When all else fails, blame everyone else
Early in September, Mayor Brandon Johnson announced he is seeking a second term. The deeply unpopular incumbent, whose approval rating fell as low as 6.6 percent last year, has few substantial accomplishments to claim, although he frequently cites a drop in crime in Chicago as one. That decline correlates with a national trend.
Locally, Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke’s demand for pretrial detention for violent suspects — contrasting with the more lenient approach of her reckless predecessor, Kim Foxx — has undoubtedly contributed to the reduction.
Johnson, a former CPS social studies teacher, is a prime example of that unique governmental creature: The person who fails upward. One of his opponents in the mayoral race, Alexi Giannoulias, is another.
Johnson is certainly a champion in one category: Blaming others for his problems. He’s the GOAT at that, the Greatest of All Time.
"Corporate"
Johnson pointed fingers several times in his reelection announcement. In one instance, he blamed “corporate media and billionaire-sponsored ads attempting to reduce my first term to a series of overlapping crises.” In another, he referred to “from [an] historic influx of migrants and asylum seekers being centered at Trump’s ire.”
That is a four-fer of blame: So-called corporate media, billionaires, the arrival of Joe Biden’s migrants, and President Trump.
Too often, Johnson blamed the City Council’s make-believe “Corporate Caucus” for his legislative failures. There is just one problem: While there is a Black Caucus on the City Council, as well a Latino Caucus, a Progressive Reform Caucus, a Democratic Socialist Caucus, and a LGBT Caucus, no such Corporate Caucus exists. There never has been one. Nonetheless, such leftist us-versus-them nomenclature is right of the playbook of Johnson’s puppet master and former employer, the neo-Marxist Chicago Teachers Union.
What is wrong with being “corporate?” Johnson doesn’t say; however, if his term refers to the private sector, roughly two-thirds of Chicagoans work in it. Excluding nonprofits, these businesses and their employees pay billions of dollars in taxes to the City of Chicago and related sister agencies, including Chicago Public Schools.
Here’s an interesting — but not surprising — fact about Johnson. He has never held a private sector job, unless you count his years as an organizer for CTU and his brief term as a Youth Director for the YMCA. But you shouldn’t.
Businesses, which are part of what Johnson and his allies call “corporate,” must make payroll every two weeks, develop a paying customer base, and offer products or services that people want. If they don’t, they fail.
And the same goes for employees of businesses. In the 1984 comedy classic Ghostbusters, Dan Aykroyd’s character, Ray Stantz, phrased their daily quandary perfectly:
“I’ve worked in the private sector, they expect results.”
It is impossible to repeatedly fail upwards in the private sector, even in a family-owned business, unless the definition of private sector is expanded to include crony capitalism ratholes like Nicolás Maduro’s Venezuela.
Trump
The instances of Johnson’s finger-pointing against Donald Trump are too numerous to mention. Yes, Trump regularly lobs insults at Chicago and Johnson. The president acts in the same manner against New York’s socialist Mayor, Zohran Mamdani.
However, since his election last year, Mamdani has met with Trump three times.
Although Johnson invited Trump to City Hall shortly after taking office, he has never met with the president. Nor are there any documented instances of Johnson speaking with Trump by telephone — or communicating with him by text.
While the relationship between a big city Democratic mayor and a Republican president is never expected to be publicly cordial, the most powerful man in the world can help Chicago in many ways. But Johnson has not reached out, even though Trump has repeatedly promised federal assistance in fighting crime.
If Trump isn’t doing enough for Chicago, the mayor can point his finger back at himself.
Another Republican president, Richard Nixon, was blamed for a particularly violent weekend in Chicago by Johnson, because he ended some of Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society social programs.
Anti-Semitism
The American left has a problem with American Jews, and Johnson is part of that movement.
So, it’s not surprising that Johnson “went there” by singling out the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and Chicago area Democratic donor Michael Sacks, who is Jewish, in his reelection address.
In a letter sent to Johnson four days later, Jewish United Fund of Chicago President Lonnie Nasatir and his Board Chair, Carey Cooper, condemned the mayor for those nefarious references, which Cleveland Jewish News reported on.
“’Singling out Jewish people or Jewish organizations as symbols of political influence or control carries a dangerous history that should be understood and rejected, not repurposed as a political rallying cry,’ the JUF leaders wrote. AIPAC “has never spent a dime opposing you or any other candidate for local office.’”
“In August, Johnson said on Jamal Bryant's Let’s Be Clear podcast that ‘AIPAC and other millionaires’ were spending money against him, ‘because I dare call out genocide.’ He said that concerns about his comments being antisemitic are ‘witchcraft’ and ‘manipulative.’”
Witchcraft? Yes, just in time for Halloween.
Brandon Johnson frequently casts himself as a political heir to Harold Washington, Chicago’s first black mayor. Yet, after hearing Johnson’s recent attacks on AIPAC, I was reminded of another black politician from that era: Congressman Gus Savage. “Goofy Gus” often targeted AIPAC and, in one notorious episode, falsely claimed at a campaign rally that most of the contributors to his opponent Mel Reynolds’ campaign — yes, the same Reynolds who would later serve time in federal prison — were members of the organization. Savage then proceeded to read the donors’ names, just as Johnson specifically mentioned Sacks.
But Johnson said more in that podcast. He promoted an exchange with Jamal Bryant on X about the Gaza War and he made this dubious statement:
“There is a direct line between federal dollars that are taken out of black communities and used to pay for bombing brown and black people around the globe.”
Wrong. But there is a direct line between Chicago’s descent from top-tier city status and Brandon Johnson’s three-and-a-half years as mayor.
The finger-pointer
On the flipside, here is an accurate campaign slogan for Johnson: "Vote for Brandon because it’s always someone else’s fault."
It might work.
On the other hand, whether in the public or the private sector, if you are in the workforce long enough you encounter a toxic species — the finger-pointer. He never accomplishes anything and he constantly complains and blames others for his failures.
Does Chicago want four more years of the same?
What about the ever-growing pothole in front of your home? You can blame Brandon Johnson for it.
The same goes for the painfully long delay between your 911 call and the arrival of emergency responders.
