The New York Times gave Nicholas Kristof, its own columnist, who tried running for governor in Oregon, a platform to argue that liberalism hasn’t failed, it’s West Coast liberalism.

Like most Kristof columns (and New York Times ones) it’s a masterpiece of sloppy thinking and selective reasoning.

Conservatives argue that the problem is simply the left. Michael Shellenberger wrote a tough book denouncing what he called “San Fransicko” with the subtitle “Why Progressives Ruin Cities.” Yet that doesn’t ring true to me.

Democratic states enjoy a life expectancy two years longer than Republican states. Per capita G.D.P. in Democratic states is 29 percent higher than in G.O.P. states, and child poverty is lower. Education is generally better in blue states, with more kids graduating from high school and college. The gulf in well-being between blue states and red states is growing wider, not narrower.

So my rejoinder to Republican critiques is: Yes, governance is flawed in some blue parts of America, but overall, liberal places have enjoyed faster economic growth and higher living standards than conservative places. That doesn’t look like failure.

So the problem isn’t with liberalism. It’s with West Coast liberalism.

Nah, the problem is liberalism.

Kristof conflates and won’t distinguish between liberalism and leftist politics, but in his instances, 1950s style liberalism (which is different than traditional liberalism), with its sympathy for criminals and preference for enabling bad social behavior and love affair with hunting for oppressed people to represent, is bad enough.

Is this an exclusively West Coast problem? Kristof, who wanted to be governor of Oregon, would like to argue that it is, but his arguments are weak. And they’re familiar defenses for the blue state model.

Some blue states do have higher life expectancy and higher GDPs and graduation rates. But break down the demographics and you’ll find that the differences are largely attributable to upper middle class white and Asian people employed in certain high-dollar industries centered around cities like NYC and Boston, and their suburbs.

The gulf largely has to do with the white working class and lower middle class being left behind while a white professional class (the proverbial laptop class) does well. That’s not a local governance issue as it has to do with the calculated reshaping of the economy and the country.

The older members of the laptop class however have started heading for the exits, often to red states (which is not a political blessing) because the governance is so terrible in ultra-blue cities. Why are so many folks from California headed to Texas or Florida? Because the governance is better and the costs are lower.

But like Kristof, they’ve learned nothing from their experiences and will continue pushing the same bad policies and politics.