Progressive TRENDS IN CITIES = Greatest partisan imbalance since 1817 = ONE PARTY = “just emerged organically” = cities’ changing demographics

Click for WaPo Source by Harold Meyerson April 2014

GOP = 1 Mayor of 30 LARGEST CITIES

DEMS = 26 Mayors of 30 Largest Cities = Many are Progressives

New York’s Bill de Blasio
Boston’s Martin Walsh

Minneapolis’s Betsy Hodges
Pittsburgh’s Bill Peduto
Seattle’s Ed Murray.

1990s-vintage Clintonian centrism = Chicago’s Rahm Emanuel = Cling to the OLD

Platforms = Higher minimum wages + Universal preschool + energy-efficient affordable housing + Living-wage + Local hiring ordinances + Universal pre-K + Policies on police handing over undocumented immigrants to federal agents.

FACT: non-Hispanic white % of Americans dropped from 80% to 64% (1980-2010 Census) = Mostly in Cities

53% to 37% in NYC
48% to 29% in LA
53% to 26% in Houston
78% to 47% in Phoenix
68% to 47% in Boston

Millennials also flocked to urban America = Mostly liberal

New coalitions have powered Progressives into office = local unions = public + private-sector unions of janitors, hotel housekeepers, health-care workers and supermarket clerks whose members are disproportionately immigrant and black.

New coalitions = Unions + Immigrant rights groups + Organized urban poor + Affordable housing advocates + Liberal churches

Some New blue cities are nestled in deep-red states. = AZ Phoenix

FACT = 1880 to 1924 = Immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe transformed the population of urban America = Went to the polls in 1928 = Elected Al Smith as NY’s Democratic governor, Catholic + supported FDR’s New Deal.

FACT = Today a similar dynamic = Voters of color and millennials to the polls in record numbers to control City Hall.

Obama’s agenda = Stymied by GOP

But City after City = Versions of MIN WAGE + LIVING WAGE + Reduced deportations + Construction of green infrastructure are underway.

Cities = Hurt on funding to make many of the changes new Democratic mayors seek + Scramble to fund universal preschool + But are incubating the future of liberalism, and the nation.