David Hyde

The newish Blue City Blues podcast I'm working on with @skaushik100 features smart guests talking about the problems facing urban America and how to fix them. Recent guests include @fakedansavage @RepMGP @pescami @celindalake @MattMahanSJ @petersgoodman and other luminaries.

@skaushik100 If we did trigger warnings, this episode could have included the same one for reactionary anti-union conservatives and lefties who don't think we should ever question public sector unions: "Our guests today do not share your views."

"If blue state governors and mayors want to get serious about delivering excellent public services... They will have to push back against a core constituency within the Democratic Party that often makes government deliver less and cost more: unions representing teachers, police officers and transit workers.” That's not an argument you typically hear from left-of-center commentators, even reform-minded, abundance-pilled ones, but that's the provocative argument that @nicholas_bagley and @robertmgordon made in a recent, much discussed NYT op ed titled, "Mamdani Will Need to Change How he Governs." Both Bagley and Gordon are prominent Dems: Nicholas, now at the Univ of Michigan Law School, recently served as Chief Legal Counsel for Gov Gretchen Whitmer, while Gordon, now a Harvard fellow, served as a Deputy Assistant to the President on Biden's Domestic Policy Council. So @hyded and I invited them on Blue City Blues (link in next tweet) to dig into why they believe Democratic politicians need to reset their relationship with public sector organized labor if they hope to reverse the loss of public confidence in blue governance that fed into Trump's ascendency. "If we want blue cities to achieve their promise, and if we want to have a viable and effective alternative to what the Trump administration is giving us, this is a conversation we need to have,” Bagley told us over the course of our conversation about what really is a semi-verboten subject on the left.

@mattyglesias Surprised to hear you’re new to social media

One of the toxic things about Jeff Hauser is that even though he and I have real policy disagreements, he absolutely refuses to articulate and debate them insisting on arguing *exclusively* through misrepresentation, innuendo, and slander.

John F. Burns "took issue with journalists of a newer generation, who professed what he considered a messianic calling that diluted the commitment to even-handedness."

Our @bluecitypodcast guest this week @melmason says the LA mayors race has it all: “Shakespearean betrayal, dramatic reversals of fortune, breathless tabloid coverage. The Los Angeles mayor's race at last has a Hollywood-worthy plot line.”

Canonically: People do not quit jobs, they quit bosses.

Some interesting exchanges between Erica and Mayor Wilson on the podcast this week

bluecityblues.beam.ly/episode/anne-a… @anneapplebaum @skaushik100 @bluecitypodcast

Anne Applebaum (Live) on Resisting Authoritarianism Here and Abroad with the Blue City Blues Podcast. Check out the full interview on the Blue City Blues podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.

@skaushik100 more like we're still the Scandinavians. The limit in those countries is between .02 and .05 percent. But when it comes to other issues like hard drug use we're quasi-libertarian, so maybe we're just confused?

Our excellent podcast editor needs some assistance. Please donate any amount to help her rebuild from this tragedy if you can. gofund.me/ea34402ef

You can listen to our conversation with Kelsey Piper here, and if you're unfamiliar with her writing at The Argument, be sure to follow the links in the show notes: "Kelsey Piper on the Shameful Truth that Mississippi Beats Blue Cities on Educational Equity" podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/blu…

Thanks for listening! New episode tapes later today.

Thank you so much @skaushik100 and @hyded for having me on your podcast, Blue City Blues @bluecitypodcast, to talk about the challenges & opportunities facing San Francisco! I really enjoyed our conversation 🎙️🌉🏙️🎧podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/emi…

Is SPD contract a "complete failure" of police reform by current city leadership? (new episode link in comments)

I knew there were big issues with the foster care system. But it wasn’t till I read Claudia @RoweReport’s excellent book (there’s a reason it was a finalist for the 2025 National Book Award for Nonfiction), Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care, that I grokked how much the failures of the foster care system drives dysfunction and disorder on the streets of blue cities. The stats are staggering. There are about 400K kids in foster care at any given time. 59 percent of the kids who enter the foster care system will, by age 26, have been incarcerated at some point. Somewhere between a fifth and third of kids exiting the system to adulthood will become homeless. About 20 percent of the people in state prisons were foster kids. And so on. So @hyded and I invited Claudia (who’s day job is writing for @SeaTimesOpinion) onto Blue City Blues for an animated(!) conversation about how and why the foster care system is failing so many kids, what the downstream impacts of that failure means for the social functioning of blue cities, and what should be done about it. We went longer than usual with this episode because there was so much to talk about!

Executives Gone Wild? Seattle, King County Shakeups (new episode out on Patreon!)

They don’t know about the YIMBY vibe shift

More importantly, tune in to find out if @wilsonformayor is a @FIFAWorldCup fan like @ZohranKMamdani

Who are these folks? @CBSNews estimates there were around 60,000 Trump to @ZohranKMamdani voters. I suspect we had fewer Trump to @wilsonformayor voters in Seattle but who knows. The "burn it all down" vote?

@CBSNews estimates around "60,000 Trump to @ZohranKMamdani voters! Who are these people? I wonder how many Trump -> @wilsonformayor voters we had in Seattle?