After decades of one-party rule in cities torn by violent crime, public education crises, chronic homelessness and growing taxpayer despair, Democratic mayors have finally found a friend.
President
In
He's their gift.
You doubt me? Then think back to biology class, where you learned about mutually symbiotic relationships.
The bee and the flower. The Egyptian plover and the crocodile. Algae and spider crabs. Or, if you're particularly fixated on algae, then try algae and fungus.
I'm not assigning the role of fungus to either Democratic mayors or the Republican president. But both sides benefit mutually.
Aiming at suburban and rural white working-class votes in swing states, Trump attacks historically broken big-city Democratic policy with a brazen, mocking vulgarity that outrages the mayors, living as they do within their blue bubble.
The mayors attack him right back, with vigor, playing to their voters by calling him a racist. Terrible insults are traded. It all gets so personal and tribal. And, as any political biologist would tell you, it's all quite predictable.
Trump becomes the orange-haired totem that Democratic mayors shake in rage above their constituents, just as he holds street gangs of illegal immigrants like MS-13 up to his faithful.
For the mayors, it's a no-lose scenario. In attacking Trump, they seek to cement disparate urban constituencies, such as African Americans and Latinos who otherwise compete for jobs and status in cities of limited resources like
Stoking outrage over Trump's rhetoric allows them to try to keep these voters in line, even if such voters are the beneficiaries of historically low unemployment rates, particularly for blacks, in the current economy.
For Democratic politicians, particularly white progressives, there can be no diversity of opinion among black voters. Without
Democratic political professionals understand this clearly and are nervous about presidential candidates
What Trump's anger and pointed insolence gives big-city mayors is this: the gift of time.
Remember Trump, with characteristic vulgarity, denouncing
As
Speaking to a friendly crowd at the
"There is one person who is not here today. We're in
The other chiefs applauded Trump after his takedown of Johnson and
When he arrived in
I personally believe that
But Trump's attack did give Johnson's boss, Mayor
In a tweet she said:
"It's no surprise that (Trump) brought his insulting, ignorant buffoonery to
The next day, with Trump gone off to deal with
The striking
And
An exasperated Lightfoot asked: "Are we really keeping our kids out of class unless I agree to support the CTU's full political agenda wholesale?"
In a word, yes.
When Trump is in a big blue city, media focuses on him rather than on the mayors and the problems that have taken generations of Democratic policy and generations of misery to shape.
Liberal commentators who'd rather not take a risk and weigh in on a Democratic family feud like a teachers strike bravely bash Trump with glee.
The Republican president asks for it. And Democratic mayors give it to him.
It's not the bees and the flowers, exactly. Instead it's all about distraction, emotion and herding votes.
But the feeling is (symbiotically) mutual.
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John Kass is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune who also hosts a radio show on WLS-AM.