For many decades, the big three cities in America have been New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago.

Now these metro areas are the fastest DECLINING areas in terms of population.

Meanwhile, by far the largest net domestic migration losses were in the two largest metros, New York-Newark-Jersey City (minus 1,260,000) and Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim (minus 842,000). Chicago-Naperville-Elgin had the third greatest loss (minus 377,000).  Hard to believe Chicago was once the Second City.

These were for well more than a century the great financial, industrial and cultural/entertainment centers of the nation and the world. Now they are going the way of Detroit.

The sirens should be going off.  Look at the new generation of leadership of these big cities.  Does anyone in their right mind think that Zohran Mamdani, Karen Bass, or Brandon Johnson will lead these cities out of the wilderness? Seriously. Mamdani and Bass were community organizers and Johnson was a teachers union lobbyist. None of them has ever had a real job.

You wouldn’t hire them to change a light bulb.

We regard this collapse in leadership of our large blue cities as profoundly troubling.

It used to be that the blue city mayors, like Richard M. Daley (The Boss), were a little corrupt, but at least the cities worked. The garbage got collected and the police kept the streets mostly safe. Now the mayors are utopian nincompoops who would make Larry, Curly and Moe look competent. No wonder normal people are leaving by the hundreds of thousands.

We long for the good old days.