The grim data on New York’s slide into nonlivability keep arriving.
The latest numbers can be found in a Siena poll: Some 57% of New Yorkers think life here is getting worse.
That includes 43% of Democrats, with only 22% saying it’s getting better.
These ugly results hold across racial lines, with 60% of Latinos, 58% of whites and 50% of blacks saying it’s getting worse.
Hmm. Seems like the lefties who try to dismiss concerns about New York City and state falling apart as reactionary propaganda got this one majorly wrong.
Especially since the causes of the pessimism are equally clear.
A huge majority, 73%, say crime is a major problem (including 64% of Dems); similar majorities also agree across racial and class lines.
Some 62% say the migrant influx is a major problem.
Both issues dominate among respondents asked what should be at the top of Albany’s to-do list.
And affordable housing and cost of living are seen as major issues by 77% and 83% respectively.
In other words, it’s the landmark policy moves from the progressive cadres in Albany and on our own City Council that are driving the discontent.
The moves, that is, that have sent crime soaring, worsened the migrant crisis and jacked up the cost of rent and everything else (to say nothing of damaging public education and stifling our post-COVID jobs recovery).
And the widespread, justified outrage the poll exposes means that concerns about safe streets and an never-ending inflow of illegal migrants to further burden the city’s already strained finances are not expressions of “systemic racism,” as the left loves to pretend.
They’re the legitimate worries of Empire Staters that their home is falling apart.
Progressives have long been able to dominate politics here thanks to our more or less one-party state.
But the depth and breadth of this discontent around crime, immigration and affordability suggests our unaccountable electeds might be in for a rude awakening.
Because it’s not clear that anything other than a humiliating political defeat will ever drive home the message.
