Top Five Reasons the Democrat Convention Belongs in Chicago

Dems ruined a once-great city. You’ve been warned…

I was born in Chicago Heights and raised a family in the city of Chicago for 25 years. I bleed the blue and orange of the Bears. So, I take no pleasure in detailing the miserable failures of the Windy City.

But…it’s necessary.

Why?

Because Chicago is the reality that the Democrats want for the rest of America. In that regard, it is fitting and proper that they host their convention there. Here are the five most important failures of Chicago that bear relevance for all Americans:

1. Crime -- Chicago is arguably the most dangerous city in the developed world. For example, Chicago leads America in carjackings. That particularly terrifying form of theft has tripled in the last decade in Chicago. Chicago has suffered the most murders in America for a stunning 12 straight years, even though New York is over three times larger in population. Regarding overall thefts, Chicago takes a bronze medal with the third worst rate in America, just behind Baltimore of “The Wire” fame and Minneapolis, run by vice presidential nominee Tim Walz.

2. Population Loss – JB Pritzker’s Illinois is the third worst state in America for population loss, as masses of former residents (like me) flee the high taxes, stifling regulations, and crime created by near total Democratic rule. Chicago itself is down to only 2.66 million people, fewer residents than over a century ago in 1920!

3. Quality of Life – perhaps the most appalling and depressing statistic of all pertaining to Chicago involves longevity. Obviously, longevity is a general “catch-all” statistic that encapsulates all kinds of important inputs, such as the availability of medical care, healthy food, education and, of course, street safety. Well, Chicago has the worst gap in life expectancy of any city in America.

According to the NYU School of Medicine, in the tony high-rise Chicago neighborhood of Streeterville, filled with professional, credentialed white Chicagoans, residents live to the ripe old age of 90. But just 9 miles south of there, in Englewood, Chicagoans can only expect to live to 60. That kind of massive chasm quantifies the reality of what the Democrats create: a system that works for the ruling class, and punishes everyone else.

4.  Economic Privation – Chicago has the highest jobless rate in America, with over 100,000 workers in the metro area unemployed. Even as the labor market thrived in the recovery from the Covid panic from 2020, Chicago lags badly and posts a depressing 6.2% jobless rate.

In addition, Chicago’s public debt has soared from an already troubling $20 billion a decade ago to over $34 billion today. But the problem is actually far worse than just current profligacy. Looking forward, the city has only funded 25% of its total, insanely-generous pension obligations. Combine that insolvency with a declining population, and you have the recipe for economic ruin. In this regard, Chicago is merely further down the debt Armageddon trajectory created for the whole country by Kamala Harris and Joe Biden.

5. Jussie Smollett! – One of the most ludicrous race crime hoaxes  in modern America unfolded in the Second City in January of 2019, just as a dreaded “polar vortex” descended on the city. Gay black actor Jussie Smollett pretended to be accosted by noose and bleach-carrying America First thugs who assaulted him and declared that Chicago is “MAGA country.” For starters, the night of this supposed assault was so utterly frigid, even by Chicago standards, that NO ONE was outside unless absolutely necessary. Moreover, the idea that random MAGA toughs roam deeply-blue Chicago, looking for gay black guys to attack? Absurd.

No reasonable person believed this inanity. But Democrat nominee Kamala Harris did!

She tweeted out best wishes to the mentally ill actor -- and called the staged attack “an attempted modern day lynching.”  Even though Smollett has been convicted of faking the crime, Harris has never retracted her twitter post, nor her other strenuous defenses of Smollett.

The great writer Saul Bellow famously wrote “I am an American, Chicago born.” Through his writings he described and celebrated both the triumphs and tragedies of the city he so loved. Historically, Chicago has indeed been the geographic and metaphorical heart of America. But the “heart” is badly diseased right now, and the corruption and radicalism of the Democratic Party are to blame.

Steve Cortes is former senior advisor to President Donald Trump, former commentator for Fox News and CNN, and president of the League of American Workers, a populist right pro-laborer advocacy group.