BLUE MODEL MELTDOWN: “Reform for Relief” Coming to Blue Cities.

Chicago is broken — and Democratic ideas can’t fix it, at least at the local level. That’s one takeaway from John Judis’ recent article in the National Journal. Judis, one of America’s most thoughtful leftists, looks at the city’s mayoral runoff between Rahm Emmanuel and Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, and finds both candidates lacking in solutions for city’s gargantuan problems. Those problems include deeply underfunded pensions, a decline in low-skilled jobs, and a dramatic gap in wealth, employment, and educational attainment between poorer (and often African American) residents and wealthier residents.

In facing these challenges, Emmanuel may be a better manager, but his policies marginalize the city’s poor and seem incapable of reversing the city’s fiscal slide. For example, on jobs and the economy, Garcia has argued that Emmanuel has favored development in the wealthy downtown area instead of poorer ones. But Garcia himself is short on alternatives. . . .

Add all this up, and it’s likely that a European theme is going to be sounding in American politics in the future: reform for relief. That is, many Democratic, deep blue cities will be approaching state and federal treasuries with cap in hand for some time to come. First, because they don’t have the money to pay their bills, these cities will need help with exploding pension liabilities (and their pension problems are only going to become more urgent). Second, because their system has become unsustainable, they are likely to face gridlock at home. Black and Hispanic voters may be pulled apart rather than pulled together. Hispanics look like more of a conventional immigrant group wanting help from government aimed at promoting upward mobility, while the problems facing black Chicago may be more intractable. Competition over power and resources between these groups could be an important factor in the future of urban politics.

Republicans could exploit this, if they were smart.