Left-wing NYT columnist bemoans what we “liberals” have done to the West Coast

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof argued Saturday that the West Coast version of liberalism simply isn't working, urging liberals to “face the painful fact that something has gone wrong where we're at the top, from San Diego to Seattle.”

West Coast liberals accept a 'yawning chasm between our values ​​and our results', Kristof observed in his column, embracing contradictions such as declaring that “housing is a human right” while failing to “house people.” Kristof, who filed to run for governor of Oregon in 2022, but was found out to meet the three-year residency requirement to appear on the ballot, he believes the problem is not liberalism itself, but the West Coast brand of liberalism that is “infected with an ideological purity that focuses more on intentions than in monitoring and results”.

“I'm an Oregonian who bores people at cocktail parties by singing the praises of the West, but the truth is that too often we offer a version of progressivism that doesn't result in progress,” he wrote, noting the disparities between liberals . west coast and east coast cities.

“The two states with the highest rates of homeless homeless are California and Oregon. The three states with the lowest rates of homeless homeless are all blue in the Northeast: Vermont, New York and Maine,” he wrote. “Liberal Massachusetts has some of the best public schools in the country, while liberal Washington and Oregon have below-average high school graduation rates.”

Nicholas Kristof:

“The central problem of the West Coast is not so much that it is unserious as that it is infected with an ideological purity that focuses more on intentions than on oversight and results.” pic.twitter.com/uGrKLPCvWH

— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) June 15, 2024

He criticized the tendency of West Coast liberals to be “performative rather than substantive,” citing Oregon's decision to use education dollars to put free tampons on boys. bathrooms starting in kindergarten.

“The inability of progressives, especially in the Portland metro area, to face the essence of government and do something is astounding,” Oregon Democratic Rep. Earl Blumenauer, whose district includes most of Portland. “People are much more interested in ideology than in actual results.”

Kristof suggested the problem might be related to a lack of political competition on the West Coast.

“Maybe on the West Coast we have ideological purity because there's not a lot of political competition,” he wrote. “Republicans are irrelevant in much of the Far West, so they can't hold Democrats' feet to the fire, causing Democrats in turn to drift further left.”

In 2023, blue states had the highest rates of homelessness, with Washington, DC, New York, Vermont, and Oregon topping the list. seconds to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

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