The Democratic primary for the Philadelphia mayoral nomination is over, the ‘progressive’ — a term William Teach defines as ‘nice fascist’ — candidate lost, coming in third, and the #woke^[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading left are trying to spin it.

The Real Lesson for Progressives in Our Philadelphia Mayoral Defeat

by Nathan J Robinson | Wednesday, May 17, 2023

In Philadelphia’s Democratic mayoral primary, Cherelle Parker has decisively defeated her opponents. Those included progressive Helen Gym, who had the backing of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The triumph of Parker, a moderate, raises the usual question about whether today’s voters are more inclined toward centrism or progressivism and why; Politico, for example, called the primary nothing less than the “next battle for the soul of the Democratic Party,” serving as “a test of the strength of the national progressive movement.”

It’s easy to portray Parker’s victory as a message sent by voters in favor of “tough on crime” policies. During her campaign, Parker had promised to put more police officers on the streets and condemned the “lawlessness” of the city. The working class Black neighborhoods that have been hardest hit by gun violence tended to support Parker.

Mr Robinson, the Editor-in-Chief of Current Affairs magazine, a very much leftist publication, seems shocked, shocked!, to find out that the victims of crime want to be protected from crime.

But city politics are always complicated, and we should be careful about stories that emphasize a single issue.

Indeed, Parker isn’t quite the equivalent of a “tough on crime” Republican, and while she’s controversially advocated “stop-and-frisk” practices, she’s also spoken of the need for “restorative justice” and endorsed reformist District Attorney Larry Krasner when he first ran for his position in 2017. Tellingly, both the local Fraternal Order of Police and the National Black Police Association endorsed one of Parker’s opponents.

Parker is also a highly experienced politician with the backing of major local power players. She received major endorsements from local labor unions. If progressives are looking for a clear takeaway from this race, “progressive candidates can’t win if major local unions aren’t supporting the progressive candidate” is just as important as anything about the politics of crime and policing. After all, Chicago’s Brandon Johnson recently won the city’s mayoral election while openly rejecting “tough on crime” politics in a city plagued by gun violence. But Johnson was a union organizer with the powerful Chicago Teachers Union (CTU). In cities where organized labor is still strong, the key lesson here might be that a progressive candidate who wants to win cannot afford to have major unions endorsing their opponent.

Uhhh, how did Mr Robinson miss that Helen Gym Flaherty had the strong endorsement of the teachers’ union in Philadelphia?

There are still some important takeaways about crime and policing. First, clearly at least some voters who are alarmed by the city’s ongoing violence found reassurance in Parker’s promises to keep people safe. Parker offered a clear and detailed public safety plan. Those progressives who don’t think “more police” is the answer to gun violence (and I count myself among them) can’t afford to let pro-police candidates be the only ones with clear policies. The slogan “Defund the Police” was ill-conceived, not because reallocating police funding is a bad idea, but because it emphasized what the progressive movement was against (harsh policing) rather than emphasizing what it was for (good schools, good jobs, good housing, healthy communities).

Oh, so Mr Robinson does support defunding the police, but simply recognizes that the slogan was “ill-conceived.” He likes the idea, but doesn’t want to be too explicit in telling the truth about it.

Progressives who want to win in areas suffering from widespread violence need a strong pro-safety message, with an emphasis that more incarceration and more safety are not synonymous.

Here’s where Mr Robinson clearly gets lost in the weeds: like Mrs Flaherty — though she carefully avoided saying it in this campaign — he supports “reallocating police funding, and he is supporting the very things Mrs Flaherty claimed to be, but the candidate was very light on the details about how she was going to pay for all of her promises.

And, quite frankly, more incarceration and more safety are synonymous: the criminal who has already been locked up for past crimes isn’t out on the streets committing more, and District Attorney Let ’em Loose Larry Krasner’s decarceration ideas, very much supported by Mrs Flaherty, left criminals out on the streets to kill other people .  .  . and Philadelphians knew that.

That Ameen Hurst, accused of murdering four people in different rampages, had escaped from jail and was on the loose on election day probably didn’t help ‘progressives.’

The Philadelphia Inquirer tried to analyze Mrs Flaherty’s defeat as well, and actually got a lot of things right:

Progressive mayors have won elections in Boston, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Here’s why Philadelphia’s race was different.

Although Helen Gym ran to help working people, her biggest appeal was to wealthier voters in Philadelphia.

by Julia Terruso and Anna Orso | Thursday, May 18, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

National progressives were looking for another big win in Philadelphia this week, but Cherelle Parker, a moderate Democrat born and raised in the city’s Northwest section, won the historic nomination.

Progressive political celebs had lined up behind Helen Gym, hoping she might continue a wave of mayoral victories in Boston, Los Angeles, and Chicago.

“We’re taking this movement from the West Coast to the East Coast!” U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told an amped-up Gym crowd at a rally on Sunday.

Ultimately, with 94% of votes counted, Gym came in third place in the Democratic mayoral primary, trailing Parker and former Controller Rebecca Rhynhart and frustrating progressives who hoped to propel gains in recent years into the city’s biggest office.

Further down:

While Gym ran to help working people — she often said she was running to change the way people live — her biggest appeal wound up being with wealthier voters in the city.

Gym won 29% of the vote in precincts where people made an average of $100,000 and more and just 11% in precincts where the average income was less than $50,000 a year, an Inquirer analysis shows.

In wealthier districts, like Center City and affluent parts of the Northwest, Gym almost certainly split votes with Rhynhart, who ran an effective campaign as a budget wonk and problem solver.

Mr Robinson had noted that Cherelle Parker Mullins won the nomination with about a third of the total vote, because the city allows a plurality to win, without a runoff election between the two top vote getters to achieve a majority. Yet he somehow failed to mention that, if Philly did have a runoff system, Mrs Flaherty, who finished third, wouldn’t be in it! Brandon Johnson, the newly elected mayor of Chicago, won the runoff election, but finished second in the initial ballot; if Chicago allowed plurality winners to win, he wouldn’t be mayor.

But the bigger part — other than the fact that Mrs Mullins is black and Mrs Flaherty is of Korean descent, in a city that voted along racial lines — is that Mrs Flaherty’s ‘progressive’ campaign claimed to be for “working people,” but much of her support came from wealthier ones. Mr Robinson, himself a millionaire, like so many other white liberals with money, just don’t seem to realize that the things they advocate don’t actually make much sense to poorer and working class people. Mrs Flaherty’s strong support of policies to attack global warming climate change can only mean greater costs for the hundreds of thousands of Philadelphia row homes which use natural gas for heating in the city’s cold and snowy winters. Advocating policies to reduce warming eighty years from now is a program for those who don’t have to worry about money, not for those who are concerned with putting food on the table tonight, or being able to pay their rent or mortgage next month.

‘Progressive’ politics are for the wealthy, for the people who just don’t have to worry about money, for people whose lives are already mostly safe and secure . . . and Philadelphia is the poorest of our nation’s ten largest cities. While all of the Democratic candidates were on the liberal side, Mrs Flaherty, herself wealthy due to her husband, was the only true ‘progressive’ in the race, and two of the Democratic candidates finished ahead of her.