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In 2002, political analyst and commentator Ruy Teixeira co-authored The Emerging Democratic Majority. The book, published near the zenith of the Bush presidency in the aftermath of 9/11, gave beleaguered Democrats cause for hope. Demographic change, Teixeira and co-author John Judis predicted, would soon create the political conditions for Democrats to forge an enduring political majority.   When an emerging coalition of educated knowledge economy professionals, minorities, young people and women powered the election of Barack Obama to the presidency in 2008 and 2012, Teixeira’s optimism appeared prescient. But the big Democratic majorities of Obama’s early years were ephemeral. The country remained closely divided politically, yo-yoing back and forth between the two parties. Trump won narrowly in 2016, and then again, catastrophically, in 2024.  Teixeira, now a senior fellow at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, has spent the years since Trump’s first victory excavating what went wrong for Democrats. So we invited him to join us on the latest episode to dissect the current state of the Democrat Party and its future prospects. In our conversation we explore why the leading optimist about the party’s future fortunes two decades ago has today became one of its most vocal pessimists.  Why did demography not turn out to be destiny? We discuss the core findings of Teixeira’s more recent analyses, laid out in a string of articles published at The Liberal Patriot (the Substack site Teixeira co-founded) and in a follow up 2023 volume also co-authored with Judis.  He argues that, from Obama’s second term on, the party’s increasingly strident promotion of the cultural beliefs of the educated elites of blue urban America has caused the party to hemorrhage working class voters of all races. Teixeira further explains why he thinks the party continues to be in deep trouble in the mid-to-longer term, despite benefitting currently from public backlash to Trump’s authoritarian excesses.  We dig in with him into Democrats’ positions on immigration, race, and gender and why he believes they create a political anchor around the Democrats’ necks. And we close with a discussion of how the increasing polarization between the parties distorts our politics, with Teixeira arguing that the educated cosmopolitans who now comprise the Democratic Party’s vocal core need to stop treating politics as a self-ratifying moral crusade and focus on what matters: building a winning coalition. “Politics is not supposed to be fun, It’s supposed to be about getting shit done, and that’s hard, typically, and you have to make compromises,” he tells us. “You don’t always get to stand on your soapbox and talk about how you’re on the right side of history.” Robert Scaramuccia edited this episode. Outside references: John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira, The Emerging Democratic Majority (2002). Ruy Teixeira and John B. Judis, Where Have All the Democrats Gone? (2023) Ruy Teixiera, "The Democrats' Common Sense Problem," The Liberal Patriot, March 24, 2022 Ruy Teixeira and Yuval Levin, "Politics Without Winners: Can Either Party Build a Majority Coalition?" American Enterprise Institute, October 2024 Please send your feedback, guest and show ideas to [email protected]

We spoke with San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan last April about his groundbreaking approach to municipal governance and the new directions he wants to take the Democratic Party. Now, he's running for governor of California, which makes this a good time to give this interview a second spin. A Harvard grad who made his bones in the disruption-centered world of Silicon Valley tech startups, Mahan tells us he's put his focus on prioritizing results over ideology since becoming mayor of one of California’s biggest blue cites in 2023.  Along the way, Mahan has been more than willing to touch progressive third rails. Take Prop 36, a 2024 CA ballot measure toughening sentences for drug and theft crimes. Openly bucking Gavin Newsom and the Democratic establishment, Mahan went all in advocating for Prop 36. Fed up Cali voters backed it too, passing it by more than two to one.  He hasn’t stopped there. Mahan’s call for “a revolution of common sense” has led to breaks with public sector unions over pay raises and linking pay to performance, to prioritizing shelter over housing, and – most recently – to his controversial proposal to arrest homeless people who repeatedly refuse offers of shelter. So far, it’s working at the ballot box: Mahan was re-elected last year in a cakewalk, with 87 percent of the vote. So we decided to go deep with one of the nation’s more unique blue city mayors. “Historically, cities have been engines of economic opportunity and upward mobility, and I think that's where we're struggling most,” Mahan told us in explaining his motives for broadly rethinking blue city governance.  Is Mahan a role model or a pariah? Listen to what he has to say and decide for yourself.   Our editor is Quinn Waller.  About Blue City Blues  Twenty years ago, Dan Savage encouraged progressives to move to blue cities to escape the reactionary politics of red places. And he got his wish. Over the last two decades, rural places have gotten redder and urban areas much bluer.    America’s bluest cities developed their own distinctive culture, politics and governance. They became the leading edge of a cultural transformation that reshaped progressivism, redefined urbanism and remade the Democratic Party. But as blue cities went their own way, as they thrived as economically and culturally vibrant trend-setters, these urban cosmopolitan islands also developed their own distinctive set of problems. Inequality soared, and affordability tanked. And the conversation about those problems stagnated, relegated to the narrowly provincial local section of regional newspapers or local NPR programming.  The Blue City Blues podcast aims to pick up where Savage’s Urban Archipelago idea left off, with a national perspective on the present and the future of urban America. We will consider blue cities as a collective whole. What unites them? What troubles them? What defines them?  Please send your feedback, guest and show ideas to [email protected]

While David is away, we are reposting some early days Blue City Blues episodes that many of our more recent listeners may have missed. We thought this one, with author and cultural critic Freddie DeBoer, was a great conversation on a topic that remains timely. We'll be back with fresh episodes shortly: Freddie DeBoer knows a thing or two about mental illness. He’s been admitted into psychiatric hospitals five times; he was involuntarily committed in 2002. He has, as they say, lived experience.  Freddie is also one of our most original and independent commentators on American cultural trends. A self-described Marxist and a cogent critic of recent ideological turns within blue city progressive culture, he has written extensively, with clarity and passion and urgency, about why the idea of involuntary commitment of the severely mentally ill has long been a third rail in progressive blue city politics, and why that needs to change.  We asked Freddie on to make his case for reforming our laws and procedures, and also our attitudes, about how to address the problem of the mentally ill suffering on blue city streets. And to discuss why the disability rights community has gotten this issue so wrong.   "If the left does not have a vision for how to solve these problems, then the people will elect strong men who will come in and do it in a worse way," he told us.   Our editor is Quinn Waller. Outside References:  Freddie DeBoer, "Psychotic Disorders Do Not Respect Autonomy, Independence, Agency or Freedom," Substack (Freddie DeBoer), May 24, 2023 Freddie DeBoer, "The Case for Forcing the Mentally Ill into Treatment," New York, June 20, 2024 Freddie DeBoer, "'Well I Don't Know About This Involuntary treatment Business!' He Said, Stepping into the Safety of a Closed Tab," Substack (Freddie DeBoer), July 3, 2024 Freddie DeBoer, "You Call that Compassion?" Substack (Freddie DeBoer), Aug. 5, 2024 Freddie DeBoer, "What Is Freedom for the Mentally Ill?" City Journal, Dec. 2, 2024 Please send your feedback, guest and show ideas to [email protected]

In 1955, three men in the bohemian enclave of Greenwich Village got together to form what they thought would be a local community newspaper. But the Village Voice would soon morph into the voice of New York City’s political outsiders and cultural dissidents, as it became the progenitor of a new kind of journalistic outlet – the alternative newsweekly – and a new genre of engaged, inside out journalism that rejected the antiseptic detachment of traditional post-war newspapers. The model pioneered by the Voice spread rapidly across the country, and alt weeklies became a ubiquitous fixture in the media landscapes of large American cities in the second half of the 20th century.  Tricia Romano, our guest on this BCB episode, spent eight years as a writer and columnist for the Village Voice in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s. She is the author of The Freaks Came Out to Write, a sweeping, magisterial oral history of the original, and most storied, of the alts. Over its 88 chapters and 572 pages, Romano’s definitive account weaves together more than 200 interviews to tell the inside story of the paper that radically remade a large corner of the American journalism world in its own image.  With David away, Sandeep and Tricia discuss the epic factional ideological battles and the soap operatic personality clashes between legendary writers – Hentoff, Christgau, Gornick, Musto, Crouch, Brownmiller, Whitehead and so many others – that shaped the Voice’s quarrelsome and often overwrought internal office politics. But we also explore how the Voice became not just the chronicler, but the nurturer and the advocate, of a series of once fringe subcultures and artistic movements that fundamentally changed not just New York City but blue city cosmopolitanism more broadly. Experimental theater, radical feminism, hippie bohemianism, avant garde film, gay liberation, hip hop, all were catapulted from the social fringes to the city’s cultural mainstream by the early and loving attention of the Voice, Romano says.  We dive into the series of colorful owners -- including Rupert Murdoch, the founder of Fox News -- and editors who shaped the paper in its heyday  and discuss how the Voice lost its distinctiveness in the ‘90s as once stodgy mainstream papers like the New York Times aped its concerns and poached its writers, and once the rise of the internet stole away its classified ads cash cow. And finally we lament how it finally began to unravel into its current hollowed out husk when the owners of the New Times chain of weeklies bought the Voice in 2005 and rapidly stripped it of its countercultural cool. We close by talking about how the latter day fracturing and fragmentation of our online subcultures cries out for a cohering voice of the sort that alt newspapers like the Voice once provided. Our editor is Quinn Waller.    Outside sources: Tricia Romano, The Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper that Changed American Culture (2024).  Please send your feedback, guest and show ideas to [email protected]

The pervasiveness of untreated mental illness on the streets of blue cities – about 20 percent of the homeless population in the United States is severely mentally ill – is a glaring feature of the urban landscape. So we invited sociologist Neil Gong, the author of an eye-opening book, Sons, Daughters and Sidewalk Psychotics: Mental Illness and Homelessness in Los Angeles, to join us on this latest BCB episode to talk about his observations of how class dynamics drive radically different social expectations of how to address this problem. Gong spent years observing public outreach and treatment efforts directed at the mentally ill in Los Angeles, first with the homeless on the gritty streets of Skid Row, and then in the city's tony private pay clinics where wealthy families sent their mentally ill relatives. His book insightfully unpacks the complicated – and often counterintuitive – ways that social inequality shapes not only how we address, but also how we think about, mental illness in urban America.  We dig in with Gong on the “two different worlds” that exist in LA for handling mental illness. The public system for the homeless focuses on what Gong terms “tolerant containment.” This is the effort, born of civil libertarian ideas about the personal autonomy of the mentally ill combined with a woeful lack of public resources, to accept the problematic behaviors of the mentally ill so long as they remain out of public view in subsidized apartments or flophouses. But Neil contrasts that with the “concerted constraint” work of private clinics that, driven by the concerns of the patients’ families and loved ones, limit the freedoms of their clients as they intensively work to make them as high functioning as possible.  In the latter part of the conversation we talk about what we should be doing to improve our response to mental illness in American cities. Gong argues we don't need new approaches, but rather greater investment in a more balanced system that combines a variety of approaches, from sober housing to intensive residential programs to in patient hospitalization capacity that compliments the existing, clearly inadequate, post-deinstitutionalization community care system. Our editor is Quinn Waller.  Outside sources: Neil Gong, Sons, Daughters, and Sidewalk Psychotics: Mental Illness and Homelessness in Los Angeles (University of Chicago Press, 2024). About Blue City Blues:  Over the last two decades, rural places have gotten redder and urban areas much bluer. America’s bluest cities developed their own distinctive culture, politics and governance. They became the leading edge of a cultural transformation that reshaped progressivism, redefined urbanism and remade the Democratic Party. But as blue cities went their own way, as they thrived as economically and culturally vibrant trend-setters, these urban islands also developed their own distinctive set of problems. Inequality soared, and affordability tanked. And the conversation about those problems stagnated, as rising tribalism and growing polarization constrained discourse and reinforced cosmopolitan progressive groupthink among educated urban elites. Blue City Blues aims get beyond that conventional wisdom in offering a national perspective on the present and the future of urban America. We will consider blue cities as a collective whole. What unites them? What troubles them? What defines them? Through conversations with a diverse array of smart thinkers and expert guests, we're committed to expanding the horizons of dialogue about the challenges blue cities face.  Please send your feedback, guest and show ideas to [email protected] Please send your feedback, guest and show ideas to [email protected]

We invited writer Sherman Alexie on to weigh in on recent cultural trends in blue cities.   Alexie has long been recognized as one of the country’s most talented, interesting – and funny – literary figures. The author of two dozen books, including The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007), which won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, along with many short stories, essays and poems, Sherman has spent his life, and much of his writing, negotiating the boundaries between vastly different cultural communities: after growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation, the child of alcoholic parents, he went on to become an “urban Indian” in cosmopolitan Seattle as his highly lauded body of work catapulted him into the rarefied ranks of the  literary elite.  Much of Alexie’s recent writing has been on Substack, where he has a large and devoted following. That work touches, in layered and nuanced ways, on the beliefs and the failings of blue city urban cultural, intellectual and activist elites. Alexie, sometimes subtly and obliquely and sometimes more directly, questions the assumptions of the self-righteous, puncturing the sense of certitude and moral perfection that has gripped much of the educated left.  In our conversation, Alexie tells us why, drawing on a terrifying youthful encounter with a budding murderer-in-training on the reservation, he felt compelled to question the abolitionist pieties of Ivy League academics, why he now has a complicated relationship with leftist politics, and why he describes himself as “artistically a libertarian” and has come to believe that “every writer is an individual who owes loyalty to nobody.” Our editor is Quinn Waller. About Blue City Blues:  Twenty years ago, Dan Savage encouraged progressives to move to blue cities to escape the reactionary politics of red places. And he got his wish. Over the last two decades, rural places have gotten redder and urban areas much bluer.    America’s bluest cities developed their own distinctive culture, politics and governance. They became the leading edge of a cultural transformation that reshaped progressivism, redefined urbanism and remade the Democratic Party. But as blue cities went their own way, as they thrived as economically and culturally vibrant trend-setters, these urban cosmopolitan islands also developed their own distinctive set of problems. Inequality soared, and affordability tanked. And the conversation about those problems stagnated, relegated to the narrowly provincial local section of regional newspapers or local NPR programming.  Blue City Blues aims to pick up where Savage’s Urban Archipelago idea left off, with a national perspective on the present and the future of urban America. We will consider blue cities as a collective whole. What unites them? What troubles them? What defines them? Please send your feedback, guest and show ideas to [email protected]

This week we take a close look at the damning decline in the quality of public education in progressive cities where, as Sandeep puts it, the "glaring contradiction" between a fixation on equity and shockingly inequitable results "drives me bat shit crazy." Our guest, Kelsey Piper, formerly at Vox and now a staff writer with The Argument, doesn't pull any punches either, arguing that "illiteracy is a policy choice.”  In a series of cogently argued recent pieces (links below), Piper has provided yeoman service in jump starting a debate, largely dormant during the years of the Great Awokening, among left-of-center commentators about the declining quality of public education in blue jurisdictions. Her work details how Mississippi went from dead last to near the top of the nation in fourth-grade reading scores – demonstrating particular success with poor and minority children – via a combination of mandated phonics-based curriculum, teacher training, and accountability measures, including the controversial rule that holds back third-grade students who fail to demonstrate basic reading proficiency.  Rather than joining her call to follow Mississippi’s lead, some prominent thought leaders on the left have instead worked overtime to try to discredit the success that Mississippi (and several other Southern states) has achieved. But Piper’s defense of the underlying data supporting “the Southern surge” in test scores is convincing.  Beyond the Mississippi Miracle, we go deep with Piper on other misguided pedagogical trends that have emerged out of progressive education circles, like the move away from tracking and the push to eliminate gifted and talented programs, as well as rampant grade inflation and the lowering of standards in the name of equity. And we delve into the history of education reform in recent decades, and why the accountability ideas that were ascendant in the Clinton, Bush and Obama years have fallen into such disrepute on the left. Drawing on a shocking recent UC San Diego report acknowledging a massive surge in admitted students requiring remedial math instruction despite boasting stellar high school transcripts with A’s in higher level math classes, Piper explains how a cynical focus on credentials over competence — giving kids a passing grade instead of making sure they reach basic competency — is a catastrophic mistake that only delays accountability, putting students at a profound disadvantage in the real world.  Our editor is Quinn Waller.  Outside references: Kelsey Piper, “Illiteracy Is a Policy Choice: Why Aren’t We Gathering Behind Mississippi's Banner?” The Argument, Sept. 25, 2025 Karen Vaites and Kelsey Piper, “Is Mississippi Cooking the Books? No, the Skeptics Are Wrong. The Southern Surge Is Real,” The Argument, Oct. 7, 2025 Kelsey Piper, “Education Isn’t a Zero-Sum Game: The Strange Equity Crusade Against Algebra,” The Argument, Nov. 3, 2025 Kelsey Piper, “When Grades Stop Meaning Anything: The UC San Diego Math Scandal Is a Warning,” The Argument, Nov. 18, 2025 And ICYMI, previously on BCB: "Whitney Tilson on Why Kids in Blue City School Districts Are Being Left Behind," Oct, 9, 2025 About Blue City Blues:  Twenty years ago, Dan Savage encouraged progressives to move to blue cities to escape the reactionary politics of red places. And he got his wish. Over the last two decades, rural places have gotten redder and urban areas much bluer.    Ame Please send your feedback, guest and show ideas to [email protected]

In November 2024, fed up San Francisco voters elected an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune the city's 46th mayor. Daniel Lurie, a moderate Democrat and a newcomer to City Hall politics who largely self-funded his own outsider campaign, ran on the promise of fundamental change, reversing course away from the permissive - and often performative - radical chic progressivism of the peak woke era. For a city reeling from spiking crime and street disorder, he won by offering a return to what he calls "common sense" policies that involve getting tougher on encampments, crime, and public drug use, while beefing up policing and speeding construction of new housing.  Now Mayor Lurie is approaching the first anniversary of his tenure in office, and we want to know: how well is he delivering on his promises, and has life in San Francisco improved as a result? For answers we turn to San Francisco Chronicle editorial columnist Emily Hoeven, a relatively recent transplant to the city whose sharply drawn and impactful writing about San Francisco issues - and in particular about the failures and foibles of municipal governance - has quickly established her one as of the most prominent journalistic voices in the city.  Hoeven tells us that there are good reasons for Lurie's broad popularity (recent polling has his approval rating north of 70 percent). The mayor's relentless cheerleading for a San Francisco comeback, particularly through his prolific and much viewed output of Instagram videos that lean in to his "earnest dad vibes," has changed how San Franciscans are feeling about their city, Hoeven tells us. And tangible signs of progress are readily visible: crime has significantly dropped, new businesses are opening and some big new housing developments are coming on line. "Overall, I do think the city is in a good place, and hopefully we'll continue heading in that direction," Hoeven says. But she also emphasizes that significant challenges remain, and as the mayor's honeymoon with the public fades "it's probably only going to get harder" for Lurie to maintain the city's positive momentum. This is San Francisco, after all. Untreated addiction and serious mental illness remain a problem on the streets of the city, city government faces budget and labor challenges, and the city's notoriously fractious politics may be poised for a comeback. "The realities are going to become more real," as Hoeven puts it.  Our editor is Quinn Waller. Outside references: Emily Hoeven, "S.F.’s giant naked woman sculpture brought out the worst in our city," San Francisco Chronicle, April 15, 2025 Emily Hoeven, "People are ‘obsessed’ with Daniel Lurie’s Instagram. But will it actually help S.F.?" San Francisco Chronicle, May 28, 2025 Correction: The first version of the audio for this episode misidentified the artist who created "Father and Son" for Seattle's Olympic Sculpture park. The artist is Louise Bourgeois. We have removed the reference in the audio to avoid misinforming listeners.  About Blue City Blues:  Twenty years ago, Dan Savage encouraged progressives to move to blue cities to escape the reactionary politics of red places. And he got his wish. Over the last two decades, rural places have gotten redder and urban areas much bluer.    America’s bluest cities developed their own distinctive culture, politics and governance. They became the leading edge of a cultural transformation that reshaped progressivism, redefined urbanism and remade the Democratic Party. But as blue cities went their own way, as th Please send your feedback, guest and show ideas to [email protected]

Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care was a National Book Award finalist. Author Claudia Rowe exposes the chilling truth: the nation's foster care system is a "major gear" driving mass homelessness and the incarceration crisis in American cities.  She shares shocking statistics—including studies that found up to 59% of youth who grew up in foster care have been incarcerated by age 26—and outlines how the system's structural failures lead to such devastating outcomes. Rowe joins us to share the story of this broken system through the eyes of the former foster care kids who lived it, and she argues for a fundamental transformation grounded in modern brain science. Our editor is Quinn Waller. About Blue City Blues:  Twenty years ago, Dan Savage encouraged progressives to move to blue cities to escape the reactionary politics of red places. And he got his wish. Over the last two decades, rural places have gotten redder and urban areas much bluer.    America’s bluest cities developed their own distinctive culture, politics and governance. They became the leading edge of a cultural transformation that reshaped progressivism, redefined urbanism and remade the Democratic Party. But as blue cities went their own way, as they thrived as economically and culturally vibrant trend-setters, these urban cosmopolitan islands also developed their own distinctive set of problems. Inequality soared, and affordability tanked. And the conversation about those problems stagnated, relegated to the narrowly provincial local section of regional newspapers or local NPR programming.  Blue City Blues aims to pick up where Savage’s Urban Archipelago idea left off, with a national perspective on the present and the future of urban America. We will consider blue cities as a collective whole. What unites them? What troubles them? What defines them? Please send your feedback, guest and show ideas to [email protected] Please send your feedback, guest and show ideas to [email protected]

This Thanksgiving week, Blue City Blues sits down with former traffic engineer and urban planner Ray Delahanty, better known as “CityNerd” on YouTube. We get into the essential question: “what makes a great city?” Ray also shares his insights on the concept of "affordable urbanism" and gives us his honest assessment of one of modern transportation's most divisive projects, the "Vegas Loop." Our editor is Quinn Waller.  About Blue City Blues:  Twenty years ago, Dan Savage encouraged progressives to move to blue cities to escape the reactionary politics of red places. And he got his wish. Over the last two decades, rural places have gotten redder and urban areas much bluer.    America’s bluest cities developed their own distinctive culture, politics and governance. They became the leading edge of a cultural transformation that reshaped progressivism, redefined urbanism and remade the Democratic Party. But as blue cities went their own way, as they thrived as economically and culturally vibrant trend-setters, these urban cosmopolitan islands also developed their own distinctive set of problems. Inequality soared, and affordability tanked. And the conversation about those problems stagnated, relegated to the narrowly provincial local section of regional newspapers or local NPR programming.  Blue City Blues aims to pick up where Savage’s Urban Archipelago idea left off, with a national perspective on the present and the future of urban America. We will consider blue cities as a collective whole. What unites them? What troubles them? What defines them? Please send your feedback, guest and show ideas to [email protected] Please send your feedback, guest and show ideas to [email protected]

One of Seattle's most insightful chroniclers, longtime Seattle Times metro columnist Danny Westneat, joins us in this episode to discuss the blues that have settled on one of the country's bluest (and most educated and affluent) cities. For more than a decade now, Westneat wrote in a recent post-election column, both Seattle city hall and the voting public have seemed torn between the agendas of the city's two competing political camps: on any objective scale Seattle's left and center left may not be that far apart ideologically, but subjectively in the city they feel -- and act -- as if they are diametric opposites.  The result, Danny says, has been an extended period of discord and paralysis within Seattle's municipal governance, as voters yo-yo between the two poles, making it close to impossible for elected officials on either side of the divide to fully enact their agenda while briefly in the ascendency. In the elections two years ago, moderates swept out the left at City Hall, but this year the pedulum is swinging hard in the opposite direction. "This failure to choose has become a core part of Seattle’s identity," Westneat writes. "It’s why the city feels sort of 'stuck' much of the time. Directionless." In out conversation, we discuss the city's struggles to come to grips with rampant street level fentanyl and meth addiction and the terrible toll it is taking on affected neighborhoods, and the equally deep divide over how to address the homeless encampments that have become a seemingly permanent feature of Seattle's streetscape. Danny relates the story of a homeless man in his neighborhood who ended up dying in a bus shelter as the local community could not come to agreement about how best to help him, suggesting that failure is emblematic of the Seattle public's conflicted psychology.  We also delve into the city's sharply contested mayoral race -- the outcome of which, at the time of our taping, hung on a razor's edge -- and discuss our impressions of Katie Wilson, the progressive activist (and self-proclaimed socialist) challenger to incumbent Mayor Bruce Harrell. And we assess whether we think (if she emerges victorious) she might be able to break the political logjam and address the city's seemingly intractable street-level problems, mostly born of what Westneat has termed the "prosperity bomb" that exploded over the city over the last decade. Our editor is Quinn Waller.  Outside references: Danny Westneat, "Seattle shows it's a fickle city," Seattle Times, Nov. 8, 2025. Danny Westneat, "After a homeless man;'s death, a Seattle neighborhood confronts the limits of helping," Seattle Times, Nov. 22, 2023. About Blue City Blues:  Twenty years ago, Dan Savage encouraged progressives to move to blue cities to escape the reactionary politics of red places. And he got his wish. Over the last two decades, rural places have gotten redder and urban areas much bluer.    America’s bluest cities developed their own distinctive culture, politics and governance. They became the leading edge of a cultural transformation that reshaped progressivism, redefined urbanism and remade the Democratic Party. But as blue cities went their own way, as they thrived as economically and culturally vibrant trend-setters, these urban cosmopolitan islands also developed their own distinctive set of problems. Inequality soared, and affordability tanked. And the conversatio Please send your feedback, guest and show ideas to [email protected]

In New York City, democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani routed scandal-tainted Andrew Cuomo, completing his at first unthinkable, then inevitable rise to become the next mayor of New York City. His David vs. Goliath triumph has vaulted Mamdani from backbench obscurity to political superstardom; progressives around the country are swooning, seeing his success as proof that the unapologetic embrace of bold redistributive policies and vastly expanded government interventions into the marketplace represent the pathway forward for a reeling Democratic Party still struggling to come to terms with its failure to vanquish Trump.  Nor is Mamdani a unicorn. Increasingly in blue cities young, energized socialists are mounting grassroots insurgencies against what they decry as a sclerotic establishment too cozy with corporate power and billionaire elites. In Seattle, self-described socialist Katie Wilson is on the cusp of ousting an incumbent mayor once thought to be sailing to reelection. In Minneapolis, the veteran incumbent mayor just survived a spirted challenge from another Mamdani-like young, Muslim, democratic socialist challenger.  So is this the tip of a new political spear? Is socialism the future of governance in blue cities? And anyway, why shouldn't urban America adopt policies that make transit and child care free, freeze rents to increase housing affordability, and open publicly owned groceries, as Mamdani is proposing? Because those are dumb ideas that ignore basic economic realities and are doomed to fail, contends libertarian Nick Gillespie, an Editor at Large at Reason Magazine and a sharply incisive observer of the American political landscape. After having progressive Dem pollster Celinda Lake onto BCB after Mamdani's initial primary win to make the affirmative case for the young, charismatic socialist, we turn to Gillespie, the author of a recent piece (link below) arguing Mamdani will make NYC a less vibrant and livable city, for the counter argument.  In our conversation, Gillespie argues that Mamdani’s rise is a function of the “symbolic grievances” of educated, relatively well off voters with unrealistic expectations, a rudimentary at best understanding of market economics and no grounding in history. We then turn to a discussion on whether individualism is passé in the US, on both the left and the right, dissect the mounting failings of the Democratic establishment, and then conclude with a look at what “socialism” really means in the context of blue cities.    Our editor is Quinn Waller. Outside references: Nick Gillespie, “Mamdani’s Socialist Mayorship Will Make New York a Worse Place to Live and Do Business,”Reason, Nov. 1, 2025. Please send your feedback, guest and show ideas to [email protected]

On July 24, Donald Trump declared war on the homeless. At least that was how his Executive Order, titled “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets” was received in blue urban America by many homeless advocates and Democratic elected officials.  With billions in federal funding at risk of being pulled from Housing First providers, who operate on the assumption that helping homeless people address their underlying issues like addiction or mental illness is most likely to be successful when those people are first housed, the National Alliance to End Homelessness denounced the EO as “a broadside threat to the nation’s homeless response systems, people experiencing homelessness, and the providers who serve them.”  At first read, the language of the EO certainly seems to take aim at the Housing First and harm reduction policies that hold sway in blue cities. It requires “ending support for ‘housing first’ policies that deprioritize accountability” while  calling for expanded use of involuntary commitment to get mentally ill homeless people into institutional care. It even raises the specter of criminal sanctions against providers who “permit the use and distribution of illicit drugs on property under their control.”   But is this Executive Order really a declaration of total war on blue city approaches to homelessness? Or is there, embedded in its carefully worded language, some opportunity for Housing First advocates to find common ground with the Trumpist right? For answers we turned to one of the main intellectual authors of the Trump EO, Devon Kurtz of the conservative Cicero Institute. In our conversation, Kurtz argues that common ground is not only possible, but is the desired outcome.  He argues that Housing First too often means Housing Only, and that programs that don't make serious efforts to address their clients’ underlying issues cause harm and should have their funding cut. But he contends that more responsible providers in blue cities should see the EO as an opportunity to put more emphasis on needed interventions like addiction treatment and job training for their clients. But Kurtz acknowledges that in our current polarized environment, whether blue cities and conservative advocates of more interventionist approaches to homelessness can reach an accommodation remains an open question.  Our editor is Quinn Waller.  Outside references: Trump Executive Order: “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,” July 24, 2025 Devon Kurtz, “Trump Forces D.C. to Get Real About Homelessness,” Wall Street Journal, August 20, 2025 Paul Webster and Devon Kurtz, “Trump’s Executive Order on Homelessness Is an Opportunity,” City Journal, Sept. 25, 2025 Seattle Nice podcast w (former BCB guest) Lisa Daugaard, "Trump's Homelessness Exec Order: Read the Fine Print Before Freaking O Please send your feedback, guest and show ideas to [email protected]

Like almost everything else in present day America, crime in blue cities has become a deeply partisan and polarized issue. While progressives routinely downplay levels of urban crime and call for a singular focus on “root causes” like poverty and racism, Trump, with the enthusiastic backing of the MAGA law-and-order right, grossly exaggerates the dangers of blue cities. He has ludicrously referred to such cities as “war zone(s)” and "hellhole(s)" as, in a dangerously authoritarian escalation, he’s deployed the National Guard to Washington, D.C., Chicago, and more recently Portland.  So, what’s true and what’s not about crime in blue cites? And what works and what doesn’t in fighting it? For answers, we turn to one of the country’s most prominent and respected criminologists. David Kennedy is a long-time professor of criminal justice at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, and the director of the National Network for Safe Communities. Several decades ago, Kennedy famously drew upon insights into urban crime spikes associated with the crack epidemic to devise innovative intervention strategies to interrupt the surging violence that plagued major American cities in that era. Recently, Kennedy authored an incisive New York Times op ed titled “What Both the Left and Right Get Wrong about Crime.”  Kennedy tell us that there’s some truth in the both the left and the right’s characterization of urban crime, but that each sides’ approach, conducted in isolation, is doomed to fail. Rather, he points out that much of the violent crime in blue cities is driven by a very small number of relatively easily identifiable people who are themselves likely to be both the perpetrators and victims of violence. Interrupting those patterns of violent action and reaction requires carefully calibrated, carrot-and-stick interventions targeted directly at those individuals, Kennedy argues.  Kennedy also emphasizes the deep social harms created by urban drug markets, and he strongly rejects progressive claims that targeted enforcement efforts to disrupt such markets just “move the problem around.” Finally, he tells us that while “broken windows” policing originated as a sensitive and effective approach to preventing serious crime, the concept has been fundamentally discredited as it morphed into the blunt and unevenly applied “zero tolerance” approaches in cities like New York.  Our editor is Quinn Waller.  Additional References: 2009 New Yorker profile of David Kennedy: John Seabrook, “Don’t Shoot,” June 15,2009.  David Kennedy op ed, “What Both the Right and Left Get Wrong About Violent Crime,” New York Times, Sept. 10. 2025   Please send your feedback, guest and show ideas to [email protected]

The modern Democratic Party has a class and culture problem. Blue city leaders struggle to understand their cultural and political disconnect with working-class voters. Why did so many, both within and beyond blue cities, cast their ballots for Donald Trump, who gives tax breaks to the wealthy? When and how did the Democratic Party lose the allegiance of the white (and increasingly of the black and brown) working class? In this episode, former politics reporter and author David Paul Kuhn joins us to unpack a pivotal, yet often overlooked, event: New York City's "Hard Hat Riot," a spontaneous May 1970 attack by hundreds of blue collar construction workers, in lower Manhattan building the World Trade Center towers, on long-haired anti-war protesters four days after the shootings at Kent State University. Kuhn, whose richly textured book and fascinating new PBS documentary delve into the riot and its cultural and political import, discusses with us the crack up of the Democratic Party’s New Deal coalition as a chasm grew between traditionally patriotic blue-collar workers and countercultural, college educated anti-Vietnam War "elites" amidst the economic shifts of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Kuhn argues the riot serves as a microcosm for an emerging – and enduring – political and social polarization in American politics. He argues that the "hard hats," frequently mischaracterized as pro-war, were in reality anti-anti-war, feeling their patriotism and sacrifices were being disrespected by protestors who were waving Viet Cong flags and burning the Stars and Stripes. The conversation explores how white ethnic working class Americans felt increasingly alienated from blue city leaders and the New Left counterculture, and how first Richard Nixon and then subsequent Republican politicians weaponized that rift for their own political advantage.   Drawing contemporary parallels, the episode explores how the events of 1970 New York City triggered the Republican Party's rapid inroads with non-college educated working-class Americans. The discussion examines the lasting impact of deindustrialization, cultural tensions, and the ongoing challenge for the Democratic Party to re-engage with this critical demographic, offering a historical lens through which to understand the persistent polarization affecting blue cities.  Our editor is Quinn Waller.  Read David Paul Kuhn, The Hardhat Riot: Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of the White Working Class Revolution (Oxford University Press), selected as one of the New York Times’ “100 Notable Books of 2020”  Also watch PBS’ American Experience documentary, Hard Hat Riot, aired Sept. 30. 2025 Please send your feedback, guest and show ideas to [email protected]