Four years ago, a 36 year-old Harvard Law grad and City Councilmember named Michelle Wu rolled to victory as the first elected female, non-white mayor of Boston. Since then, she's racked up further governing successes: Boston these days is often touted as the safest big city in the country, and Wu has delivered progressive wins (albeit incremental ones) on free transit, fair housing and a municipal Green New Deal.

Wu, up for re-election this year, provided an eye-popping demonstration of her  broad popularity in the September primary. She blitzed her free-spending establishment opponent -- the son of New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft -- by a whopping 49 percentage points, prompting him to raise the white flag and exit the race. In so doing, Wu has, in less than four years at Boston's helm, established herself as a national progressive icon who has seemingly cracked the complex code of turning movement left ideology into a successful governance strategy, and who now stands as a role model for other young, energized progressives on the cusp of taking the reins in blue cities like New York and Seattle.  

So what, exactly, is Wu's secret sauce of successful governance? How has she seemingly so rapidly turned the old, white ethnic, two-fisted Boston into a multi-culty latter day symbol of how progressives can not only win, but deliver tangible quality of life results on homelessness, crime and other hot button municipal issues?

For answers, we turn to Emma Platoff, the political enterprise reporter at the Boston Globe, who has been covering Wu's remarkable rise since the mayor's successful 2021 run. Platoff tells us that Wu is indeed a talented politician who has threaded the needle of being both a progressive standard bearer and a supple pragmatist, finding success by forging alliances with previous ideological adversaries -- like the police union -- and by triangulating against political forces she can not overcome. But we are left asking a question that only time can answer: will the progressive mayors who follow in her footsteps be able to emulate her success?

Our editor is Quinn Waller. 

This week we take a look back at the COVID-19 pandemic with Steven Macedo, a professor of politics at Princeton University and co-author of "In Covid's Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us." The book offers a self-critical examination of how blue leaders and institutions navigated the unprecedented crisis. 

Macedo makes a provocative argument: that cosmopolitan elites, influenced by political divides and class blindness, made some significant mistakes in pandemic response. The conversation highlights a lack of public debate surrounding the trade-offs inherent in lockdown measures, school closures, and other non-pharmaceutical interventions. We also discuss the economic and social costs, disproportionately borne by low-income and minority communities. 

The episode was taped before a live audience at Seattle University at the invitation of President Eduardo M. Peñalver as part of his presidential speaker series. 

Our editor is Quinn Waller.  

New York Times contributing opinion writer Nicole Gelinas, who writes regularly on New York City issues, is the author of a deeply researched and informative book, Movement: New York’s Long War to take Back Its Streets from the Car. In this fascinating account, Gelinas cogently argues that NYC’s unwinding of its robust early 20th century streetcar system, followed by decades of relentless effort by the city’s political elites to remake the landscape of the dense urban city to be car friendly, sharply undercut New York's livability and brought the city to its proverbial knees. Unwinding NYC’s car fixation, and restoring a welcoming and functioning transit system – and with it the city’s vitality – has been a 50-year struggle.

A senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, Gelinas is that most fabled of unicorns (at least in our experience), an ardently pro-transit conservative. Her deep dive into New York’s 20th century car wars offers up some fascinating insights, not just about New York, but about blue cities generally. 

In this episode, we tease lessons from the grassroots political organizing in Greenwich Village, led by housewife Shirley Hayes, that in the 1950s stopped a Robert Moses road that would have split Washington Square Park, and how that decade-long battle raised the consciousness of a young Jane Jacobs. And we go deep with Gelinas on why transit is so central to the health of dense urban environments, and why, given that reality, so many urban electeds and residents  continue to worship at the altar of the automobile. 

We also talk about how important it is that transit systems are well run and welcoming. In particular, we discuss the wave of crime that beset the New York’s subway system in the 1970s and ‘80s, and how a young transit police chief named William Bratton, appointed in 1990, got a handle on subway crime by putting an emphasis on apprehending fare evaders. Bratton's “broken windows” approach worked, sharply reducing subway crime – a lesson forgotten by blue cities in the 2010s, when the curtailment of fare enforcement efforts sparked a new wave of transit crime and disorder, which again began to drive riders away. And we close with a discussion of why Trump’s move to send the National Guard to police blue cities won’t work.

Our editor is Quinn Waller.

In this special episode we venture outside our respective basements to explore a sprawling open-air drug market in Seattle’s Little Saigon neighborhood, which resembles similar drug markets in poor, blue city neighborhoods across the US that have been overrun by the urban fentanyl and methamphetamine crises. Whether it's the Tenderloin in San Francisco, or Kensington in Philadelphia, or Skid Row or MacArthur Park in Los Angeles, the well intentioned, largely permissive policies towards hard drug use that in recent years took root in progressive-dominated bluer cities is coming under increasing challenge, and not just from Trump and the MAGA right.

In the fall of 2024, Oregon rolled back its famous 2020 experiment in full drug decriminalization - as did Vancouver, B.C. earlier last year - after Portland neighborhoods like Old Town were overrun by addicts committing petty crimes to fuel their addictions. Recently installed San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie has embraced more aggressive law enforcement and treatment interventions, as part of a nascent shift heralded by the city’s adoption of “Breaking the Cycle” and “Recovery First” policies.

Our guide in Little Saigon is Andrew Constantino, a former heroin addict and outreach worker, whose recent Seattle Times op-ed, “Here’s what I Learned about Addiction at 12th and Jackson,” has struck a nerve in Seattle’s social services provider community. Constantino walks us through the streets of Seattle’s most notorious open air drug market, where methamphetamine, fentanyl, and stolen goods are openly exchanged at all hours of the day and night, and explains why so many fentanyl users are stuck here on the streets, trapped in a cycle of rising hopelessness and despair – due to the fleeting, highly addictive nature of the drug.

With a searing candor, disarming humor and electric cowboy green hair, Constantino rejects many prevailing progressive orthodoxies to offer his own, deeply compassionate yet sharply questioning perspective on addiction, personal autonomy, and opportunities for productive interventions on the mean streets of blue cities.

Our editor is Quinn Waller. Our producer and editor for this episode was Jennie Cecil Moore. 

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? 

The Windy City is not just a great American metropolis – the third largest in the United States – it is a world class city, recognized globally as a center of finance, trade and economic dynamism, and as a cultural and tourist mecca. 

But there is an emerging counter-narrative about Chicago, a declension story of a great and proud urban powerhouse now fallen to its knees, beset by incompetent governance, fiscal mismanagement, declining quality of life, and shocking levels of crime and violence. There’s an argument to be made – and you’ll hear it in this episode – that present day Chicago is in dire trouble.

How could a great American city lose its mojo so quickly? For answers we turned to Forrest Claypool, a man who could credibly be dubbed (and we mean this as a compliment) the Robert Moses of Chicago, a consummate power broker. Claypool boasts a breathtaking résumé: two stints as Chief of Staff for Mayor Richard M. Daley (son of Richard J. Daley), another under Rahm Emmanuel, a former business partner with David Axelrod, and who at various points ran the Chicago parks department, transit authority and school system. But Claypool is also a committed reformer who took on the old political machine as a Cook County Commissioner and who believes in the importance of good governance.

The author of The Daley Show, a recent, fascinating account of the tenure of the younger Mayor Daley, who led the city for six terms (leaving office in 2011), Claypool tells us he wrote the book out of anger at witnessing the sharp decline in Chicago’s governance since Daley left office. While Daley was far from perfect and was ultimately brought down by accumulating scandals and controversies, Claypool cogently argues that the city worked, and thrived, in the Daley years. 

But no longer. We explore with Forrest what’s gone wrong since first Lori Lightfoot and then in 2023 Brandon Johnson – arguably the most unpopular big city mayor in the country – took the reins of power in Chicago. And we conclude by discussing what it will take for the city to regain its tattered glory. 

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? 

In the latest installment of Blue City Blues, we welcomed Jonathan Zimmerman, professor of the history of education at the University of Pennsylvania, to join us in delving into the Trump-led defunding of public broadcasting. Zimmerman, whose incisive public commentaries have been published at the New York Times, Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer and elsewhere, is the author of a recent op ed at The Hill in which he called on public broadcasters (and elite universities) to “openly admit their liberal biases.”

As a highly educated cosmopolitan, in that piece Zimmerman (who outs himself as an NPR donor and lifelong Democrat) argues that it is glaringly obvious that NPR “caters to people just like me.” Openly acknowledging this orientation, he adds, might have enhanced the network’s credibility and bolstered public support in the face of Trump’s grossly exaggerated caricature of public media as advancing “radical, woke propaganda,” among other false claims.

Our conversation explores how NPR, while always liberal, in recent years allowed a creeping "one-sidedness" to shape its coverage, alienating many core listeners, traditional liberals as well as conservatives. He argues that calling for self-reflection isn't "capitulation" to the Trump administration, but rather a necessary step toward fostering viewpoint diversity and upholding "small-l liberal values" like open exchange. While acknowledging the existential threat Trump’s defunding poses for smaller, rural NPR stations, the discussion turns to the broader political ramifications and lessons for blue cities, where public broadcasting’s core demographic and donor base reside.

The conversation also goes beyond the plight of public media, drawing parallels to the challenges faced by elite academic institutions as they navigate unprecedented authoritarian, ideologically motivated attacks from Trump 2.0. Zimmerman believes that, despite these alarming attacks, universities must continue to build on recent efforts to redress their own turn towards cultural authoritarianism and work to restore an internal culture embracing intellectual pluralism. Zimmerman provides examples of where he thinks both universities and public media have failed to embody principles of open discourse, making them more vulnerable to conservative attacks and external pressures. The episode concludes by considering the future of public broadcasting in a post-funding era, and the possibility of restoring the "enlightenment liberal principles" that once defined these institutions.

Read Jonathan Zimmerman, “On NPR and at elite universities, liberals should openly admit their biases,” The Hill, July 12, 2025.

Quinn Waller is our editor. 

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,

The political gulf between educated urban progressives and rural and blue collar Americans has accelerated in recent decades. The consequences for blue cities - and for the Democratic Party - are profound.

In this episode, we explore the evolving rural/urban divide with Blue Dog Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, who represents Washington’s State’s 3rd Congressional District in Southwest Washington. Outside the blue urban enclave of Vancouver, WA,  the 3rd CD is largely red-leaning Timber Country: it voted for Trump in all three recent presidential elections, and no Democrat had carried it in any race, federal or statewide, in more than a decade before Marie pulled off a stunning upset victory in 2022. She was then re-elected to the seat in 2024.

In our conversation, Gluesenkamp Perez, who owned an auto repair and machine shop with her husband before her election to Congress, brings a thoughtful and unique perspective on the nature of growing hyper-partisanship. We begin by exploring what she learned from her experience running for the county commission in deeply rural, overwhelmingly Trumpy Skamania County in 2016, a race she lost, but one where she listened intently to the anger and resentment of her fellow rural voters who felt ignored by urban elites.

The conversation also explores the challenges Gluesenkamp Perez faces from progressive Democrats who expect her to align with their positions on every issue. She argues that deliberative democracy is not about nationalized political tribalism or cookie cutter ideological checklists, but should be about authentically representing the values of the local community.

We also talk with Gluesenkamp Perez about her efforts to revive and reinvent the moderate Blue Dog Coalition as the voice of blue collar voters within the Democratic Party. She emphasizes her "hyper-local" and "anti-partisan" approach, and the importance of focusing on tangible constituent needs.

Finally, Gluesenkamp Perez, raised as an evangelical Christian, discusses the growing divide between secular cosmopolitans in blue cities and voters of faith. She emphasizes the importance of understanding and engaging with religious communities, arguing that it is a mistake to walk away from such a core part of the fabric of American life.

Quinn Waller is our editor. 

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?

Zohran Mamdani's upset victory in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary wasn't just a win; it was a seismic event that's shaking the foundations of the Democratic Party. How did a self-described socialist unseat a political giant like Andrew Cuomo? And what does it mean for the future of progressive politics in America's blue cities?

This week we spoke with leading Democratic strategist and pollster Celinda Lake, who polled for Joe Biden in 2020 and polls for many progressives including AOC, to try and understand Mamdani's surprising win. Lake argues that Mamdani's "positive, solutions-oriented" message and "coherent plans"—from freezing rents to free daycare and city-run grocery stores—offered a compelling alternative to Cuomo's "horrible" campaign. We also explore how Mamdani's effective messaging and viral videos resonated with voters, offering a potential blueprint for Democrats looking to "stand for something" in an increasingly polarized political landscape. 

Quinn Waller is our editor. 

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?

In this episode of Blue City Blues, 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?

Outside references:

Sherman Alexie essay, "The 'I' in BIPOC," Persuasion, June 2, 2023.

Sherman Alexie poem, "Unsayable," April 22, 2025.

Alexie on "decolonizing literature."

In 2020, when the power of social media – Twitter, in particular – to police the boundaries of acceptable thought in blue cities was at its cultural zenith, journalists Katie Herzog and Jesse Singal launched their boundary-shattering podcast, Blocked and Reported. BARPod, as it’s referred to by its growing legions of fans (us included), is focused on “scour[ing] the internet for its craziest, silliest, most sociopathic content, part of an obsessive and ill-conceived attempt to extract kernels of meaning and humanity from a landscape of endless raging dumpster fires.”

A lot of that crazy, silly, sociopathic content involved detailing the self-righteous foibles of cancel culture-era social media authoritarians, which made sense since both Katie and Jesse had previously been on the receiving end of Twitter mob cancellation attempts (after writing stories about detransitioners) from the very online commissars of cosmopolitan progressivism. So over four plus years and now more than 260 highly entertaining BARPod episodes, Herzog and SIngal have, humorously and insightfully and with commendable sanity, cataloged the crazy and the bizarre and the hurtful across social media platforms and other online spaces. 

But since the purchase (and renaming) of Twitter by Elon Musk, things have changed a lot in the virtual world. Once the online town square for blue city elites, X has now been enshittified, and the online cadres of urban progressives have decamped en masse, either self-ghettoizing themselves at Bluesky or scattering across a wide range of increasingly siloed platforms. So we asked Katie, formerly a staff writer at the Stranger in Seattle and the author of an upcoming book, Drink Your Way Sober, set to be released in September, onto BCB to explore what this new era of social media fragmentation means for the culture and politics of blue cities.  

We discuss the origin story of BARPod and what prompted Katie and Jesse, in that semi-hysterical moment that layered anxieties over COVID, Trump and the fallout from the murder of George Floyd, to decide it was the right time to call out online progressive excesses. And we talk about what the downstream consequences were of the old era of social media cultural dominance in blue cities, why her podcast was such an instant hit, and how BARPod and its audience – and blue cities – are evolving given that the cultural Maoism of the woke era now is seemingly giving way to the new Trumpist era of cultural fascism. And we speculate about what, if anything, might fill the void left by the post-Musk wreckage of Twitter.

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 coll