DAVID MARCUS: Democrat mayors fighting Trump's deportations are playing with electoral fire
For the better part of the last eight years, being a Democrat mayor in a bright blue city has been a pretty easy job. As long as they beat their chests and swore to oppose MAGA, it didn’t matter how bad things were getting, these leaders of the left would be dutifully reinstalled.
But there are real signs that this might all be changing, and opposition to President-elect Donald Trump’s ambitious deportation policies by liberal mayors in so-called sanctuary cities could be the latest game-changer.
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One does not expect San Francisco to be the place where a national shift to the right in American cities begins, and yet, as soon-to-be former mayor and progressive darling London Breed will tell you, that’s exactly what just happened.
It also occurred in Oakland, where lefty Mayor Sheng Thao was shown the door by voters fed up by the same crime that ravages the city across the bay.
Now, in Denver, Mayor Mike Johnston has promised that he is willing to go to jail to defy what he calls Trump’s "immoral" and "un-American" deportation plans, and even predicted that America would face a "Tiananmen Square" moment, with citizens on the street defying military tanks!
Or something.
Yet, just days later Johnson would walk back at least part of his absurd anti Trump ramblings, saying, "I probably wouldn't have used that image. That's the image I hope we can avoid."
Hope we can avoid? Let’s be completely clear, in no way, shape, or form are the American people going to foment an uprising to stop the Trump administration from deporting violent illegal immigrants. It's an insane notion.
Donald Trump won the election and improved his numbers in various deep blue cities precisely because he promised to deport violent criminals such as the monster who murdered Laken Riley and the members of the Venezuelan Tren De Aragua gang.
In April of last year, it was reported that Denver, a city of 710,000 souls, had taken in an astounding 40,000 migrants, and spent a staggering $60 million dollars to accommodate them.
In nearby Aurora, illegal immigrant gangs have taken over entire apartment buildings, terrifying residents, and straining law enforcement.
In one of the election’s more stunning moments, ABC News’ Martha Radditz told then Vice Presidential nominee JD Vance, that it was only a "handful of apartment complexes," to which the Vance famously quipped:
"Martha, do you hear yourself? Only a ‘handful’ of apartment complexes were taken over by Venezuelan gangs, and Donald Trump is the problem, and not Kamala Harris’ open border?"
Ouch.
As absurd as it obviously is, this seems to be the exact same position currently held by Mayor Mike of the Mile High City.
What mayors Breed and Thao learned from their losses this year is that there is a tipping point, even in the most reliably blue cities, there is a moment at which crumbling quality of life has electoral consequences.
Back in August in San Francisco I spoke with Joseph, who runs a salon, and said he and his husband are taxed at 50 percent and also regaled me with tales of the violent crimes he has personally witnessed.
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I don’t know if Joseph voted against Breed, but it sure as hell wouldn’t surprise me.
Democratic mayors like Denver's Johnston need to wake up to the fact that the border crisis is just as destructive to quality of life as the pro-crime policies Breed and Thao were punished for, because the open border literally is a pro-crime policy.
Citizens of Denver, and so many American cities see the tent-laden Bidenvilles set up for migrants, they see the roving bands of unemployed young men, they know people in Aurora scared of the gangs, and they know that American homeless people, including veterans, aren’t being lavished with the benefits migrants are.
If Johnston and Democratic mayors like him wish to avoid the ignominious fate of London Breed and Thao, then they should open their eyes and realize that helping Donald Trump make their cities safer is actually what voters want them to do.
The American people, even in our most liberal cities, do not want four years of bloody resistance to Trump. They already had that. They want a border that is secure and an immigration policy that works.
Any Democratic mayor who does not understand this fundamental dynamic is risking a very long walk down a very short political plank that is coming sooner rather than later.