“POLITICS IS DOWNSTREAM FROM CULTURE,” Andrew Breitbart liked to say. But sometimes it isn’t, as when a political worldview has a distinct impact on the pop culture a city gets to enjoy: Sports: the latest victim of DC’s crimewave. The departure of the city’s pro basketball and hockey teams to Alexandria was so avoidable.

[DC Mayor Muriel] Bowser has done a U-turn in recent months after multiple botched reform efforts that were killed by Congress and even opposed by fellow Democrats, but even her “drug-free zone” proposals are receiving pushback from progressives on the council. And those policy changes won’t solve the disastrous state of DC policing, which has seen a net loss of 500 officers since 2020. In the past, the city offered nearly thirty officers to Capital One Arena during events to keep order — now, they only offer three.

The underlying problems driving this crime wave are obvious. Unemployment, which is particularly high among black residents, is a major problem. But so is chronic absenteeism in DC schools, which has never returned to pre-pandemic levels: it’s 43 percent for students in general, and 60 percent among high-schoolers.

It turns out that offering free tracking devices for when you’re carjacked isn’t enough to satisfy the demands of workers, citizens and visitors who want to be safe when having dinner a stone’s throw from the White House and Capitol Hill — or if they want to spend the high prices necessary to go out to a game at night with their family in the increasingly unsafe Chinatown area.

There are fundamental problems that the city faces beyond crime as it relates to the arena, which was built in the mid-1990s. The trend in the NBA in recent years has been that owners want to own not just an arena, but the surrounding area as well — the retail, restaurants, hotel and residences in an area that will offer far more income than games alone.

In his remarks at the announcement ceremony, the owner spoke of the positioning of the Alexandria site, located between Ronald Reagan Airport and right by a new Metro site, as “romantic,” with the appeal of starting on “seventy acres, and the ability to start with a clean slate.” No amount of money the city could offer could compete with that.

Meanwhile on the opposite coast, there’s another leftist-monopoly city with crime rates its local government isn’t willing to face: San Francisco Giants Lost Out on Shohei Ohtani in Part Due to Rampant Crime, Homelessness.

San Francisco’s struggles with rising crime, rampant drug use, and sprawling homeless camps have kept tourists away and led to businesses and residents fleeing the city.

Now, the downtown disorder is being blamed for deterring a big name from relocating to the Golden Gate City: Major League Baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani.

Ohtani, a rare two-way talent who is both an elite hitter and pitcher, made news over the weekend when he announced he was signing with the Los Angeles Dodgers. He signed a record-breaking ten-year, $700 million contract with the team this week.

But news reports have indicated that the San Francisco Giants — the Dodgers’ biggest rival — were also all-in on trying to land Ohtani, and, in fact, offered him the exact same deal.

In an interview with the Athletic on Tuesday, one-time Giants All-Star catcher Buster Posey, who is now a member of the team’s executive board, suggested that San Francisco’s struggles with downtown degradation and lawlessness have played a role in preventing star players, including Ohtani, from signing with the team.

Posey said that Giants leaders tried to sell Ohtani on being part of the team’s storied history, and what joining the Giants could mean for the city. “I just feel that him coming to the Giants could have been transformative, obviously for the baseball team but it also would’ve given the city a boost that we’ve all been looking for,” Posey said.

While Ohtani never personally expressed concerns about the state of the city, there were some reservations in his camp, according to the Athletic. The Bay Area, according to the outlets, is perceived by many as damaged goods.

Former Power Line contributor Paul Mirengoff adds: Decline has consequences.

Some of the commentary about the move seems to assume that D.C. — the nation’s capital, after all — is entitled to host sports teams, or at least an NBA team given the city’s great affinity for basketball. Think again.

The basketball and hockey teams spent two decades in Maryland before moving to D.C. The football team has played its games in Maryland for more than 25 years. The entire D.C. area was without baseball for 35 long years.

Like every other jurisdiction in America, Washington, D.C. must compete to attract and retain businesses and taxpayers. Sure, D.C. has an enormous permanent industry — the federal government — but that’s not enough. Moreover, D.C. must even compete to keep some federal agencies from heading to the suburbs.

Every year is an audition. Washington, D.C., like so many other jurisdictions run by left-liberals (including neighboring Maryland), is failing its auditions. It is declining rapidly. And, as we can see from what’s almost certain to happen in Chinatown, the consequence of that decline will be more decline.

Both cities could tackle crime if they wanted to. But DC’s last Republican leader left office in 1961, and San Francisco’s last Republican mayor left in early 1964. As NRO’s Jay Nordlinger wrote in 2010 when Detroit was making headlines and photo spreads thanks to its Hiroshima-like bombed out landscape, “If people are voting a certain way — maybe it’s because they want to. Maybe they know full well what they’re doing. Sometimes you have to take no — such as ‘no to Republicanism’ — for an answer,” no matter what ancillary losses such decisions bring to those cities.