter. Joel Pollack.
