Posted on 06/15/2024 9:24:15 PM PDT by Cronos
As Democrats make their case to voters around the country this fall, one challenge is that some of the bluest parts of the country — cities on the West Coast — are a mess.
Centrist voters can reasonably ask: Why put liberals in charge nationally when the places where they have greatest control are plagued by homelessness, crime and dysfunction?
I’ll try to answer that question in a moment, but liberals like me do need to face the painful fact that something has gone badly wrong where we’re in charge, from San Diego to Seattle.
...the truth is that too often we offer a version of progressivism that doesn’t result in progress. ...Democratic states enjoy a life expectancy two years longer than Republican states. Per capita G.D.P. in Democratic states is 29 percent higher than in G.O.P. states, and child poverty is lower. Education is generally better in blue states, with more kids graduating from high school and college. The gulf in well-being between blue states and red states is growing wider, not narrower.
So my rejoinder to Republican critiques is: Yes, governance is flawed in some blue parts of America, but overall, liberal places have enjoyed faster economic growth and higher living standards than conservative places. That doesn’t look like failure.
So the problem isn’t with liberalism. It’s with West Coast liberalism.
...the West Coast’s central problem is not so much that it’s unserious as that it’s infected with an ideological purity that is focused more on intentions than on oversight and outcomes.
...Maybe a healthy Republican Party keeps the Democratic Party healthy, and vice versa.
Without opposition party oversight, problems aren’t always fixed expeditiously.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
In mid 1990’s my sister was living here in Calif with her kids. The oldest was in 7th grade. I was helping him with his homework and told him to redo an essay he wrote because it was messy. He refused and said his teacher wouldn’t care. I was so angry at him. He brought home the messy paper and it received a perfect grade! Such BS. I was glad my daughter was not in public school.
Government can never make us safe. It's God given duty is to punish and destroy evildoers. Yet our infitely wise, elite and merciful governors would rather play god and "make us safe" than to do their duty. May God damn them!
That is not exactly the case.
The homelessness epidemics per capita are by far and away worse in the wealthy lavish welfare benefit blue states.
NY
VT
CA
OR
HI
WA
AK
ME
MA
NV
CO
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/20-states-largest-homeless-populations-030258896.html
...Democratic states enjoy a life expectancy two years longer than Republican states.
Look at the demographics. A lot of the Blue states are overwhelmingly White. Whites tend to have less obesity and heart disease, diabetes, etc than Blacks and thus a longer life span.
Per capita G.D.P. in Democratic states is 29 percent higher than in G.O.P. states, and child poverty is lower.
Again, Demographics. Also, have you accounted for the cost of living differential? California and New York and Massachusetts, etc are expensive as hell. You'd have to earn literally almost twice as much in NYC to have the exact same standard of living as someone in most of the South/Midwest/Non Left Coast West.
Education is generally better in blue states, with more kids graduating from high school and college.
The Northeast has relatively few hispanics. Then same goes for Oregon and Washington. They tend to start working and not finish high school nearly as often. That is particularly true for new immigrants...so again, demographics.
Let's compare like for like. How do White people do in Blue states vs in Red States controlled for the cost of living differential? Gee.....doesn't appear to be a big gap like you're talking about. Hint, you're trying to claim demographic differences are due to POLICY. Nope!
Yep. I was gonna add....how about some other cities that Democrats control such as Baltimore, St. Louis, New Orleans, Chicago, Philly, NYC, etc? They are chitholes.
Crime ridden, corrupt, drug infested, decaying chit holes.
something has gone badly wrong where we’re in charge, from San Diego to Seattle.
From Philly to Boston along with leftist cancer centers...er...cities like Chicago and Atlanta.
Infant mortality is one I've pointed out for years is not an apples to apples comparison. If a baby is under a certain weight (MUCH more likely to die), they are not counted as a "live birth" in much of the rest of the world including all European countries and I have no doubt in Cuba as well. They ARE counted as a live birth in the US. When a significant percentage of those low birth weight babies then die, its counted as the US having a higher infant mortality rate. BS. This is not comparing like for like.
You could but that isn't representative.
Meanwhile I have driven through rural areas where people at the gas stations and diners will tell me to keep driving past X and Y areas otherwise I become a victim of meth zombies or self-sovereign types who will shoot from their trailer homes right at your passing vehicle.
Yes, you could encounter such areas but again, that is not representative. You are FAR more likely to encounter crime in urban areas.
“Education is generally better in blue states, with more kids graduating from high school and college.”
Graduating from college is not necessarily a badge of honor (and I have two college degrees - B.S. in Electrical Engineering and A.A.S. in Chemical Technology). Why? Because liberals choose the idiotic degrees instead of law, medicine, engineering, and so forth. Then they cry because they cannot find a job with their idiotic degree, and they want you and me to pay for their idiotic school loans.
kristof should distinguish between liberals and Leftists. Fetterman is a liberal - Newsom is a Leftist along with the Squadettes, most blue city mayors excepting maybe Adams who goes back and forth.
“The US right now, is the most repressive dictatorship you have ever seen.”
The US Code and government in general is an abomination of the first magnitude, accumulated and endlessly added to by infinitely flawed humans. It was a noble idea but has strayed so far from the founding philosophy as to be unrecognizable just in my lifetime.
WOW, what a load of BS. So you are mentioning democracy, and democratic freedoms and saying we have to much freedom in our country. I have traveled to twenty two countries. The USA is the freest nation in the world, the best place to live. Of coarse, the democrats are trying hard to kill us. Our republican form of government, not democracy, is freedom.
What a stupid article by a stupid person.
Basically it’s …our system is best they’re just not doing it right….over there.
Total lack of self awareness and surroundings.
Actually it is the case for cities, regardless of the state governance. Here is the per capita stat:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/25-us-cities-highest-homeless-153443475.html
6. Anchorage
9. Savannah
13. Amarillo
14. Tallahassee
19. Colorado Springs
22. Battle Creek
23. Topeka
24. St. Joseph (MO)
It should not be surprising that California - the only with a mild year round climate and generous benefits - attracts so many homeless. What is more surprising is that cities with harsh climes and lower benefits (AK, KS, GA, FL TX) have so many per capita. Again, this can only be the result of liberal city governance, and not Governors DeSantis, Abbot, etc.
All these cities need to be put into receivership but then we will hear screams of racism etc. So they will continue to circle the drain.
On
“You are FAR more likely to encounter crime in urban areas.”
Except crime is almost always in Latino and black areas.
If you stick with mostly white north Chicago you will be mostly fine, for example.
It's not because they're Democratic. They're Democratic because they have all those advantages - the elites and well-off tend to vote liberal.
Communism. We’re going to get it right this time. Blah, blah, blah.
Can we believe all the crap about “how progressive places are superior to conservative?????
The premise is faulty...hard to believe.
Maybe his standards are different from mine.
Also, Chicago, Detroit, NO, Austin, Filtadelphia...every Rat run city.
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