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Comment by xp84 | Hacker News Reader

I'm kind of confused how a President can promise something like that. He doesn't have any power to appropriate money, and given his party's lack of control of Congress, I'd argue he can't promise anything.

Not to mention that one can scarcely find a "bluer" area than Baltimore -- I would assume that the most proudly right-wing politicians would be more than happy to let Baltimore suffer to score points with their polarized supporters. I hope it doesn't come to that, but they tried to block Hurricane Sandy relief, despite every hurricane in the South being an automatic 'non-partisan' emergency.

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> It's my intention that the federal government will pay for the entire cost of reconstructing that bridge and I expect the Congress to support my effort

This is what he said. I would expect Congress to play along too -- just how unpopular would it be to abandon Baltimore??

Republican side probably doesn't care; Maryland voted 65% for a democratic party president.

Baltimore city and PG county voted for a democratic president. Rest of the state was red.

10 EC votes to Biden. 0 to trump and no hope of any in this year's election.

1/8 red house seats. The other 7 very comfortably blue.

The rest of the state doesn't seem like it matters much to the only results they'd care about - seats and EC votes.

It doesn’t, I agree. Just pointing out that whenever Baltimore figures out Democrats have been fucking them over for decades maybe something will change.

Edit: not that Republicans are any better.

> just how unpopular would it be to abandon Baltimore??

As someone else posted above, Baltimore is a massively important US seaport, that moves tons and tons of goods.

Even the most pro-business Republican realizes that a lot of industries are going to get hurt, and in places far away from Baltimore, if they can't move freight through there.

"- just how unpopular would it be to abandon Baltimore?? "

I mean I'm from the Baltimore area and.. well.. I mean some of us would consider that town somewhat abandoned already, think Detroit. It has some pretty rough parts. With the main triggering event being 60s/70s loss of steel industry (Bethlehem Steel). Of all the big east coast cities (Boston, DC, NYC, Philly, Baltimore) I would say Baltimore is the most abandoned already.

> just how unpopular would it be to abandon Baltimore??

You underestimate how much vitriol is coming from the Right about Democratic-leaning cities. Baltimore is 60% Black and voted 87% for Biden in 2020. Baltimore isn't on the top of the list of cities they like to claim are failures, but just wait.

My dad is deep in the Right-wing media econsystem and he is convinced that the downtowns of Portland and San Francisco have been burned to the ground and the entire region is a lawless anarchy.

He'll need to get Congress to pass an appropriation, yes, this is his way of putting pressure on them to do it. I think that there are emergency funds already appropriated that he can immediately tap, but they would fall way short of the cost needed to build a new bridge. The damage here doesn't just affect Baltimore, the national economy is affected.

Industry has the power here.

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