From the Editors: Progressive-run cities promise much, deliver little. Philadelphia is better than many of them.

CNN’s Fareed Zakaria surprised many of his viewers recently by saying the thing CNN people are not supposed to say: many of America’s cities are run by Democrats, and they’re run badly.

“New York is really a prime example of a problem Democrats seem unwilling to confront,” Zakaria — no one’s idea of a conservative — said on his show, “Fareed Zakaria GPS”. “Blue cities are out of control, promising more, spending more, delivering less and pushing off the fiscal problems to some future date.”

He’s right. There’s a basic bargain implicit in big-government regimes: you pay higher taxes, but you get more services. This, at least, is the way it gets sold to the voters. “We’ll take more of your money,” Democrats say, “but in return you’ll get better schools, better roads, better welfare programs, and a better life.” They don’t even call it spending anymore — it’s “investment”, because it will pay dividends in the future. 

Sounds like a great deal, until reality hits. Modern cities are run with the worst combination of progressivism and libertarianism: spending more money every year, but refusing to enforce any of the rules that would make that stuff usable for the average citizen. Spending more on parks — but refusing to clear out the homeless encampments. Spending more on mass transit — but refusing to arrest people who urinate, defecate, smoke, drink, and shoot up on it. 

Zakaria’s comments were inspired by New York, where the new socialist mayor announced that he would ask their City Council to raise property taxes by as much as 9.5 percent. Meanwhile, at least 20 mentally ill homeless people died on the streets this winter because the Mamdani administration refused to force them into shelter on frigid nights, like other cities do. It would violate their autonomy! When the mayor is a socialist, you have the freedom to die.

But not all blue cities are equal. In Philadelphia, the snowstorm showed that we are actually improving where other Democratic-run jurisdictions fall farther behind. After the massive snow and ice storm in January, roads and sidewalks were blocked for weeks in New York, and trash pick up was delayed for ages. Even in the wealthy (and heavily Democratic) suburbs of DC, schools were closed for more than a week. 

In Philadelphia, the response was not perfect. But schools were open sooner and most streets were plowed, too. Code Blues got the homeless inside so they could at least stay alive. No, it wasn’t perfect, but it was a good deal better than other deep-blue cities like those Zakaria opined about. 

Much of the credit must go to Mayor Cherelle Parker, a Democrat who has plenty of progressive views, but who also understands that the city has to work for the people in it. New York elected a pie-in-the-sky trust fund socialist, but Philly has a mayor who had to work for a living and who understands that the rest of us still do. After the drift into dull, left-wing inertia that characterized her predecessor’s regime, Philadelphia has been fortunate to escape the downward spiral that many cities like it are living through right now.