It is not often one sees this kind of honesty – intellectual or otherwise – from a Democrat, but New York Times opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof’s column, “What Have We Liberals Done to the West Coast?” is a surprisingly honest recitation of the disasters Democrats have
visited upon the West Coast.
Mr. Kristoff’s article ultimately fails to offer plausible solutions to the disasters Democrats have visited upon the West coast, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves – first let’s look at what he got right.
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.
Why put liberals in charge nationally when the places where they have greatest control are plagued by homelessness, crime and dysfunction, such as:
* The two states with the highest rates of unsheltered homelessness are California and Oregon.
* Liberal Washington and Oregon have below-average high school graduation rates.
* Oregon ranks dead last for youth mental health services, according to Mental Health America.
* Drug overdoses appear to have risen last year in every Democratic state on the West Coast.
* Democrats in the West impeded home construction in ways that made cities unaffordable, especially for people of color.
* Black people in Portland are also murdered at higher rates than in cities more notorious for violence.
* Seattle and Portland have some of the greatest racial disparities in arrests in the country.
* Public sector efforts to build housing are often ruinously expensive, with “affordable housing” sometimes costing more than $1 million per unit.
Mr. Kristoff explained he began to recognize these problems when touring Oregon in an abortive run for Governor, “I’d meet groups of liberal donors in Portland, as the city’s problems cast a shadow over all of us; we’d all be wondering nervously if our catalytic converters were in the process of being stolen. The undercurrent in such a liberal gathering would be the failures of Republicans — but Portland was one mess we couldn’t blame on Republicans, because there simply aren’t many Republicans in Portland. This was our liberal mess.”
After reciting the many failures of West Coast Democrats Mr. Kristoff makes the surprisingly honest observation that, “Perhaps on the West Coast we have ideological purity because there isn’t much political competition. Republicans are irrelevant in much of the Far West, so they can’t hold Democrats’ feet to the fire — leading Democrats in turn to wander unchecked farther to the left.”
“Maybe a healthy Republican Party keeps the Democratic Party healthy, and vice versa,” concluded Mr. Kristoff.
Unfortunately, instead of following that idea to its logical conclusion, that maybe conservatives and Republicans have some good ideas, Mr. Kristoff asks, “Why does Democratic Party governance seem less effective on the West Coast than on the East Coast?”
He then identifies the West Coast’s dysfunction as being attributable to too much Leftwing “ideological purity,” not the failure of its first principles, such as diversity, equity, and inclusion.
How he missed the many disasters wrought by East Coast Democrat states and their Far Left ideology is hard to understand: New York’s no bail law and its dysfunctional anti-Semitic public school system, the end of gifted programs in New York, Boston and other East Coast Democrat school districts, Boston’s notorious Mass and Cass open air drug market, the fentanyl and tranq epidemic in many East Coast Democrat states, the carjacking epidemic in DC, and the extraordinarily high tax burden in both East and West Coast Democrat states, to name but a few.
Saying the East Coast liberal Democrats states are the model for failing West Coast liberal states amounts to arguing in favor of the same failed policies, only with worse weather.
What was most astonishing though were some of the measures of success Mr. Kristoff identified among West Coast Democrat states: Oregon’s assisted suicide law, California’s gun laws that have been regularly struck down as unconstitutional and expansive fraud-prone vote by mail schemes that are arguably how Democrats on both coasts keep Republicans irrelevant.
And in the end Mr. Kristoff couldn’t actually offer any conclusive criticism of the Leftists on the Left Coast and wrapped-up by attributing a private sector success – self driving cars and taxis – to the West Coast’s most dysfunctional city government, San Fransisco, claiming “That [a ride in a Waymo] did feel like a futuristic journey in a futuristic city.”
While Mr. Kristoff’s analysis of the many failures of West Coast Democrats was an interesting and somewhat unusual exercise for a liberal Democrat, if San Francisco is the future, it is much more like Blade Runner than the Jetsons, and one that is unlikely to be embraced by those of us now living safely outside the beneficent embrace of coastal Democrats, West or East.
2024 Election
west coast
Gavin Newsom
public schools
blue states
blue cities
California
homelessness
crime
Oregon
mental health services
home construction
Portland
Republican party
DEI
Mike Shellenberger explained it in "San Fran Sicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities."
The west coast? Try the entire country, folks . . .
And yet, this will be yet another "Near Miss" of a "Come to Jesus Moment" for a Leftard, as Kristoff will still vote Democrat, fully aware that, although the Republicans may not be the solution to all our problems, the Democrats are the cause of all our problems!
Their Party loyalty matters more than their actual survival, as they have been gaslighted to a point of near or total insanity, somehow believing that the Part of slavery, Jim Crow, the KKK and the creation of the new plantations like the "Hood" and/or "Projects" specifically intended to remove fathers from the family, then to contain and control blacks, is the caring, loving and considerate Party, the liberal and accepting Party, while…