Say what you wish about the recall last week of Chesa Boudin, San Francisco's liberal district attorney, it has been a gift for pundits searching for signs of a pushback against progressive criminal justice reforms.
"Most San Franciscans just realized that doctrinaire progressivism had become a suicide pact," wrote Daniel Henninger of The Wall Street Journal, declaring an end to "a major city's long transition to flowers-in-your-hair progressivism." James Hohmann of The Washington Post labeled Boudin's defeat as "the latest wake-up call for Democrats, who have lost the public's trust on criminal justice."
But the prize goes to Nellie Bowles, who weighed in with a nearly 8,000-word screed in The Atlantic, calling her former hometown a "failed city" and ascribing its decline to "progressive leaders" and their "left-wing values."
