The 2021 fall of Kabul and the 2024 fall of Damascus should give a lesson to the state governments of New York and California. In Afghanistan and Syria privileged elites in the capitals lost touch with the people they were ruling to a point where they could not see the signs of their demise bubbling under the surface.
Much the same could be said for the pampered Democrat princes in Albany and Sacramento. Although Democrats retained control of the levers of government, the loss of reliable voters in places like New York City and San Francisco should deeply concern the poobahs who have assumed loyal support from their urban base.
Democrats have always assumed that retaining the urban mob on the dole would ensure that their overwhelming numbers would keep the unwashed Republican masses in the rural areas and small towns in the majority of counties in their place.
Even as key cities in the interior of Afghanistan quietly came under Taliban control, the Afghan government failed to realize that its strongholds in cities like Herat, Mazar al Sharif, and Kabul itself were crumbling; the elites continued to believe their own press releases. The process was even more precipitous in cities in Syria such as Aleppo, Hams, and even Damascus. That is one of primary reasons why the elites did not realize that government, police, and soldiers in key cities and towns were quietly changing sides and throwing open the gates to the rebels.
After a recent meeting with New York’s Democrat mayor Eric Adams, President-elect Donald Trump called the meeting “good.” Adams may not have opened the city’s gates to Trump, but the meeting did signal that Adams will be taking a new more aggressive law and order stance in the wake of some truly horrific violent crimes lately.
The November elections saw right of center Democrat candidates make gains and right-leaning ballot initiatives pass in San Francisco. This has caused some left coast politicians to call the winners DINOs (democrats in name only). Like the leaders in Hams and and Aleppo in Syria, these newly right-leaning people may be looking to placate the — until recently — compliant urban masses. Survival is a great motivator in politics, and changing sides politicly is an art not just practiced in the Middle and Southwest of Asia .
If Republicans can gain control of one or both houses of the legislatures of New York and/or California in the next election, it will represent a sea change in those states as profound as the rebel victory in Syria and the Taliban triumph in Afghanistan. All this will depend on how well Donald Trump fulfills his campaign promises. If he manages to drain criminal illegal aliens from “sanctuary cities” and immigrant-related crime goes down, he may well be rewarded with seeing more conservative candidates in control of cities like Rochester, New York and Santa Monica, California. The expected “Red Wave” of 2022 did not materialize; but, if Trump brings home the bacon, it could occur in 2026.
Rochester is a good example. In 2017, it declared itself a sanctuary city. Since then, it has suffered a crime wave of murders by illegal aliens including the barbaric slaughter of an entire family in a drug related murder by an illegal from the Dominican Republic. Other criminals, including indigent illegals, have committed multiple crimes under New York’s “progressive” bail laws.
Tip O’Neil’s observation that “all politics is Local” may well come home to roost to the the dismay of Democrats who assumed that they had the local votes in urban areas locked up for the duration of this century.
READ MORE from Gary Anderson:
Generals Should Win Wars Before Declaring Victory
The Dark Side of Women in Combat
Gary Anderson lectures on Alternative Analysis at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs.
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