What do America’s drunkest cities have in common? No, not the weather. It’s Democrats. The liberal-run bastions of blue that pledge to have their good citizens’ interests at heart are causing folks to crack open a frosty one, slam a short snorter — one after another — and throw the cork from the bottle in the trash can.
Cities are ranked by all sorts of random factors: best for singles, quality of life, cheap housing, etc. For the most part, those superlative influences show a smattering of towns with both conservative and liberal governments. Not so for the overindulgers. The excessive abusers of alcohol call these fine cities home: Milwaukee, New Orleans, Portland, Denver, Providence, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Chicago, and Austin.
How did Milwaukee claim the title over New York City, Las Vegas, and Chicago? The Real Estate Witch website tallied numbers gathered by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, the US Census Bureau, Walk Score, Expatistan.com, Yelp, and Google Trends and found “Beer City” averaged three breweries, 36.7 general bars, and 2.7 wine bars. Seems normal. But that’s per 100,000 Milwaukee residents, exceeding the national average by 131%, 99%, and 60%, respectively.
Chicago ranks in the top ten thanks to an excessive drinking rate of 22.7%; Pittsburgh rolls in with an impressive 22.5%, narrowly beating out Portland and Austin.
Democrats Sing the Drunken Blues
(Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
The uptick in alcohol consumption was seen across the board in every US metropolis, small town, and rural location, thanks to the onset of the COVID pandemic. Who wouldn’t tip an extra one back to forget toilet paper shortages and mandatory masks? But that isn’t driving the big city drunken blues. It’s the results of the typical liberal agenda that have people drowning their sorrows: a rising crime rate, a dismal economy, and a lack of full-time jobs.
The National Desk pulled party affiliations of mayors, district attorneys, sheriffs, and city council members with the highest murder rates. Let’s compare that list to the alcohol users and abusers: New Orleans, Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Pittsburgh. And don’t forget that Democratic district attorneys tend to play a part in the soaring rate of violent crime.
Somehow, in so many ways, Democrat-run cities like Milwaukee are making poor people poorer, which drives the middle class to seek a different place to live. Homeless camps are nearly as prevalent now as during the Great Depression. Liberty Nation’s Managing Editor Mark Angelides warns:
“While there are certainly distinctions between the original Hoovervilles and what may come to be known as ‘Bidenvilles,’ there are enough similarities to make the acceptance of this first Randalls Island camp a cause for concern. Once the genie is out of the bottle and other states realize that they too can deal with the mounting problem by simply funding camps from the public purse, it is a certainty as much as death and taxes that they will do so.”
No one wants to see a “Bidenville” pop up in the backyard, but solving the homelessness problem means pulling the economy out of the death spiral it’s in now. And Democrats don’t seem to want that to happen.
Party or Pity Party Time?
American consumers of alcohol spend upward of $220 billion a year on their self-medication of choice, and it’s no wonder the populace in liberal-run cities needs to toss back a drink or two to get through the day. Decades of municipal budget mismanagement, increasing crime without consequences, and lack of hope would have anyone hanging on to the ideals promised by Democrats take that extra nip. There’s just no escape from the parallels between blue cities and the blues.
