Tag Archive for: Milwaukee

How the Democrats Destroyed Detroit, Milwaukee, Newark and St. Louis

Discover the Networks has updated its profiles of those cities under long term Democratic leadership. The updated profiles are of the cities of Detroit, Milwaukee, Newark and St. Louis.

Here are excerpts from each updated profile with a link to the full analysis of failed leadership in each city:

Detroit’s Decline Under Democratic Leadership

Detroit, now synonymous with failure and decline, was once the emblem of American progress and prosperity. As the late biographer and scholar Matthew Josephson observed in the 1920s: “Nowhere in the world may the trend of the new industrial cycle be perceived more clearly than in Detroit. In this sense it is the most modern city in the world, the city of tomorrow.” University of Michigan historian Jeffrey Mirel puts it this way: “Throughout the 1920s, Detroit was the shining star of the new era, the very center of the American economic universe, where capitalism and technology combined to produce the greatest goods for the greatest numbers.”

Read the full profile.

Milwaukee’s Decline Under Democratic Leadership

The city of Milwaukee was once a prosperous, thriving metropolis. For years it was the world’s foremost beer-producing city, and home to four of the largest breweries on earth (Schlitz, Blatz, Pabst, and Miller). Almost every major American brewery, in fact, had at least one factory in Milwaukee. These employed thousands of local residents in jobs that formed the foundation of the city’s middle class. Other major corporations in the city during the first half of the twentieth century included the A. F. Gallun & Sons leather tanning company; the machinery manufacturer Allis-Chalmers; the heavy-mining equipment producer Bucyrus Erie Company; the Falk Corporation, producer of industrial power transmission products; the electrical component maker Cutler-Hammer; and the A.O. Smith Corporation, a major manufacturer of automotive frames.

Politically, Milwaukee has not had a Republican mayor since 1908.

Read the full profile.

Newark’s Decline Under Democratic Leadership

The city of Newark, New Jersey has been led exclusively by Democrat mayors for the past 81 years. The entrenched power of the Democratic Party is reflected in the near-unanimous support its candidates receive from Newark voters in political elections on every level. For example, in the 2009 gubernatorial race, Newark voters cast 90.2% of their ballots for Democrat Jon Corzine, vs. just 8.3% for Republican Chris Christie, the ultimate statewide winner. Similarly, in the 2004 presidential election Democrat John Kerry received 85.9% of the vote in Newark, far outpacing Republican George W. Bush’s 12.8%. And in the 2008 presidential election, Democrat Barack Obama captured 90.8% of the Newark vote, vs. 7.0% for Republican John McCain.

Read the full profile.

St. Louis’s Decline Under Democratic Leadership

During World War II, St. Louis, Missouri was a bustling place replete with factories that produced such necessities as ammunition, uniforms and footwear, K-rations, chemicals and medicines, and even aircraft. Soon after the war, in 1949, began an era of Democratic rule that continues in the city to this day. Indeed it has been 65 years since a Republican was elected as mayor of St. Louis. This entrenched Democratic dominance is reflected in the fact that in each of the past three U.S. presidential elections, voters in St. Louis cast between 80 and 84 percent of their ballots for the Democrat candidate.

Between 1940 and 1970, St. Louis was one of the major destinations for the millions of blacks who migrated away from the rural South to take advantage of newly opened job opportunities in Northern cities. During this 30-year period St. Louis’s black population nearly tripled, fromapproximately 108,000 to more than 317,000. By 1970 it was a majority-black city—a fact that, in light of the overwhelming degree to which African Americans identify as Democrats, would have immense political implications for the city and its future.

Read the full profile.

These profiles show the failures of policies embraced by the Democratic Party over time. They are a harbinger of things to come in other cities and towns.