To me, while I share a lot of values with progressives, they seem to be most interested in gestures and who is gesturing. They also don't seem to have tons of interest in local governance and its prosaic details (fire department, police, trash clean up, etc.) or the role of local government vis-a-vis state and federal government. They are more interested in signaling on national issues. There's also an underlying tide of evangelicalism that I don't subscribe to.

I'm a liberal because I believe there's a huge role for government to help people get out of poverty and protect rights, including the rights of minorities. But, in most cases, that is role of higher levels of government, not the government of a poor shrinking city.