But Garcia is exactly the wrong solution to Chicago’s problems. If the city’s devolution into a two-tier class society is driven in part by the failure of its public schools, then the last thing they need is a candidate who is in the pocket of the teachers’ unions, whose solution is impose higher taxes on employers so they can throw more money at the existing system without reforming it in any way. Garcia threatens the city with a Detroit-like death spiral: the failure of the moderate Democrats drives the poor into the arms of the far left—which chases even more employers and middle-class residents out of the city, making all of its problems worse.

(This is why, despite being in real trouble in the polls, Emanuel has a good change of winning the run-off—by appealing to the city’s Republican voters and their fear of a far-left mayor.)

The two-tier stratification of big Democrat-run cities is not exactly a political accident. Some of us have speculated that Democrats are purposely fostering the constituency that favors them, a “top-bottom coalition” of the upper-middle-class and the poor, while driving out the politically independent middle class. The kind of people who gave Richard Nixon a majority of the vote in places like Chicago and New York City way back in 1972 have been chased out to the suburbs by now. But the creation of urban liberal hothouses could now backfire on the Democrats. They haven’t built a coalition for the moderate left. They’ve built one for the far left. In doing so, they are damaging their national image and endangering the more moderate leaders who need the support of all those now-suburban voters.