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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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Children in urban public school districts are falling behind. While a handful of lower spending red states – Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee and, most notably, Mississippi – have delivered remarkable academic progress over the last 12 years, high spending districts in big cities like New York and Seattle have seen test scores plunge. 

And it’s not just because of Covid. While over-long school closures in blue jurisdictions did wreak havoc on the educational attainment of children in those communities, the declines began long before the pandemic, coinciding with the shift away from (however imperfect) national accountability efforts that were born of the federal No Child Left behind law and other reform initiatives. 

And yet, progressive politicians and school leaders in blue cities often hand wave away the declining performance of their schools, particularly with respect to the sinking test scores of low income children of color, even as they loudly proclaim their allegiance to trendy pedagogical approaches justified in the name of increasing equity. Nor has the declining performance of schools and reduction of choices and standards (like eliminating gifted and talented programs) in blue America generated much public pushback. Although it's also evident that falling enrollments in cities like Seattle are due to more affluent parents in these areas quietly moving their children into higher performing private schools. 

So what are the root causes the sinking performance of public education systems in well-funded blue city school districts? 

For answers we turned to Whitney Tilson, an ardent (and unfashionable!) education reformer – Tilson is a founding member of Teach for America and of Democrats for Education Reform – who earlier this year ran unsuccessfully for mayor in New York as a Bloomberg-style technocrat, on a platform that significantly focused on fixing what ails New York City schools. While New York City spends more per pupil than any other jurisdiction in the country, academic achievement has declined sharply since the Bloomberg years, falling far behind Mississippi. 

Tilson argues that a trendy rejection of the culture of accountability that undergirded school reform efforts through the late Obama years, along with the hegemonic power of  teachers unions, is to blame. As one example, he points to blue cities’ rejection of proven phonics-based reading instruction in favor of the supposedly more equitable (and less accountable) “whole language” reading approach: “as a nation we allowed a dangerous left-wing ideological curriculum to infect our schools in a way that resulted in millions of kids not being able to learn to read properly.” 

You can read the plan to fix New York City's schools that Whitney Tilson offered during his mayoral campaign here.

Our editor is Quinn Waller. 

Please send your feedback, guest and show ideas to [email protected]

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. 

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 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" (Princeton University Press). The book offers a self-critical examination of how blue leaders and institutions in government, academia, science and the media 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 live before an audience at Seattle University at the invitation of Seattle University President Eduardo M. Peñalver (a fan of the pod!) as part of his presidential speaker series, which brings nationally known speakers to Seattle to discuss issues related to freedom of speech, viewpoint diversity and campus culture. 

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]

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.

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]

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? 

Please send your feedback, guest and show ideas to [email protected]