Michael Hiltzik: Progressives have ruined San Francisco. Just ask this heiress

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."

More on Bowles and The Atlantic in a moment. But first, some perspective on the election. There are few signs, if any, that voters are actually "fed up" with criminal justice reform, as Bowles would have it, whether in San Francisco specifically or