Tom Perez and the DNC will be holding the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee in 2020, and I'm really not sure how I feel about that.
Democrats picked Milwaukee on Monday to host their 2020 national convention, setting up the party's standard-bearer to accept the presidential nomination in the heart of the old industrial belt that delivered Donald Trump to the White House.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez chose Milwaukee over Houston and Miami after deliberations lingered longer than party leaders or officials from the three finalist cities had expected.
"This choice is a statement of our values," Perez said in a statement. "The Democratic Party is the party of working people, and Milwaukee is a city of working people."
The convention is scheduled for July 13-16, 2020.
It will be the first time in over a century that Democrats will be in a Midwest city other than Chicago to nominate their presidential candidate. Instead, the political spotlight will shine for a week on a metro area of about 1.6 million people. Once dubbed as "The Machine Shop of the World," the famously working-class city also is known for its long love affair with beer and as the birthplace of Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
On one hand, Democrats need the upper Midwest to beat Trump in 2020. I understand the message this sends, that Democrats are serious about winning Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania back and making a serious try at Ohio.
On the other hand, there's no denying that Milwaukee is the most segregated large city in America.
Milwaukee is the most racially segregated metro area in the United States, a new Brookings Institution study found.
The report, which the nonprofit think tank based on an analysis of U.S. census data, also found that black-white neighborhood segregation nationally "has declined only modestly since the beginning of the century."
"Most white residents of large metropolitan areas live in neighborhoods that remain overwhelmingly white, and while black neighborhoods have become more diverse, this is largely due to an increase in Hispanic rather than white residents," wrote William H. Frey, the study's author.
Milwaukee has for years been considered to be one of the most racially segregated metropolitan areas in the country. And it's frequently been at or near the top of the list of highly segregated areas in past Brookings studies.
Brookings found most of the areas with the highest levels of segregation are in northern parts of the country, with Milwaukee, New York, Chicago and Detroit leading the list.
"At least three in four black residents in Milwaukee, New York, and Chicago would need to relocate in order to live in fully integrated neighborhoods with whites," Frey wrote. "In another four areas — Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, and St. Louis — seven in ten blacks would have to relocate to live in a completely integrated neighborhood with whites."
NYC, Detroit, and Chicago are doing things about their decades of redlining and racial segregation. Milwaukee is pointedly not lifting a finger. And to me, the choice of Milwaukee means Democrats are trying to win back white Trump voters, and frankly I don't want anyone who voted for Trump in this party at all. They were okay with Trump's racism. It wasn't a dealbreaker for them.
Why would we want them back?
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