Public safety policy reformer Lisa Daugaard won a MacArthur Genius Award in 2019 for her work creating the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program, which has become a much touted national model for progressive criminal justice reform. The idea is to help low-level homeless offenders arrested for crimes like shoplifting by connecting them with shelter and mental health and addiction services, as opposed to just jailing them before releasing them back onto the streets.

But Daugaard is no police or prison abolitionist. In fact, she argues that the politics of abolition that emerged before 2020 helped provoke a backlash, which slowed some of the progress blue cities had been making to improve how police and the courts operate.

So what does she think of Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom's controversial call for local governments to clear more homeless encampments? Tune in and find out!

Our editor is Quinn Waller. 

Seattle venture capitalist and Democratic megadonor Nick Hanauer doesn’t fit neatly into pre-fab boxes. He’s a wildly successful tech investor who denounces tech moguls as “narcissistic sociopaths.” He’s a billionaire “class-traitor” (his term) who’s been sounding the alarm about what he sees as the dangerous obliviousness of the ultrarich to the resentment their class privilege engenders. He’s a proud capitalist who rails against neoliberalism and who developed and popularized the concept of “middle out” economics.

In short, Hanauer, a host of the popular Pitchfork Economics podcast (President Joe Biden was a recent guest), has strong opinions on lots of topics, including what ails blue cities, and why. In our wide ranging conversation with Nick for the latest BCB episode, Nick voices his frustrations with the seemingly intractable problems evident on the streets of blue cites: unsheltered homelessness, untreated mental illness, unchecked street disorder. 

While he blames ideologically misguided governance in blue cities for not appropriately tackling these problems, he says the blame for their existence, and their daunting scale, lies elsewhere: with 50 years of neoliberal policies that have led to disinvestment in public priorities like institutions for the mentally ill or affordable housing. Policies he says Democratic elites – and in particular Barack Obama – and the party’s donor class have been complicit in. “That was Obama-ism to me: we’re going to put a good face on how much we care about the little people, but we’re really not going to do anything about it,” Nick tells us. “A kinder, gentler form of trickle down economics.”

In a quest to reinvent municipal governance, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan is breaking ranks and breaking a few eggs. A Harvard grad who made his bones in the disruption-centered world of Silicon Valley tech startups, he 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? 

This week, we take a close look at Trump's tariff-happy trade war and its impact on blue cities with New York Times global economics correspondent Peter Goodman, the author of Davos Man and How the World Ran Out of Everything.

We explore the political tightrope blue city and Democratic Party leaders are walking on trade policy. Are they anti-tariffs or just anti-Trump’s tariffs? And we ask Peter: Is Trump dismantling the global neoliberal free trade regime as left-progressive activists have been demanding dating back at least to the Clinton Administration? And, if everyone agrees the status quo is failing American workers, how much of the blame for that falls on blue city Democrats?  

Goodman argues Trump’s erratic, on-again-off-again tariffs chest thumping is not rescuing the American working class. But it is killing confidence in the U.S. as a safe harbor for investment and ushering in an extreme form of crony capitalism. We also get into the possible real-world consequences of Trump’s tariffs for the non-investor class in blue cities, including the potential for a recession and shortages of essential goods. 

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? 

Donald Trump is in full retribution mode and the anxiety – and anger – in blue cities is spiking. Sex advice columnist and friend o’ the podcast Dan Savage joins us to talk about how blue cities should (and should not) resist an aggressively authoritarian administration that sees them as the enemy.

We go deep on the April 5th protests, dissecting everything from the signs ("We’re all the couch now”) to the range of concerns roiling blue city residents. Dan shares his thoughts about grassroots movements, the power of showing up, and whether marching actually changes anything. 

We also talk about the best path to growing the anti-Trump resistance, how blue city  resistance could be more effectively framed and messaged, the pitfalls of "purity tests," and whether a general strike could be on the horizon. 

Plus, we get into some serious blue city governance talk. How should mayors and city councils be pushing back against this administration? Should they be laying low, or leading the charge? And is building more damn housing a form of resistance?

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 recent years San Francisco, widely regarded as America’s most progressive city, has experienced a far-reaching anti-progressive backlash. In 2022, voters recalled three progressive school board members and progressive DA Chesa Boudin. Then moderates took control of the city’s Board of Supervisors. Last year they won a majority on the city’s Democratic Party central committee, and in November San Francisco elected a new moderate mayor and decisively re-elected the centrist tough-on-crime DA who replaced Boudin. 

In a detailed, deeply reported piece in The New Republic titled “The Shadowy Millions Behind San Francisco’s ‘Moderate” Politics,” left-leaning journalist Laura Jedeed connects the dots to argue this remarkable political shift did not happen organically, but rather was sparked by a sustained, lavishly funded organizing campaign backed by a handful of tech industry titans. 

We invited Jedeed on to Blue City Blues to tell us what she found when she followed the money that helped to fuel San Francisco’s moderate backlash. While she sees this effort as fundamentally deceptive and illegitimate, we probe with her how much, big spending aside, voter unhappiness with progressive rule in San Francisco is rooted in something real, and how much San Francisco’s moderate backlash differs from the backlash experienced in other blue cities like Seattle.

You can follow more of Jedeed's writing at https://www.bannedinyourstate.com.

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? 

Former National Public Radio and Slate journalist Mike Pesca, host of the longest-running (and highly entertaining!) daily news podcast, "The Gist," joins us to talk about the tough challenges blue city media is facing during the terrifying roller coaster ride that is Trump’s second term. Especially at a time when public trust in the media is at a record low.

Mike's got some well informed - and strong - opinions on whether major blue city outlets like the Washington Post and LA Times are caving to pressure from the Trump administration, and if the media outlets that shape the worldview of urban archipelago elites – the New York Times, NPR, et al – are doing enough to win back the public’s trust. We also chat about whether the whole "moral clarity" approach to news (a major hallmark of the Trump 1.0 era) is about to make a comeback, or whether old-school “objectivity” approaches are in the ascendency. Plus, we discuss what the hell is up with California Governor Gavin Newsom's new podcast that features right-wing guests like Charlie Kirk, and whether the mainstream media is correctly interpreting Newsom’s political and media play. Nor do we shy away from the big questions, like, how should legacy blue city newsrooms adapt to the rise of social media?    

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 this episode, we dive deep into some of the big questions every left-of-center political observer has been asking: what the hell went so wrong in the last election? Why did so many urban working class voters in blue cities swing hard towards Trump? And is there any reason to think that the Trumpist right is making a credible and serious economic (as opposed to cultural) play to build a durable blue collar, multi-racial Republican majority?

To answer these questions, we sit down with veteran progressive labor movement strategist David Rolf, who until his retirement was a national leader in the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and who ran the biggest union local in Washington State, representing 55,000 home care workers. A little over a decade ago, Rolf lit the match that sparked the $15 minimum wage movement that swept big blue cities from Seattle to New York. 

The author of The Fight for $15: The Right Wage for a Working America (2016), Rolf is also one of the smartest thinkers in the country about the role of organized labor in our broader economy and politics. In our conversation, he breaks down the historical trends around the union vote, and explains why working class Americans have been drifting away from the Democratic party in recent years. 

We also ask Rolf why an ardent progressive trade unionist like himself has entered into dialogue with conservatives like Oren Cass, whose think tank, American Compass, is pressing the Republican Party to adopt a pro-blue collar policy agenda. And we get Rolf's take on the emerging debate within the GOP around economic policies aimed at appealing to workers. Plus, he shares his insights into the apparent cultural disconnect between union leadership and their rank-and-file members, and what the labor movement needs to do to reconnect with the broader working class.  

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? 

The wave of bold new decriminalization-centered approaches to drug policy reform that swept West Coast cities from San Francisco to Vancouver, B.C. starting around 2020 has failed, according to one the nation’s leading drug policy experts, former Obama White House drug policy advisor and Stanford psychiatry professor Keith Humphreys. On this week’s Blue City Blues, we invited Professor Humpreys on to explore why.  

Humphreys, the author of a recent Brookings Institution paper on “The rise and fall of Pacific Northwest drug policy reform,” blames the failure on a sharp shift by reform advocates away from proven public health and harm reduction approaches to new notions about the individual autonomy of drug users, ideas that emerged out of a strange conflation of progressive and libertarian ideas. In an effort to “destigmatize” addiction, reformers created new policy models that rejected the idea that addiction to drugs like fentanyl or methamphetamine is a problem that necessarily even needs solving. 

Humphreys believes these West Coast reformers were right to want to correct the punitive excesses and other shortcomings of the War on Drugs. He does not want society to put more drug users behind bars. But in his view, blue city reformers swung too far, and made the mistake of embracing dubious approaches that sought to normalize addiction to hard drugs and ignored its serious personal and social harms.

Humphreys criticizes reformers for refusing to consider the way addiction can rip families apart, or how crimes associated with drug dealing and rampant addiction can injure neighborhoods. The conversation also gets into the serious challenges posed by the displacement of heroin by fentanyl on the streets of blue cities, and the limitations of the Portuguese drug reform model in the U.S. West Coast context.

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? 

Democrat Adam Smith has spent the last several years engaged in a (perhaps quixotic?) crusade to save the Democratic Party from itself. The veteran congressman, who represents parts of Seattle and its South King County suburbs in Washington's 9th Congressional District, recently played the starring role in a New Yorker article titled "The Not-Quite-Anti-Woke Caucus." In the story, Smith joined a few like-minded congressional colleagues in forcefully calling out recent shifts within the left-progressive culture that dominates blue cities, changes which he believes are leading to governing failures and poor outcomes. 

By moving away from traditional cultural beliefs in notions of personal responsibility, accountability, the need for maintaining standards and emphasizing hard work, blue city leaders are screwing up, Smith says. "The way we Democrats have chosen to govern over the course of the last ten years has not succeeded,” he bluntly told the author of the piece. He's worried that incompetent blue city governance on issues like homelessness and crime is hurting his constituents and the Democratic Party's brand locally and nationally. 

We asked Congressman Adam Smith to join us on the podcast to elaborate on why he thinks that the current ideological and cultural landscape of blue cities contributed to Trump's victory in November, and why he feels such a strong need to speak out about what he sees as he the mounting failures of blue city governance.