NewsBusters has chronicled a slew of media reactions both on-air and print in the hours and days since Donald Trump’s stunning presidential election upset of Hillary Clinton, but stories like one posted late Friday for Saturday’s print edition of The New York Times about West Coast liberals proved that such meltdowns will be here to stay for the near future.
Reporters Thomas Fuller, Jack Healy, and Kirk Johnson fanned out across western states from Colorado to California, Oregon, and Washington to wallow with those living in a portion of the country they hailed as “an engine for reinvention and progressive ideals” that was usurped by the rest of the country.
“The West Coast has long prided itself as an engine for reinvention and progressive ideals, distinct from the rest of the country. But after Tuesday’s election, the states bordering the Pacific Ocean feel increasingly like an island unto its own,” the three complained in the lede.
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Touting how the West Coast approved things like euthanasia, higher taxes, and recreational marijuana, the article went straight to far-left politicians like California Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom to boast of promises to “push back aggressively” against Trump seeing as how they have truly “enlightened” leaders with citizens “ahead of the curve” than the rest of the country.
The level of elitism and self-entitlement was dripping as the article dragged on to touting the leftist enclaves as true areas of “innovation” and “economic dynamism” that a quote from a California documentary filmmaker stated she was thankful for the “bubble”:
The notion of West Coast states leaving the United States is fanciful and often tongue-in-cheek. But it reflects a sentiment here that after Mr. Trump’s unexpected victory on Tuesday, the West increasingly sees itself as separate — a place of innovation, economic dynamism and a belief that government can be an agent of change.
Abby Ginzberg, a documentary filmmaker who lives in Albany, Calif., said she felt both deflated by the result but somewhat insulated from its consequences.
“Right now, I am depressed and upset and aware we live in a bubble,” she said. “Thank god for the bubble!”
A story that certainly wouldn’t have drawn the same level of sympathy if Hillary Clinton had won, the article turned to the openly gay Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, who the journalists relayed had told them that he equated the “recent days as almost like a fortress under siege, scanning for attack on the ramparts.”
Only part of the way down the length story did the liberal trio discover why the Left Coast voted the way they did and the other parts of the country thought otherwise:
Still, one reason Mr. Trump’s populist revolt bypassed the West is that the economic landscape did not reflect decades of decay and job losses.
Yes, there are areas of anger and strain, from the high-desert ranches of eastern Oregon to coal towns in northwestern Colorado to strawberry farms in the Central Valley of California to steel towns struggling to reinvent themselves.
But there are also new solar and wind farms, no-vacancy tourist towns and cities from Denver to San Jose, Calif., to Seattle that are buzzing with businesses, construction cranes and swarms of new residents.
As for Oregon, the levels of fretting were set to high because “[t]he Obama years had given Portland a close partner in Washington” but such a link “could be upended if Mr. Trump follows through on promises to cut off all federal funding for cities deemed to be ‘sanctuary cities’ for undocumented immigrants” that would hurt “everything from rail lines to crime fighting to school lunch programs for poor children.”
Naturally, the dispatch concluded, in part, with nods to the anti-Trump rioters who’ve taken to the streets of large, liberal cities this week:
In other liberal towns across the West, students joined protests against Mr. Trump, chanting what has now become a familiar motto, “Not Our President.” In Portland, some of the protests turned violent on Thursday night.
In Boulder, Colo., Mrs. Clinton had a bigger win than Mr. Obama four years earlier. High school students streamed out of classes on Wednesday afternoon there to protest the election results, as they have in a several secondary schools across the West.
On the pedestrian Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, Heidi Ames, 41, kept a lonely vigil with a sign that said, “Trump Is Not My President.”
“There are a lot of shocked and depressed people right now,” she said. “I wanted to show other liberal people I’m doing something. I’m not just talking on Facebook.”
