Maybe the suburbs are a winning issue after all

Image by Ghengis Gary.

Andrea Widburg . . . "Densely populated cities, however, are the lifeblood of the Democrat party.  It came as no surprise, therefore, that Obama created his Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing ("AFFH") regulation.  The AFFH allowed the Department of Housing and Urban Development to use federal funding to bully suburban communities into changing their zoning for cheaper, high-density housing.  In other words, the Obama administration told communities that had grown dependent on infusions of federal money (something applicable to both affluent and less affluent communities) that, if they wanted the money, they had to urbanize.  (You can learn more about the AFFH here.)

"In my pleasant suburban community, I knew plenty of Democrat moms who normally supported all of Obama's initiatives but who parted ways with him when it came to AFFH.  They'd paid good money to raise their children in spacious, safe communities that were near sophisticated cities (for the arts, you know) but not close enough to those cities to import urban problems.

. . . 

"The moms in my world fully understood that turning their suburban schools into copies of the urban schools they'd escaped would not only threaten their children, but also destroy the value of their houses.  Across suburban America, the houses are usually each family's biggest asset.

"Still, when Trump recently announced that he was revoking the AFFH, the chattering Democrat classes (along with NeverTrumps) immediately announced that doing so would not woo back the suburban moms who seem to dislike him.  Instead, the chatterers said, his plan would alienate those same moms because the move reeked of racism, and if there's one thing suburban moms hate, it's racism.  NPR, for example, was hot on the racism dog whistle angle:" . . .