Democrats’ telltale choice of Chicago for 2024 convention
Hugo Gurdon
Republicans should take note of the Democrats’ decision to go to Chicago for their 2024 national convention. One aspect of the choice is being largely overlooked.
It is not that it shows Democrats know the presidential election will hinge on the upper Midwest. Republicans know this already, which is why they chose Milwaukee, in Wisconsin, for their convention. Democrats are desperate to rebuild the blue wall that Donald Trump demolished there in 2016.
Nor am I thinking of the fact that Chicago will showcase the Democrats’ failure to govern America’s big cities properly. Carjackings jumped 135% in the windy city since last year and have tripled since 2021; theft has more than doubled in two years. Thousands of residents are fleeing, as are businesses such as Whole Foods.
Finally, it is not that Illinois is a union-controlled state, and President Joe Biden once again did Big Labor’s bidding to shun Atlanta in the right-to-work state of Georgia.
More intriguing is that snubbing Atlanta looks like a stain left by Democrats’ baseless allegation that Georgia’s election laws are racist and designed to suppress black voting. Democratic pressure forced MLB to move the All-Star Game out of Atlanta in 2021, so it would look capricious now to take the party convention there.
There is surely yet another reason why Democrats are snubbing Georgia, even though the state could determine whether Biden is returned to the White House in January 2025 or his Republican challenger displaces him in the Oval Office.
Georgia is turning purple, Biden won in 2020, and Democrats won both of Georgia’s seats in the Senate in January of 2021 and held them in 2022. Yet the state still leans red as long as former President Donald Trump is not on the ballot.
All the Democratic wins were due less to long-term demographic trends and more to the leader who hung around the Republican brand like an unpleasant odor. Trump lost Georgia in the 2020 presidential race, and even when he was not on the ballot, just adjacent to it with his support for weak candidates such as Hershel Walker, he drove Georgians away and they voted for Democrats.
When Trump was not on the ballot, by contrast, Georgia remained red. Republicans control both chambers of the legislature, and the down-to-earth GOP Gov. Brian Kemp, whom Trump attacked for supposed disloyalty, easily won reelection.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Democrats probably know they can snub Georgia because what will win or lose the state in the next election is not whether the convention is held in Atlanta but whether Trump is on or off the ballot. He’s running again for the nomination, and Democrats would be overjoyed if he succeeded in getting it. They want Republicans represented on the ballot by the proven loser of the last three elections — the one GOP presidential candidate whom Biden can almost certainly beat.
If Republicans choose someone other than Trump, Georgia is probably beyond the Democrats’ grasp.