Was Jussie Smollett telling the truth after all? Back in Jan. 2019, when he lied about being attacked in Chicago by two of the Left’s much-discussed but seldom-seen “right-wing extremists,” he claimed that they were shouting “This is MAGA Country.” It seemed ludicrous back then that anyone would have said that about deep-blue Chicago, which hasn’t had a Republican mayor since gas cost seventeen cents a gallon and “Minnie the Moocher” was the number one song on the hit parade, but maybe Jussie’s fables had a grain of truth to them: asked after her loss if she blamed racism and sexism for going down in flames at the ballot box, Lightfoot replied: “I’m a black woman in America. Of course.” And Maggie Cullerton Hooper, former deputy finance director of the Illinois Senate Democratic Victory Fund, likened Chicagoans to Trump for having the temerity to show Lightfoot the door. MAGA Country after all!
The Political Insider tried to introduce a bit of sanity into the proceedings on Wednesday by pointing out that Lightfoot was “actually a ‘black woman in America’ when she became the first openly lesbian black woman to serve as mayor of a major city in the United States in 2019. So the same people who were open-minded enough to usher her in as Chicago mayor four years ago are suddenly racist again.” Maggie Cullerton Hooper would certainly agree that racist is exactly what they are.
Cullerton Hooper, who, besides working with the Illinois Senate Democratic Victory Fund has also raised cash for Planned Parenthood of Illinois, wrote on Facebook Tuesday evening: “Please know that if you cast a vote for Paul Vallas, you no longer get to cling to your bystander justification. You are now just as racist and hateful and bigoted as Donald Trump. Make no mistake, that is exactly who you voted for and it would’ve taken so little effort for you to educate yourself.” Cullerton Hooper vowed to harass these newly minted Trumpian racists publicly: “I SEE YOU. And now, I know exactly who you are. And I will make sure to remind you of that fact. Loudly. In public. Every time.” Charming.
We’re not exactly dealing here with people who are working within the realm of strict evidence-based rationality, but nonetheless, here goes: Paul Vallas, who won 35% of the vote Tuesday and thus became the front-runner to become mayor of Chicago after the April 4 runoff, is no MAGA hat-wearing Trump supporter. He ran on a platform of cracking down on crime, which must have been music to the ears of many weary residents of the Windy City, but otherwise he is a doctrinaire Leftist. He vows to make sure that Chicago “remains a safe haven for women seeking abortions” and will address what he claims are “the horrific disparities in access to maternal care for minority women here in Chicago.” He promises that a Vallas administration in Chicago “will make Climate and Environmental Justice an organizing umbrella to protect and improve the quality of life for all Chicagoans, while creating an economic renaissance for our great city.” “Climate and Environmental Justice” and an “economic renaissance”? Yeah, and I’m Al Capone.
But whatever the merits or abundant demerits of Vallas’ plan for the city, it’s blazingly obvious that he is no racist, much less a Trump supporter, and that Lightfoot and Cullerton Hooper are falling back on what has increasingly become the Left’s only explanation for anything. They’re both likely completely sincere and in earnest about their assumption that Chicago has overnight become a nightmarish place where the ghosts of George Wallace and Theodore Bilbo terrorize unsuspecting passersby and Bull Connor is just waiting with his firehoses and German shepherds for any “people of color” to get out of line, because that’s the only way they have been taught to look at the world.
Related: Dear Lori Lightfoot: You Were a Terrible Mayor, Get Over Yourself
Lori Lightfoot thus represents not only the failure of the Leftist governance, but, along with Maggie Cullerton Hooper, the failure of Leftist analysis as well. The defeat of Lori Lightfoot doesn’t show that Chicago is racist; it shows that there are still some people living there who are tired of dealing with the high crime and squalor that Lightfoot’s policies have brought upon the city. They have been forced by the rapidly deteriorating conditions in the city to risk being called racist and sexist by voting against an incompetent mayor who is a black female.
If American society were remotely sane today, both Lightfoot and Cullerton Hooper would recognize that being held to account for one’s record is not racist, but the opposite of racism, as it assumes that a black woman can and should govern ably and is responsible when she doesn’t. But, of course, that is not how all this works.
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