The myth that liberal cities are debauched and violent is a right-wing article of faith too often repeated by mainstream sources

It’s funny how narratives work. After San Francisco voters recalled District Attorney Chesa Boudin, Washington Post columnist James Hohmann called the vote “the latest wake-up call for Democrats, who have lost the public’s trust on criminal justice and play down voter anxieties about crime at their peril.” New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait, who imagines himself a sensible progressive amid the left-wing rabble, wrote that Boudin “represents the long tail of a disastrously misconceived response by progressives to the problem of abusive and racist policing.”