When are you all going to understand, your side has controlled these cites for decades, and your side is responsible for the very problems you seem so concerned about. Democrats controlled cities have incarcerated more blacks than conservatives, by very wide margin, and you've nominated Biden, one of the biggest contributors to "tough on crime" laws.

The incessant need to attribute false motives to people seems more like projection to me, given the history of the DNC and their decades long destructive romp in the inner city.

On a per capita basis? You got some stats to back that up?

And that's even putting aside the obvious issue with your claim that mayors have most of the control about how many Black people get locked up. Mayors don't enact drug laws.

Furthermore, the liberals here are more than willing to acknowledge the shortcomings of the Democratic Party. I don't think there's a single person here fistpumping about Biden winning the nomination.

Someone who doesn't know what "DNC" stands for trying to act like they understand complicated political issues is always good for a laugh

You'll get no real arguments out of me that we've(our country) locked up way too many people--but the idea that what happens in cities is solely the result of D pols is misguided thinking imo. Go start some threads in some of the heavily rightwing parts of the internet saying you'd like to start a conservative movement to lock up less black people The vast majority of conservatives I know think we should be locking up more people/handing out longer sentences--and that's just reality. Alternative viewpoints out in the wild are pretty few and far between ime. Any changes have been both pretty small in scope and pretty recent as far as changes in views go. Cannabis arrests for example have been bumping upwards the last few years ffs--a step in the wrong direction but definitely on-brand for the cops with a big supporter in the WH.

It absolutely is. They run the PD's the school districts, budgets, etc etc. Whatever they point to as the issue, they are responsible for those issues in these cities.




Half the Republican Party believes drugs laws should be less strict, even more independents who lean conservative think drug laws should be less strict.

What you are talking about is people who commit violent crime, and those who repeatedly commit crime.

When Democrats stop being slaves to public sector unions, I'll take them more serious.

Cities don't exist in vacuums--and PDs have traditionally been heavily conservative, local business interests other interests religious etc. There are also still state/federal laws and politicians driving issues/how things get done. It's just not that simple.

I hear ya and agree that there are conservatives that say/believe that--but then why are the red states lagging so far behind on balance on legalizing even Cannabis? We're ready to keep moving on psychedelics etc let's go.

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson says pardon likely if St. Louis couple charged

Huh, weird, I swore Dems were responsible for everything that happens in "their" cities. It's almost like there's huge institutions working to preserve white supremacy beyond the control of city mayors, and every now and then one of the actors in those systems says the quiet part out loud to make it really clear.

Of course it's glib to say that, but the point is that it's really a vacuous and pointless exercise to talk about complicated political problems with people whose answer to everything is literally to point at the nearest official with a D next to their name. The anti-lockdown protests were a perfect example of this: at a time when most/all states in the country were under some degree of lockdown, protests were exclusively aimed at the nearest Democratic official people could find. When Trump tweeted "LIBERATE <STATE WITH DEMOCRATIC GOVERNOR>" it was Gretchen Whitmer. In states where that didn't work, like Mike DeWine (R-OH)'s, they targeted the ****ing state health director.

It's just like the Tea Party protests early in Obama's term - ostensibly they're against "spending", but 10 years later now that we've seen that ideology come to full fruition (spoiler: it's Donald Trump), it's plainly obvious they didn't give two shits about spending and were just really mad at having a black president.

Back to the subject of this thread - there's definitely complicated political problems here in which anyone on the left can tell you Dems have their hands dirty (get Victor in this thread, he'll gladly tell you). But you're never, ever going to have an honest conversation about those problems with the people like IHIV or Kelhus who are the spirit animals of those chanting angrily outside Amy Acton's home.

You can pass off some of the blame, but the reality is...the D's suck at running cities. Once again, they are married to the public service unions. I think Democrats are the blame for the terrible primary education problem we have, mostly becasue they favor teacher unions over education. You can't blame federal law on policing, not when you have sanctuary cities that ignore federal law. I just don't get why anyone would want to defend or be an apologist for the left's record when it comes to running the inner city.

It's not even a right versus left issue, either. The right has no power in these cities, and won't ever have power. When if the left going to start holding their leaders accountable? Never, they just keep feeding the masses a invisible boogeyman, and will just go harder and harder on that narrative. Las Vegas is the perfect example of bullshit city management. You have massive cash inflow from tourist, but our education system is ****.

The R Gov here ended a ~3B development(transportation/train) project in the city after the riots several years ago(that did like ~15mil in damage iirc). How is that not an(and just 1 in a huge sea) example of the kind of power that can affect the city/put a spin on things from outside the control of the city pols?

Look man I agree it shouldn't be a left/right issue but to say the problems in our cities are solely the responsibility of 1 party(and it's not like I'm claiming there's no blame for the Ds there's plenty) or that the opposite party has no sway(not to mention all the non-politician interests) is just kinda out of touch with how things work and how interconnected the local/state/fed govts are. Things have become so politicized these days that it just dominates everything--you can't take a step w/o the other side using every tool available to stifle it.

Another easy example is the Biden crime bill narrative--to say he's solely responsible for it is just kinda silly--you couldn't take a step in any direction back then w/o an R politician screeching about inner city crime/time to get tough/he must be one of those Soft on crime do-gooders etc. That kinda stuff drives issues and what/how things get done. Even verbalizing an opinion like hey maybe we ought to consider legalizing/ending the drug war was a literal death sentence to careers(e.g. Elders) well into the late 90s. Sitting here on the other side of a couple decades and saying great job a-hole is comical for the Rs(again the Ds deserve plenty of blame as well) because if they had their way entirely back then the laws would've been even tougher.

Hahahahahahaha

But yeah this explains why conservative areas of the country are known for stellar public education, itscryinginvegas totally nailing some objective nonpartisan analysis as usual lolol

I'm not sure why you keep going to the "solely responsible" bit....

Re: Disparate Outcomes

Which conservative cities are the shining cities on the hill? Which feature better outcomes for Black people? And what policies are responsible for that, shall we say, disparate outcome?

Because the talking point/narrative, which it very much is, that D politicians created all the problems(and the various other permutations of it incarceration/violence) in cities works as a talking point--it's just not really tied to reality.

There's also the built in(Rs being 'completely blocked' from having any say) idea that maybe it's time to give the cities to the Rs so they can show us all how it's done. And then we hear the next volley about the evils of cancel culture lol. If the cities are all red and everywhere else is red--that sounds kinda cancelly to me I don't know.

And all the R talking heads sure don't seem to mind the big blue bubbles Not like many actually live out in real red land.

It does not matter. This is not a "my team is better than your team " argument. This goes to wetwork as well.

The 'cons don't matter. By and large the left controls the major labor, education, media, and political markets, and have so for decades. This is not about conservatives, as much as you all want to make it about that. Far as I'm concerned any sort of deflection of responsibility for the failings of the Democrats is just more of the same. Sure the state and federal have some culpability, but, once again, that's just deflection. The lion's share belongs to the D's.

I mean we have a center right party and a rightwing party. That's just kinda reality. There is no real left. Most 'progressive' movement has been wrt social issues--any real efforts at actual left economic ideas get chopped down quick. Our tacking rightwards in the wake of the new deal era could partly be put off to the 'left' not fighting hard enough as the story goes. But no matter how you slice it--the capital class(and their natural allies on the right) have played a huge role in the whole thing. If the cons don't matter--the results these last 40-50yrs would seem to suggest otherwise.

Sorry, but the left has the unions. That's their constituents. That's who really keeps them in power. You keep doing the same thing, deflecting responsibility. The D's been blaming everyone and everything for decades. The idea they need to be more "progressive", "socialist" or leftist" is "absurd. They need to be pragmatic.

Yes, it matters. We live in a two party system, and if one party is better than the other, then even if imperfect, it's a preferable choice, while we continue to work to drag them further left.



lol, no they don't.

OK, if your argument is truly making no value judgment about left vs. right, then you might as well just conclude, as we have done, that the Democratic party is not far enough left. Welcome to the team, comrade.

Oh ya, the Police unions are practically a bunch of commie hippies And you'd have to be blind to not have noticed the rightward shift in recent decades of the blue collar rank and file etc.

I wonder if their personal experiences had any influence on their worldview.

Well, we can nail down the origins of when the shift started pretty precisely I guess you could broadly toss what led to it under experience.

Even Megan McArdle, one of the most detestable conservative libertarians on the internet, gets things that 2+2 conservatives do not

Kinda wondering who held her at gunpoint and made her write a column that didn't suck for the first time ever

Disparate outcomes by race, particularly negatives ones, are attributed to "systemic racism", nothing else. She even cited a "resume study" as evidence, never mind only about 30% of all black people are affected in that particular study (and I'm being extremely charitable, it's likely way less), and could be even less than that, given the new insight we have about the efficacy of such studies.

That's the extent of the argument the author made. Critical race theory in a nutshell.

What do you have in mind by pragmatic? Legalize drugs? Bury everyone under the prisons? Or something else? Biden's apparently a non-starter since he's going to put all the black people in jail so I guess it must be something else?

What's that braintrust running all the Southern States been up to?