Anonymous wrote:Do Republicans not run? What are their ideas?
They do.
City is 2/3s AA.
In other words, shrugs.
The problem isn't so much Republican versus Democrats but that everyone knows what the solutions are but no one is willing to take the route because it'd require substantial violations of civil rights laws. You could solve Baltimore's crime problems overnight by turning the city into a military patrolled zone, with military bases and tanks patrolling the streets. And then bring in sweeping dictatorial powers to seize large swathes of lands via eminent domain and bulldoze everything to create large new land parcels for redevelopment via special economic zones not subject to the city's taxation structure, forcibly break up neighborhoods and move people out to make this happen, and do something comparable to the schools, probably creating a two zoned school district, one for the better parts of town to revive middle class interest, and the other for the ghetto areas with its dysfunctional problems. You'd need unelected leaders with wide sweeping powers to make major decisions and who aren't answerable to city voters.
Baltimore represents the extreme end of the failures of democracy when people consistently vote via special interests (race, class, ideologies) rather than for the community good. And because of this, nothing meaningful can happen in Baltimore via the government. The private sector is left to try to improve things on its own, and it has been doing that in parts of the city. But it can't work in the majorly deprived areas. The voters are more content to blame the racism bogeyman than address their own failures.