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Gotham needs change (Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty)
If the Trumpian message of decay and decline has any resonance, it’s in places like Hunts Point. Emerging from the subway here in the South Bronx, I see a man on a payphone pleading to speak with a psychotherapist. Another stands outside the entrance begging for change. A third is challenging street vendors to a hand-measuring contest: the winner gets a dollar (no one takes him up on the offer).
This is not Trump country — far from it. But despair in Hunts Point, where almost half of residents live below the poverty line, and where drugs and prostitution are rife, is forcing a rethink. One shopper here stops to tell me why Biden lost her vote. “What did he give me?” Rosaria asks. “My groceries now cost a bomb, my gas is up and I’ve never felt less safe here in my life.” Just a few days ago, she tells me, her son’s best friend got “snatched up” — kidnapped — and they still can’t find him. He was last seen buying a drink inside the local bodega, but nobody has heard from him since. Rosaria believes it could be gang-related. “I don’t want my children outside after dark anymore.”
In this year’s election, 27% of Bronx voters plumped for Trump, almost three times more than in 2016. And in Hunts Point, right at the heart of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s 14th district, the Rightward lurch is even starker. In this neighbourhood, Trump increased his share of votes by 50% compared with four years ago — one of the biggest pro-Trump swings in the country. Nor was this trend unique to the Bronx: Queens, Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn are all becoming redder too. Yet as the electoral post-mortems begin, one big question remains: can New York’s conservative resistance grow?
New York City hasn’t had a Republican mayor since Michael Bloomberg (before he switched allegiances) in 2005, and the state hasn’t voted for a GOP president since 1984. But dissatisfaction with the status quo has been rising since 2020 as crime, the migrant crisis and housing all worsen. No wonder, then, that 573,000 New Yorkers abandoned Harris. While she might have won the city comfortably, securing over twice as many votes as Trump, her margin of victory was 16% lower than Joe Biden’s four years earlier.
For the Republicans, the main challenge here is less the Democrats, and more voter apathy. Of Hunts Point’s 11,000 or so residents, only around 2,774 voted (2,039 for Harris, 735 for Trump). This means that if Rosaria is the face of the GOP’s new coalition — urban, working class and Hispanic — then it is people like her who Republicans need to rally to their side. And while she has reservations about the President-elect (the “Mexico is sending rapists” line still rankles), she says she’s more willing to vote Republican than ever.
Other voters in AOC’s district are more bullish about their support for the President-elect. In the heavily Hispanic neighbourhood of North Corona, a corner of Queens where nearly half of residents went for Trump, a group of Latino barbers explained why they voted red. “Our neighbourhood is a wreck,” says one. “No one is trying to fix anything around here.” Another says that in the past two years, four of his close friends have lost their jobs due to rising costs. He wonders if he’ll be next. One pulls out a phone to show me his two young boys wearing the full MAGA uniform: red cap, red t-shirt and camo trousers. They all went to the President-elect’s rally in the South Bronx. “He came out here to speak to us,” he says. “I’ll never forget that.”
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SubscribeThe Republicans really need to get some ground game and proper organisation and candidates in big cities which with a couple of exceptions, have been run into the ground by the Democrats in the recent past and present. It’s capitalising on these opportunities which the GOP struggles with. Furthermore ditching neoliberalism and neocons will surely only serve to boost the party. Finally, adopting some common sense economic programs and boosting small businesses could be crucial for the success of the American economy moving forward. It will be interesting to view from afar how the GOP adapts to the changes in their electoral coalition.
How do you define or understand “Neoliberalism” to be?
The proper and accurate description of neoliberalism is an economic philosophy that entails such policies as privatization, deregulation, austerity, “free” trade, etc. Pretty much every single US president since at least Reagan has been a neoliberal whether Democrat or Republican. The only exception would be DJT. It is decidedly NOT the polar opposite of Neoconservatism which is a foreign policy philosophy. In fact almost ALL Neocons happen to be Neoliberals simultaneously.
How would you identify Trump’s core economic and diplomatic values?
Pretty much every single US president since at least Reagan has been a neoliberal whether Democrat or Republican. The only exception would be DJT.
Dead wrong. Obama, Biden, and Clinton all expanded the regulatory state and mocked austerity. Free trade is the only one where Trump has been out of step with neoliberalism, unfortunately.
Many Republicans who are no longer willing to tolerate malfeasant Democrat governance have just left which makes it difficult for the GOP to get traction in these states and areas.
My SIL and daughter lived in NYC during the DiBlasio reign of terror. They got called “racist” all the time. Although SIL could easily get a job there (and has been offered), they will never go back. They arrived as dem libs, and left as rock-bound conservatives who were Always-Trumpers.
and you could argue that its in the Republicans’ interests to stay out of it and watch New York & San Francisco rot from the inside out so they can point to them as the end game for the Democratly governed Cities?
The D’s have the strategy. The income producing people leave to keep their sanity and assets. The only ones left are beholden to the D’s welfare and healthcare schemes, because they
buy their votesare “for the people”.Governor Newscum’s potential future has been fatally crippled by the mess he helped create.
God I hope not. Cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face just has no place in politics at this scale. Millions of people are suffering and dealing with these issues (crime, homelessness, drug use, etc) and just letting these cities burn would be terrible. Give Democrat voters a chance. I live in socal, and I see more and more Republican support from folks around here than I ever have. They might take a little while to come around, but everyone has their limit to how much crap they can put up with in the name of party loyalty.
The smart ones got smarter.
Excellent comment Mr. Woods. New York City is ripe for a Republican comeback. It can be built on the disaffection of small business owners and entrepreneurs who are being crushed by crime and taxes. It will grow quickly in the hispanic and asian communities. Even black males will accelerate their shift away from the Manhattan and Brooklyn progressives who have given them no economic reason to remain loyal.
In a closed primary system, you can only vote in the party you are registered as. Therefore, the “6 to 1” ratio of Democrats to Republicans in NYC is meaningless. Many of these are registered as such so they can vote in the primary, but vote Republican during the general election.
Also, Mike Bloomberg ran as a Republican in 2001 and 2005; as an Independent in 2009. Just saying ….
I look at NY and I see potholes, creaking infrastructure, public and elected officials who just don’t care, because their electorate will never throw them out of office, whether they work hard or hardly work at all.
I hope that this will change. As Einstein said, “The definition of insanity, is to do the same thing repeatedly and expect a different result …”
Political apathy is also rife in NYC…when DeBlasio first ran, only 22% of voters came out and then when he won he said he did so with a ‘landslide’. It’s pathetic.
Bloomberg was a Republican like Elizabeth Warren was an American Indian, regardless of either’s cheekbones.
I didn’t believe Warren was American Indian until I saw the hatchet job she did on Bloomberg in the 2020 primaries. She scalped him.
The Democrat governing model -at least in cities- is based on dependents, not taxpayers -producers and consumers of government services. That is now an urban majority. Democrats will only lose power if people feel enough pain.
Exactly- the city will have to ‘crash & burn’ before anyone takes notice.
The party’s biggest supporters tend to be the ones most immune to the consequences of its policies. When you’re in a swanky high-rise or a gated community, things like crime, the condition of the subway, and homelessness do not affect you.
Political machines, typically in particular locations, seem un-stoppable – until one day they are stopped by their ‘clients’ becoming fed up with being taken for granted.
You can even argue that this happens nationally too. In the USA there were two crusty old political machines, Republican and Democrat, who (until Trump) relied on the same old supporters.
In the UK the Conservative political machine has faltered, and the future of the Labour political machine is not secure for the same reasons. What have they done for me recently?
Gooder and harder.
And then there are thousands of people like me, a Republican, who’ve left the city because of its woke governance, disorder and filth, never to return. Nothing has stemmed this outflow. Many Republicans have left other blue states which is making it difficult for the GOP to develop the party in these areas. These states are essentially one-party states, a form of ‘soft’ Communism. In CT, where I live now, Republicans have no representative at the federal level.
Exactly. Well-run red states are growing, blue sh-t-holes are shrinking. California is the poster child – population expanded rapidly when it was well run by Republicans, but has spiraled into the mud under Donkeys. Hence California lost 3 representatives and Texas gained.
Cops need to regain the ability to beat the heck out of miscreants.
How well did that work in the late 60s early 70s?
There needs to be a balance between enforcement, liberty, and fair treatment across class and ethnic lines. Not a return to the (on average) more corrupt, less accountable departments that some are tempted to associate with the good ol’ days.
How about a return to enforcing laws? How about not elevating the criminal above the law-abiding citizen? There is a guy on trial in NY right now for having the audacity to come to the aid of subway passengers being hassled by a criminal who also belonged in mental health care. Also, the criminal was alive when responders arrived on the scene. That’s the state of progressive ideas in a nutshell.
I agree with much of that, when it doesn’t become a reactionary excuse that serves contrary-extremist ideas.
The Daniel Penny case may be an over prosecution. But for him to remain free (on bond) while facing trial for taking another man’s life does not sound like the gravest injustice. He will probably serve no time in jail and may even be acquitted.
Jordan Neeley was criminally insane and due for some kind of comeuppance, but taking a life is still taking the law into your own hands. Easy to say from a chair, but a highly trained Marine veteran might have subdued him short of killing him.
Reducing things to a nutshell can lead to nutty responses.
Would you choose an authoritarian police state or an anarchic free-for-all (be honest, ye hard-line libertarians)? How about neither?! I refuse to frame a complex, deeply-rooted issue as a death match between extremes, or to choose a favorite far-wing lunacy.
Many recent. progressive policies have failed in the area or law and order, for sure. That doesn’t mean there was no problem with police departments, or that mass incarceration was going just fine from a moral, economic, or social standpoint. We need to build consensus from the significant common ground that exists among the middle 80-percent of this country who are not hungry for extremism, let alone domestic bloodshed of any kind—left, right, or untethered.
73 percent of my fellow Californians just voted with me to increase penalties for disorder crimes like theft and public drug use. Does that fit in your Left Coast or Blue State nutshells?
Many of us need to cool our anger and stop denouncing or shouting at one another so easily and often. I give myself a passing mark for effort and improvement, but I don’t claim victory, nor exonerate myself in that regard.
Well said. I’m guessing by the downvotes, that most folks here would rather cynically trash talk Democrats than be civil. I voted Trump this time around, but I didn’t get there by listening to people on the other side condescendingly speak to me like I’m a five year old that can’t form my own logical thoughts and opinions. People, even in left leaning states, are still people, and many of them as you said, are coming around. And the best way to get them to see this is to treat them as the intelligent humans they are, even if they don’t see things the same way as you. I feel like the right has been much better at this than the left, but now that Trump won, I feel like too many people are simply punching down, which is sort of a reversal of how things were when Biden was president. All this does is make people dig their heels in even more, rather than maybe find the compromise, which is almost always the best solution for a given issue.
Another problem is that I’m a very imperfect messenger for civility, because I often take the bait on rude provocations—as with Paul Thompson below—and sometimes even start it, though I’ve cut down on that. I tend to be confrontational and contrarian even at my best, mostly with what seem like good intentions to me. I apologize when I feel it’s warranted, but I’d like to offend or throw gas on pointless fires much less often to begin with. Ah well, I still have some loudmouth know-it-all in me, which doesn’t help my sincere efforts at civil, good faith discussion across differences.
I agree that respectful engagement and intellectual charity is more characteristic of the right overall, and that rudeness and demonization are quite typical of progressives, and to a lesser extent actual liberals.
But populist or burn-it-down-to-save-it movements on the right certainly flip the script on that. Even putting aside the “edge lord” and nihilistic clown contingent.
I’m well past pretending that all who disagree with me are some combination of stupid and evil. And I try not to believe everything I think as though it’s some established truth, or right for all people at all times. We’re into a pretty new and volatile era in our politics and social interactions. Many welcome it; many loathe it. We all need to find a way through. With as much benevolence, honesty, and strength as we can manage at the individual and group level. [end rant].
Ah, you are from CA. No wonder you say moronic shit. CA is a model for what not do anywhere anytime.
Of course. Way to label and dismiss 40 million people. Nice for you to have a model that’s simple and convenient enough for you to be able to follow.
Any idiocy that comes from your tribe is just fine though, because you are pretty bubble-bound and tribally all-in. One of the worst frequent commenters here: amplifying disagreements and quite certain of all your swallowed opinions. Take a victory lap.
But I hope you don’t see your own thinking and speech as a model, to the extent it even comes from anything you’ve thought through on your own.
Are you referring to the good ol’ days where only criminals were put in jail and families could take a peaceful walk in the neighborhood? It appears more folks want to return to those days than not. But I guess when the people decide what is best for them electorally, it becomes a threat to Democracy!
No, the “good ol’ days” when blacks, Indians, and poor whites could be rounded up on the flimsiest grounds and put to years of unpaid or barely paid hard labor. The historical record shows that many were railroaded and even framed. The good ol’ days when a cop could kill a suspect with near total impunity, or shoot a nonviolent, fleeing theft suspect in the back without fear of having it captured on body cam or cell phone.
I really don’t think the electorate voted for a police state, at least not intentionally. We already incarcerate more people per 100 and in total numbers than any other country in the world. And that costs and average of more than $40,000 per year for each of our more than 2 million incarcerated people. Guess they’d better break a lot of rocks and stamp a lot of license plates for 20-cents-an-hour.
Do your arms never get tired holding up that “I Am Virtuous” sign? I preferred the smaller “I Am Nicer Than You” sign until it got so weatherbeaten.
Not one of your better cracks dude. I’m pretty self-aware of my own shortcomings and capacity for meanness, and preachiness. To me you seem to have given up not only on showing yourself to be nice, but on even trying to be kind and respectful.
I’m not consistently nice in real life but I do get tired of myself when I’m mean and unfunny at the same time.
How did it work? It actually worked well. Cities were well-run. People could go to downtowns without scum mugging them. There wasn’t crap all over.
What we have today is cities filled with black criminals and black bums who are drug addicts. My daughter took her 2 YO to 3 cities (Philly, Kalamazoo, Boston) recently. In each case, she would go out and get harrassed by black criminals. She didn’t feel comfortable with the baby.
Cities have been taken over by scum. We need to end that, and restore the ability of normal non-scum non-addicts to go to cities and enjoy themselves.
If more black criminals get beaten, that’s fine. The majority of criminals in cities are black today.
No wonder you long for the pre-Civil Rights era. You sound like little more than an old school racist right now.
California is indeed a mess in many major pockets, and mismanaged overall. Where I live—in the land of Tech Bros and Silicon dreams—the public addicts and lunatics are more often white than anything else, next most often Latino, black a distant third. Given your negativity toward blacks as a group, you might like CA better than you expect; the black population is about 6 percent, half the national average. There are also many Republican and redneck pockets you’d probably kinda dig.
But you have a hard time seeing people as individuals, as more complex than their geography or skin color or voting records, don’t you?
You better hope that some cop doesn’t decide that you are the miscreant, Paulie!
Right on to that, Mr. Socialist. I look forward to your moments of substantive contribution, though you rarely step out of troll mode.
You show just about zero appetite for discussion or debate, but there’s some sincerity in you. Cheers.
Cheers? So you are writing from a pub. Explains a lot.
Trump may have added nearly 100,000 votes to his tally from 2020, but over half a million Democrats simply stayed at home.
More likely, many of those half a million never existed in the first place.
You can bet the ones who never existed in the first place have not missed voting at least once per election since the age of Boss Tweed.
New York did not become this way overnight, much like comparable cities in California did not. When one-party rule exists, blaming the other party is a bit much. And the people given voice in this story are taken for granted if not ignored by Dems. Why wouldn’t they be? When people like AOC can count on reelection for as long as she likes, they have no incentive to change.
The qualified Repubs who may exist see the landscape. Any change will be years in the making. Ironically, many of the people who hate Rudi and love the lawfare waged against him were among the beneficiaries when his administration took over a similar mess and cleaned the place up.
There’s a reason why the Dems could run a “glass of water” in AOC’s district and still win. Nothing epitomizes the depravity of deep blue districts like the Bronx, where the $2.3 Billion Yankee Stadium, filled with Wall Street executives and others who can afford hundreds of dollars for a single seat, stands as the ultimate in hypocrisy. Virtually all the well-heeled attendees in luxury boxes get dropped off and picked up again by a limo. While in the luxury suites, which cost thousands per night, they dine on gourmet food and sip lavish concoctions out of chocolate shot glasses, while children in the surrounding neighborhoods get kidnapped and the streets are “out of control”. The elites are fiddling again and the serfs are finally sensing that there is blood in the water for the first time in a long while. We know how this story ends.
I think it’s safe to say the rest of the country believes the Big Apple deserves what it is getting – only it should be gooder and harder. The same goes for the other big city bowel movements that keep returning progressives to office.
You can’t safely speak for the rest of the country at all. You’re more vicious and vengeful than the average person these days. Just like the incoming president.
I consider that good company, loser. *does the Trump YMCA dance sweeping the globe*
I knew you would, fool. All-in jerks like you don’t win in a way that puts them in real good company, or fills the inner void. But you must know that at your age. Because you ain’t dumb, just hollow.
The Aussies have the right slant on things.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28bo4H8IqkY
Rob Reiner checked himself into a mental hospital for treatment of the election blues. If you have the money you might consider doing the same. Spending the day in a pub writing hateful posts is not healthy.
Thanks for your concern, but believe it or not I don’t drink on most days, including yesterday and today. And I don’t have constant or severe election sadness.
I’ll make a point of leaving your posts alone as a rule unless I have something real to add that’s not sneering or hostile. Maybe you can do me the same courtesy? I’d welcome real engagement if you decide to turn over a new leaf in how you respond to things and people you disagree. (Yeah, I got work to do there too).
Anyhow, pace yourself. If only for your own sake.
*I took a glance a your link to a gushing celebration of Trump & company and I’ll try to get back to it when I have time. I do find it interesting, and easy to look at because of the host. Y’all sure credit Trump with a lot and expect something like miracles from him, based on nothing much he’s done before or proven himself up to. We’ll see. Good luck to all of us in these here yoo-nited states. Try to call him out if and when he comes up short, will ya?
My family visited my aunt and uncle in NYC several times in the Sixties and Seventies. I was older in the Seventies, so I better understood what I was seeing—that the city was bankrupt and crime was high. The Bronx has always been been crime ridden, but I certainly understand the anger people feel. Staten Island has always been blood red. It is populated by working (plumbers, electricians) and middle class (cops, firemen, teachers) people. I’m not sure about Queens. Anyway, politicians in urban areas have been saying they will stop crime forever. Trump was going to clean up NYC in 2016. Nothing happened. I do understand that with 200,000 migrants, many of them homeless, in the city is frustrating for residents. I will add that NYC is ranked 11th for violent crimes, behind cities like Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Chicago.
Interesting, thanks for the level headed and non reactionary take. Lots of big cities have serious crime issues, and have for a long time. but we do love to focus on SF and NYC here. Things obviously need to be shaken up, but for some here to act like 50 years ago you could just walk through the Bronx in the middle of the night and not get mugged is insane. Same goes for just about any inner city out there.
50 years ago, anyone who walked in Central Park after 4 PM was taking his life in his hands. So, mayors cracked down on crime. After a while it was safer. Now it is not.
Two weeks ago my wife and I were in NYC, just after the election. On the local news were stories that Roosevelt Avenue (partly in Corona) had a new monica (prostitution avenue). Illegal immigrants were plying the oldest profession there to earn money to pay the gangs that brought them to the US.
Many decades ago, I grew up in Jackson Heights (adjacent to Corona) and crossed Roosevelt Avenue walking to Newtown High School in Elmhurst. Today, much of NYC is over run with crime. Likely it will take time for New Yorkers to decide someone like Giuliani is the way to go. Any Republican candidate has to overcome an 80% Democrat vote from Manhattan to win the Mayor’s race. More likely Republicans can start to win state representative, state senate seats and council races. if they trust you in small things they will trust you in bigger races.