People aren't smart enough to make the connection. Some other idiot with an agenda will tell them it's all the result of corporate greed and the sheep will swallow that bullshit with smiles on their faces.
I disagree and agree with
@Cincydawg :
There will be a point where this reverses I think. Folks will start to notice store closings that impact them directly and streets that become deserted when once they were thriving. Or maybe folks will just whine that their local grocery closed and not understand why.
If you look at the history there is a pretty clear trajectory:
Liberal criminal policies fail spectacularly as anyone with a functioning brain could predict.
Conservative criminal policies succeed but their success sows the seeds of their undoing. Once reasonable criminal policies are enacted, crime drops and ceases to be a major issue in elections and conservatives start losing then liberals begin enacting their asinine criminal policies and this continues until crime gets so bad that it becomes a major electoral issue again and conservatives can win elections.
NYC is a great example. I visited in the early spring of 1994 and it was truly a Sh*thole. That, honestly, is a nice way of saying it. It was awful. In fact, it was SO BAD that the far leftwing voters of NYC elected a Republican Mayor in the 1993 election. Let me demonstrate just how astounding this is:
- In the 1988 Presidential Election in NYC Democrat Michael Dukakis carried 66.17%, Republican Bush carried 32.84% so the D beat the R by well over 2:1
- In the 1992 Presidential Election in NYC Democrat Clinton carried 68.73%, Republican Bush carried 24% so the D beat the R by close to 3:1
- In the 1996 Presidential Election in NYC Democrat Clinton carried 77.10%, Republican Dole carried 17.31% so the D beat the R by more than 3:1
In the 1993 NYC Mayoral election:
- Democrat Dinkins carried Manhattan 242,524-166,357
- Democrat Dinkins carried the Bronx 162,995-98,780
- Democrat Dinkins carried Brooklyn 269,343-258,058
- Republican Giuliani carried Queens 291,625-180,527
- Republican Giuliani trounced Dinkins in Staten Island 115,416-21,507
Thus Republican Giuliani won the election 50.9%-48%, then:
- Giuliani won 57.7-40.5 in 1997
- Republican Bloomberg won 50.3-47.9 in 2001 (NOTE: Bloomberg later ran for President as a Democrat and at THAT time he was pretty leftist on crime and everything else but when he ran for and served as Mayor of NYC he was conservative on criminal policies mostly just keeping Giuliani's successful policies in place).
- Republican Bloomberg won 58.4-39 in 2005
- Independent Bloomberg won 50.7-46.3 in 2009
Crime under Dinkins got so bad that even NYC's reliably leftist voters voted R in five consecutive Mayoral elections. Unfortunately, the Republicans were then victims of their own success. Crime became less of an issue and NYC's leftist voters went back to voting on other issues and Republicans had no chance.
My point is that eventually, when crime gets bad enough, voters will make logical decisions.