In an opinion piece published by American Thinker on September 29, 2026, writer Rick Charles makes an unapologetically partisan case that New York State and New York City are in steep decline β and that the culprit is the progressive governance Democrats have delivered for years. The piece, titled “Blue city blues β the failure of progressive governance,” is less an analysis of policy outcomes than a closing argument to voters ahead of the November 3, 2026 election, where Charles urges New Yorkers to pull the lever for Republican candidates across the state and, most importantly, elect Bruce Blakeman as governor.
A Case Built on Daily Experience
Charles anchors his argument in lived experience. Writing as a resident of New York State, and especially New York City, he says he and his neighbors confront the consequences of progressive policies every day. He describes a state and city in rapid decline, pointing to what he calls a collapse of civility and a war against success, standards, and excellence.
The grievances he catalogues will be familiar to anyone who has followed conservative critiques of blue-city governance: a sanctuary state and city, poor service delivery from a highly paid and protected unionized workforce, a failing and dangerous public transportation system, rising numbers of homeless and mentally ill people on the streets, and public safety concerns that he attributes to officials who he says prioritize the rights of criminals over those of law-abiding citizens and law enforcement. He adds unnecessarily high housing costs and what he calls exploitative tax rates to the list.
For Charles, the core problem is the gap between intentions and outcomes. Progressives, he writes, present themselves as having good intentions, but their policies tend to produce negative and damaging consequences β often leaving the original problem harder to solve than before. Excessive rhetoric from the left, in his telling, does not resolve the issues that declining conditions in New York State and City make plain. Voters, especially on the political left, he argues, fail to distinguish between promises made and results delivered.
The Politics of Division and Dependency
Beyond the day-to-day complaints, Charles advances a broader critique of how progressive governance operates politically. He contends that progressives deliberately promote division through identity politics β segregating people by group, race, gender, and class β rather than unifying them around mutual interests. In his view, this approach fosters dependency among groups in exchange for long-term voting allegiance, while neglecting the interests of the working and middle-class taxpayers who make up the majority.
That neglect, he argues, is structural, not accidental. Taxpaying citizens are guaranteed to be last on the left’s priority list, he writes, because there is limited electoral benefit in serving them. Non-taxpayers, by contrast, can be kept dependent on special treatment from government β and, in his framing, “social justice” amounts to different rules for different groups, often calibrated to how many votes a group can deliver to Democratic candidates.
Charles also takes aim at the economic model he says New York City promotes, describing it as one ruled by social justice and dominated by big government β a combination he says limits flexibility, innovation, and individual initiative, and therefore growth and opportunity. The results, he argues, include a lack of adequate job opportunities for the middle class and especially the young, and an exodus of New Yorkers and prominent employers to other states. He cites JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Citibank, and Amazon as all downsizing their New York City presence. People and capital alike vote with their feet, he writes, with the Sunbelt the preferred destination for residents and pro-business environments the preferred destination for investment.
The wealthiest residents, Charles notes, pay the most local taxes β and he argues that rising Democratic rhetoric around wealth taxes has accelerated the departure of the state’s most productive citizens, threatening future tax revenues in the process.
A Warning About the Democratic Socialists
The piece then pivots to national and ideological territory, and it is here that Charles’s language grows most heated. He argues that younger and more educated demographics have embraced radically progressive policies, and that many Democratic officeholders have not moved far enough left to satisfy them. In response, he writes, a Marxist movement aligned with Radical Islam β the Democratic Socialists of America β has risen.
Charles acknowledges that Marxism and Islam may appear an incompatible pairing, but claims they share totalitarian objectives dedicated to overthrowing America and its way of life. In his account, the radical agenda seeks to subvert government institutions and replace capitalism with Marxist-style socialism, while the Radical Islamists in the coalition wish to establish Muslim supremacy and impose Sharia law. He also asserts that both share an agenda promoting anti-Israeli policies and antisemitism.
He further contends that DSA radicals are competing to become the dominant face of the Democratic Party, which he says will coerce all Democratic politicians to follow the extreme DSA agenda. At its core, he writes, that agenda hates the American people and the country itself, and deliberately promotes chaos and fear as a control mechanism to gain leverage and political power β on the theory that fearful people resist less.
The November 3 Choice
Charles frames the coming election as the central question: are New Yorkers doomed to repeat the same mistakes, or are enough voters open to corrective action at the ballot box? His answer is unambiguous. On November 3, 2026, he writes, the right and only path is clear β New Yorkers must vote in sufficient numbers for change by supporting Republican candidates across the state and, most importantly, electing Bruce Blakeman as governor. A Governor Blakeman, he concludes, would put New York State and City on the road to recovery.
The piece closes with a defense of free expression as essential to the republic, followed by a fundraising appeal from the outlet.
It should be noted that this is a commentary piece, published in American Thinker’s opinion section. Its factual claims β about corporate downsizing, migration patterns, and political coalitions β are the author’s assertions and framing, offered in service of an explicitly partisan argument rather than as neutral reporting. The article’s core value is as a window into how one segment of New York’s electorate is thinking ahead of a consequential election, and into the terms β decline, dependency, division β on which conservatives intend to fight it.
Source: www.americanthinker.com β https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/09/blue-city-blues-the-failure-of-progressive-governance/