Opinion

After Obama’s Betrayal, Trump Is Chicago’s Only Hope

REUTERS/Gary Cameron

William J. Kelly Host, Citizen Kelly Show
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I can still remember the ear-splitting roar from Chicago’s Grant Park in the wake of Barack Obama’s historic 2008 election. It was the sound of desperate people who believed hope and change had finally arrived.

Little did they know Obama’s hope was false and change would never come.

It’s been a cruel wake-up call for Chicagoans, especially my fellow South Siders who were led to believe Barack Hussein Obama – the Hawaiian transplant – was one of them. He wasn’t. He never was.

Yes, Obama was baptized in anti-American hatred at Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church, a stone’s throw from my native Beverly neighborhood, the Irish enclave on Chicago’s Southwest side. Obama ran and lost against former Black Panther Defense Minister Rep. Bobby Rush for Congress in the First Congressional District – it is the only thing this lame duck and I have in common. He served three sleepy years in the Illinois state senate before the liberal Illinois GOP gifted him a U.S. Senate seat by sabotaging conservative businessman and philanthropist Jack Ryan.

Two puny years later, the media branded Obama the “most qualified person” to ever run for President of the United States. Those three years as a “senior lecturer” at University of Chicago Law School really paid off.

But you can only coast on fake news for so long when the reality is that, after eight years, Obama will leave behind $19.9 trillion in national debt, more than $1 trillion in new Obamacare taxes, $870 billion in new federal regulations, and a record 95 million disenfranchised Americans out of the work force.

How dare those racist working class voters reject this! How dare they want America to be better than this!

That is why the mainstream media have been hard-at-work whitewashing the Obama Administration’s anemic presidential record since Trump’s election. They’re beating the “Russians did it” drum desperate to bury the lede:  How Obama betrayed his party’s base.

He betrayed his Chicago base too.

At the very least, I expected the City That Doesn’t Work to reap the socialist rewards of an Obama Presidency. His federal stimulus cost taxpayers $830 billion but is there one person on Chicago’s South Side that is any better off for it? What portion of Obama’s $9.9 trillion in added debt went to the poverty-stricken neighborhoods of Englewood or Ashburn Gresham? What benefit did they receive?

None that I can see other than the booming mortuary business.

At a speech at Loyola University in 1998, Obama said that he believed in “redistribution [of wealth] to a certain level to make sure everyone gets a shot.” But what wealth was redistributed to Chicago’s working poor and middle class? Chicago’s crony political ruling class were the only ones that benefitted from Obama’s Presidency.

And what about Chicago’s drug-fueled murder epidemic which claimed 762 lives in 2016 – the worst in 20 years? Do these mostly black lives don’t matter to Obama after all?  Apparently, not.

Thanks to the Mexican drug cartels, Chicago has replaced Miami as the primary distribution point for illegal drugs in the U.S. What has Obama done to target the flow of illegal drugs from across Mexico’s border to Chicago? Or perhaps that just didn’t jive with the President’s open borders philosophy?

After eight years of Obama and two terms of do-nothing Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s former Chief of Staff, the Great Chicago Apocalypse is still yet to come. Although shootings are up, Rahm is proud that arrests are down. The pension crisis isn’t looming – it’s here.

Obama, Rahm and their pals are devoid of solutions and voters are fed-up.

Nationally, the Democrats only control 13 state legislatures and Illinois is one of them. That’s why Trump is the Chicago establishment’s worst nightmare: the possibility of real change.

If Trump brings peace and prosperity to the inner cities, the Democrats will have lost their final argument and the politics of division will end.

Obama betrayed Chicago. Rahm has ignored it. Trump is Chicago’s only hope now.

William J. Kelly is the host of “The Citizen Kelly Show” on AM 1590 WCGO. In 2015, he busted the caps in the Chicago mayoral race, forcing Rahm Emanuel into a historic run-off election.  Kelly is also an Emmy award-winning TV producer and frequent contributor to American Spectator, The Washington Times, Breitbart.com, and writes “The Chicago Rules,” a monthly column for Newsmax.