The Limits Of Blue State Politics

New Geography reports:

Obama and his congressional allies have worked overtime in favor of urban blue-state constituencies in everything from transportation funding and energy policies to the Wall Street bailouts and massive transfers of private wealth to powerful public-employee unions. Yet these areas continue suffering from net outmigration and stubbornly high job losses – as well as from some of the most severe fiscal imbalances in the nation.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the president's hometown of Chicago. The Windy City has suffered a very bad recession and may have fallen to its worst relative position since the Daley reconquista in 1989. As Chicago blogger Steve Bartin points out, even the presence of a Daley operative in the White House has failed to prevent the city from falling "in a funk." He writes that even a reliable booster, columnist Mary Schmich of the Chicago Tribune, has lately described the city "as edgy, a little sullen and scared, verging on depressed."

Another great one from Joel Kotkin.