As Donald Trump prepares to speak at the Detroit Economic Club, the Republicans’ fascination with Detroit is once again on the radar screen.

The Motor City is often cited by GOP leaders as an urban black hole that was destroyed by big government and can only be saved through that old Republican standard, tax cuts.

On Facebook, a common theme in posts and memes asserts that Democratic mayors adhering to liberal policies over the past six decades ruined Detroit. That applause line was created by conservative commentators and spread by numerous Republican officials. When the GOP held a March debate at the Fox Theater, Ted Cruz used the opportunity to conclude that Detroit’s legacy “has been utterly decimated by 60 years of failed left-wing policy.”

With Trump’s arrival today, and his penchant for portraying American cities as foreboding, unsafe places, The Washington Post took a closer look at that Motown narrative and concluded it is false.

White flight, an utter dependence on the auto industry, the 1967 riots, freeways extending to the suburbs – all of this contributed to the long downward slide. Historic forces attributable to neither political party, as several fact-checkers have pointed out, led the way.

In recent years, taxes were high, the quality of the school system collapsed, and the subsequent escape from the city by tens of thousands of families and businesses left behind an urban landscape now dominated by abandoned buildings. But the Post’s “Wonkbook” blog points out that the city’s population peaked in 1950, well before the succession of liberal Democratic mayors and more than a decade before simmering racial tensions boiled over.

Here’s how Wonkbook’s Emily Badger debunks the claim that liberalism led to the downfall of Detroit and other major American cities:

The city did suffer much more recently from political corruption that deepened its crisis — by, yes, a Democratic mayor — but that chapter says nothing of the deep historic roots of the city’s troubles.

Another problem with pegging liberalism for Detroit’s downfall is that a lot of other cities are both deeply blue and economically strong. San Francisco, sitting at the heart of the most dynamic economy in the country right now, is far more politically liberal. New York — famously home to wicked “New York values” — is the epicenter of the country’s financial power. Washington, D.C. isn’t doing so bad, either.

The six largest metro areas in the U.S. account for about a quarter of the entire country’s economy. And the cities at the center of each of them — New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Houston and Washington — all have Democratic mayors.

That’s not to say that liberal policies made those places successful. But it’s hard to argue at the same time that they decimated Detroit. In general, we tend to blame or praise elected officials for economic outcomes they barely control, and Detroit in particular has been a victim of forces much larger than one person or party.

 

Photo: Flickr

 

Recent Posts: