If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always got
As the nation experiences the excitement of a new presidential administration, we here in Chicago are confronted daily with yet another failure of our moronic local government. Just like the liberals — nationally — who wring their hands over the flurry of Trump’s executive orders, right-thinking Chicagoans have every reason to be apoplectic over Brandon Johnson’s style of government whereby we tax the productive, give to the unproductive, free the criminal, and enslave every business and individual with never-ending and overly burdensome taxes and regulations.
Perhaps it’s time to acknowledge that whatever we have been doing in the past has failed. The traditional notion that victory can be achieved by collecting 40 more votes in some precinct in Garfield Park, and 60 more votes in Edgewater or the South Loop is not going to work. It’s time to realize that right-thinking Chicagoans need to do something different if we want to reclaim our fair city. Drastically different.
Put policy before politicians
For starters, we need to start putting policy before politicians. Politicians are people; and people are human; and humans are flawed. Therefore politicians — by their very nature — are flawed. Policy, however, strives to meet an ideal, a concept. It has a logical path from its inception to its conclusion. Further, its success or failure can be easily measured by its outcome.
Besides, if you’re really interested in results, the politician doesn’t matter. Seriously. Think about it. If you could have a government where people were taxed fairly, funds were spent wisely, and where necessary services were performed efficiently, would you really care about the name of the politician who was running things? Of course not. You wouldn’t care if your leader was black or white, yellow, red, or purple. In fact, you probably wouldn’t even care if your leader was human, e.g. it’s not unreasonable to believe that the average golden retriever would make a better mayor than Brandon Johnson.
Therefore, although it’s easy (and entertaining) we shouldn’t be picking on the mayor — or aldercreatures, county board members, state politicians, or the governor – personally. We absolutely should not be comparing the mayor to long-haired fluffy canines (as it’s insulting to the dogs.) Instead, we need to break down the mayor’s policies into simple terms and demonstrate their negative impact on the average taxpayer.
Consider illegal immigration. Simply describing the mayor’s policies as “wrong” is not persuasive. Even listing crimes committed by illegal immigrants is unpersuasive because most people always underestimate the risk to themselves. They will downplay the numbers and assuage themselves by thinking, “It’s not going to happen to me. So what if some guy from Venezuela carjacked an Uber driver? I’m not an Uber driver.”
Instead, people need to know how the policy is affecting them directly today. They need to be told that illegal immigration is costing the city (with some support from the state and federal government) one dollar per person in Chicago per day. Therefore, if you have a family of four, your family is spending four dollars a day on illegal immigrants. That’s what you’re voting for; that’s the choice you’re making. Do you want to have these illegal immigrants in your city, or would your family rather have an extra $1,500 at the end of the year?
People understand the concept of scarcity. Everyone has to decide if they want to dine at a fancy restaurant or make the monthly car payment.
People would similarly understand the consequences of the mayor's illegal immigration policy, when presented correctly. Would you rather allow all of these illegal immigrants to stay in the city or would you rather have 250 extra police officers on the job? Illegal immigrants or extend the Red Line? Illegal immigrants or midnight basketball and renew all the city’s parks? Migrants or fully funded pensions?
If this is done properly, Democrats can be forced into taking tremendously unpopular and/or ridiculous policy positions.
Consider a mayoral candidate whose sole position is that the city needs to be placed into “organized bankruptcy.” The idea is that an organized bankruptcy would be better than a disorganized bankruptcy or financial collapse whereby the city is unable to make either pension or bond payments. It’s the only thing the candidate talks about. When asked about crime, the politician answers: “If you think we have crime problem now wait until the city fails to make its payments to the police officers pension fund unless we get the city into organized bankruptcy.” Questioned on the environment? “The CTA can buy an entire new fleet of electric buses but in three years it won’t be able to pay anyone to drive them unless we place the city into organized bankruptcy.” On education: “CPS is probably top-heavy, with too many administrators, so the CTU should probably decide if they would like to take a 10 percent haircut with an organized bankruptcy now or 25 percent cut later with a financial collapse.”
What this does is forces the leftist candidates to take the position that Chicago is either fiscally solvent (ridiculous) or that taxes are going to have to be raised (unpopular.)
It’s not about having any particular candidate win. It’s about changing the narrative. Such a candidate may still lose. That’s okay. At least more people would be talking honestly about the city’s financial status. That, in and of itself, would be tremendous progress.
Republicans can’t win
Municipal races are “technically” non-partisan. Nevertheless, the leftist cabal will label anyone who disagrees with them as a “MAGA Republican.” To counter this, all messaging must be clear: There are no Republicans in Chicago. If you want to win, you have to be a Democrat. Period. Full stop.
Right-thinking candidates must therefore proudly declare themselves “big tent Democrats.” Democrats are tolerant. Democrats are open-minded. Democrats don’t need to agree on everything. We are all in this together. Democrats need to stop fighting each other and stay focused on fighting “them.”
Some may have doubts. They shouldn’t.
Consider our most recent election for Cook County State's Attorney. Running as a Republican, a well-respected Chicago liberal with excellent name recognition, former alderman Bob Fioretti, could not pull enough votes to defeat the moderate, leftist unknown Eileen O’Neill Burke. It wasn’t even close (66 percent to 30 percent).
Abandon the GOP primaries and get into the Democratic ones!
Nothing will effect change more quickly than making sure every single radical Democrat faces a centrist primary challenger. Right-thinking voters will have no problem pulling a Democratic ballot in the primaries. (That’s actually how Eileen O’Neill Burke won her primary.) This is particularly true in non-presidential years. Therefore, right-thinking people in the area are completely unconcerned with whomever is going to run on the GOP ticket in 2026. The smart money is asking, “Who are we going to get to primary every leftist Democrat?”
Similarly, in the municipal races, we need to engage in the long-standing Chicago political tactic of splitting the vote. Right-thinking people can’t be afraid to back a stalking horse candidate (or two) for the sole purpose of peeling votes away from a front runner. There are plenty of wards in the city where, with a little bit of financial backing, someone just-to-the-left of the established candidate would be able to eat away at the progressive vote totals. Perhaps even enough to permit victory by a moderate candidate.
Organize the little guys
Lastly, it’s also worth pointing out that what works in Iowa or Arkansas is probably not the right approach for Chicago’s neighborhoods. Candidates — and their donors — need to immediately stop overpaying for old-fashioned technical services (like NationBuilder.) Paying to deploy emails (on a CPM basis) is for suckers. Besides, nobody reads them anymore anyway.
While email is getting backed into the corner, text messaging and social media has moved to the forefront. This needs to be embraced.
If Trump’s 2024 victory can teach as anything, it is that the use of social media is no longer optional, it’s mandatory. Further, social media doesn’t work the same way as traditional media. It used to be people would work during the day, commute home, and then read the paper or watch the evening news. The messaging at two in the afternoon would generally be the same messaging at five in the afternoon, or seven in the evening. The news didn’t change much in three or four hours.
Social media — particularly Instagram, Twitter/X, and TikTok — works very differently. Today nearly all news, as events, is immediately old news. Unlike legacy media, where the content (a.k.a. news) is aggregated and presented as a block, social media is a never-ending stream. The flow of information, literally like a river, is continuous and never ending.
The mayor holds a press conference at noon and by 5 o’clock, before any of the local networks go to air, everything he said has already been discussed and analyzed by hundreds if not thousands of people online. Further, by the time someone gets home and checks social media in the evening, the mayor’s actual press conference is already way downstream. Most people never see it. Instead, they see the reactions to the press conference from the people they follow.
How is a lowly local politician expected to compete in such an environment?
They’re not. At least not by themselves.
Welcome to the age of the influencer. Right-thinking Chicagoans, and the politicians who wish to lead them, need to build a consortium of existing local influencers (and create new ones.) Actually, the network is already there; it just needs to be cultivated. That is, everyone needs to be introduced to everyone else. A relatively simple task given today’s technology. (More on this in the next article.)
Even the slightest coordination would have exponential effects on messaging. In traditional media, politicians fight in order to get picked up and have their views expressed during the aggregated “block” of news as produced by the establishment. In social media, the politician needs to ensure that their view is expressed in their constituents’ timeline, which might only be the previous hour or two. Influencers save the politician from having to post every two hours.
Today’s influencer is nothing but yesterday’s reporter. In the old days, anyone running for office had to have a handful of reporters on speed dial. While that’s still true, modern media is openly hostile to right-thinking people. Far more valuable to any moderate running for office today would be a list of 100 Instagram or Twitter/X accounts the politician could DM to assure the day’s messaging got out.
Anyone thinking about throwing their name into the hat should start by trolling social media and making a list of right-thinking accounts which have 75-100 (or more) followers. Reach out to these little guys — and don’t take them for granted — because you’ll never win without them.
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These ideas are not a panacea. Nonetheless, they would be a few small steps in allowing right-thinking Chicagoans to reclaim their city. Or, we can just keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. The choice is ours.
