The Chicago election and why Biden shouldn't run.
Chicago gave voters a clear choice.
It wasn’t an official announcement, but Joe Biden told NBC news this morning that he was running in 2024.
I suppose that means that he could change his mind.
He should change his mind.
I am writing this a week after the election for mayor of Chicago in which young, Black, left of center Brandon Johnson won by a margin of at least 4% of the vote against a nearly 70 year old, white, self-described centrist Democrat, Paul Vallas.
I know.
The election of a Chicago mayor isn’t the same as a national election.
Chicago is a deep blue, multi-racial, union town. An open Republican has no chance.
On this week’s podcast of Hitting Left my brother Mike Klonsky, Mario Smith, Rudy Lozano Jr and I discussed some of the reasons for why Johnson won and Vallas lost.
Like all elections, the reasons one candidate comes out on top and another loses are many and complex.
Most analysts of the Chicago results point to the Black vote, the youth vote and the GOTV ground game that Johnson’s team put together and that the Vallas campaign lacked.
Even though Vallas was able to double the war chest of Johnson, I have always believed that there is point of diminishing returns when it comes to money. How many pieces of mail and how many TV ads can overcome not having a strong street operation?
Brandon won because he energized his base with a strong GOTV operation particularly on the west and south sides.
Vallas had nothing.
Of course, there were other factors too.
But once the nine candidate field was reduced to just two candidates, voters in Chicago had a real choice.
Yes. Both Vallas and Johnson tried to put some distance between themselves and their former positions. Vallas ran from his anti-abortion statements. He claimed to be a life-long Democrat even though there was video tape of him declaring himself a Republican.
His put more cops on the street, law and order appeals failed to take hold though.
Johnson stepped away from his defund the police position that he held earlier.
Still Johnson’s appeals to equity and equality resonated with Black, Brown, white progressives and young voters.
The voters of Chicago were offered a real choice to make and we clearly chose the progressive and rejected the center-right alternative.
If Biden decides to formally run again, it won’t be like 2020 when the primaries offered a debate between Bernie Sanders on the Left and Biden on the right of the Democratic Party.
It is simply unlikely that anyone within the Democratic Party would challenge a sitting president or would be successful if they did.
To win against Trump or DeSantis or whoever the Republicans put up we need an energized electorate and a real, substantive debate leading up to a choice of a candidate.
Biden isn’t the one to do that.
In Chicago we had a real debate over policy and politics.
We needed that more than ever.
This morning Biden left the door open that he still may not run again.
He shouldn’t run again.
If the parents do not have the deciding voice in the instruction their children will receive, then they have nothing.
You want the locus of control out of the hands of the parents. This is an injustice, a violation of a fundamental human right.
In regard to standardized testing, well designed and validated tests do what what they are designed to do. They assess educational progress, and provide assurance that students will be ready for post secondary education.
In my work, we also used testing to help our clients make choices about careers and training. The tests were well validated and so we could rely on them. We had to spend a great deal of time remediating the failures of public education. Testing could show us who needed help, and in what they were deficient.
The theory behind this was supposed to be part of any education degree. I had it. I thought everyone did.
What choices? We don't seem to have any voice in what is to be taught.