The Emerging Urban Middle Class and Democratic Disaster

Of all the surprising election results this month, the hardest to ignore is the stunning decline in the Democratic vote in big cities that are supposed to be safe. There has already been a lot of journalistic commentary about this, but there is more to say about its causes and consequences.

The numbers are almost too dramatic to believe. Some early research by Ohio State University political scientist Thomas Wood estimated that the Republican presidential vote increased by 9 percentage points in Manhattan, 12 points in Brooklyn, 5 in Philadelphia, 5 in Chicago and 9 in Miami-Dade County , Florida. the figures do not turn out to be exactly accurate, they nevertheless portend a reversal that no one in the political universe expected.

But it wasn’t just the presidential vote or a partisan riot. Progressive candidates lost in seemingly safe progressive strongholdsespecially in California, even though Kamala Harris was winning the state’s presidential vote. San Francisco Mayor London Breed was ousted by a challenger who attacked her from the right on public order issues. Across the bay in Oakland, the mayor and district attorney have also been removed from office, largely on public safety grounds. In Los Angeles, progressive District Attorney George Gascón was beaten by an opponent who derided his less strict approach to a whole variety of criminal justice issues. There are numerous other examples.

It is clear what happened. What remains to be decoded is why these things happened. To explore this, we need to move beyond this year’s events and look back at several decades of urban life and demographic change.

During those decades, America’s largest cities lost much of their white working-class and middle-class populations and came to be dominated by a mix of minorities and wealthy white liberal professionals. The white blue-collar population was moving to the suburbs or dying out. When Chicago elected an African-American mayor in 1983, based on black support and white liberal votes, over the opposition of a law-and-order opponent, it seemed to encapsulate a new era in urban politics.

But demography does not stand still. Urban minority populations are now increasingly middle class, with middle class values ​​and concerns. More than in the past, their concerns are about maintaining order and security, and this year they demonstrated their belief that progressive governments and candidates did not reflect their views. This is most true for Hispanics, and especially for Hispanic men. Early indications are that Donald Trump has won a majority of the Hispanic male votewhich has not been the case for a Republican for more than 50 years. These weren’t just votes for a presidential candidate: they were protests against the government they were getting at the local level.

The most incisive recent study of urban political attitudes was conducted earlier this year in Chattanooga by the Manhattan Institute. In that study78% of respondents listed crime and safety as major issues. Most of them said crime was worse in Chattanooga than it was in 2020. Black residents are more likely to say this than whites or Hispanics. About 64% of respondents reported feeling unsafe somewhere in the city during a normal day.

These findings are striking given that violent crime has actually declined in Chattanooga. But homelessness, littering and petty crime have worsened over the past four years. Survey respondents didn’t imagine that.

SOME LARGER NUMBERS are helpful HERE. In the United States as a whole, the latest statistics from the FBI tell us that violent crime fell by 3% between 2022 and 2023. Murder and manslaughter fell by 11.6%, rape by 9.4% and burglary by 7.6%. Provisional data for the current year suggest that these patterns continue. But one crime that has risen significantly, as in Chattanooga, is shoplifting, an icon of disorder virtually everywhere in the country.

It is fairly well established that most people respond more to changes in the prevalence of a problem than to absolute numbers. When traffic delays build up in a community and drivers wait through a red light at a busy intersection, they will complain angrily even if the actual delay is modest. When citizens begin to see petty criminals stealing merchandise from a clothing store or jumping a turnstile to avoid paying transit fares, they will conclude that disorder and lawlessness are getting much worse, even if the bigger numbers don’t really show it.

It is this fear of disorder that has influenced much of the 2024 vote in America’s biggest cities. And it’s legitimate to wonder how much progressive government, and especially Democratic government, has contributed.

THE ANSWER, I HAVE TO SAY, IS PRETTY LITTLE. Obviously, it’s a mistake to blame the left for everything people worry about in cities, but if you list some of the policies that urban leaders have passed or adopted in recent years, you begin to understand why urban voters are worried.

There are the permissive crime laws that have downgraded misdemeanors to felonies. In 2014, California Proposition 47 reclassified shoplifting, grand theft, receiving stolen property, forgery, fraud, writing a bad check and personal use of most illegal drugs as misdemeanors if the dollar value was under $950. Large portions of Prop 47 were invalidated at the polls at this year’s vote.

In 2020, the Democrat-controlled Oregon Legislature made possession of illegal drugs, such as heroin, punishable by a ticket and a maximum $100 fine. This was a state law, but it had the biggest impact in Portland, where drug-related crime was most prevalent. The law it was repealed this year amid widespread public opposition, but it had long since done its political damage.

Then there was the most incendiary and damaging slogan in recent memory: “Defund the police.” It’s hard to think of any left-wing idea more likely to alienate the vast majority of voters virtually anywhere in America. Obviously, not every Democratic or progressive candidate accepted this slogan, but its damage was immense. It was Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” multiplied many times.

THERE WERE REASONS BEHIND ALL THESE LAWS AND SLOGANS. “Defunding the police” was a reaction to the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers in 2020. Defunding property crimes was an attempt to solve the real problem of excessively long prison terms for nonviolent offenders. But they gave the progressive forces and Democrats in most of urban America a political stain that explains much of what happened to them in 2024.

One way to understand this is to look at San Diego. As resentment of public order problems spread across urban California, San Diego was immune. While other major California cities took revenge on the progressive government, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria won the decisive re-election on a platform that emphasized public safety and increased support for local police. He pushed through the 10 percent pay raise for police officers that he pushed through the City Council.

It has become commonplace in recent years to talk about how the middle class is disappearing from American cities. There is some historical truth to this, but the truth is that a significant new middle class is emerging, albeit a different one from the cohort of a generation ago. It has a significant component of newcomers to this country, Hispanics and Asians and recent arrivals from the Middle East. This population values ​​safety and security above all other concerns. It is a grave mistake for any political party or movement to alienate her.