It’s no surprise that Gov. Phil Scott is turning a deaf ear and a jaundiced eye toward the Queen City, rejecting any idea that his do-nothing administration has contributed to downtown Burlington’s troubles. It’s somewhat more surprising that Democrats on City Council are effectively taking the governor’s side in the argument. Well, perhaps more ill-timed than actually surprising. Because talking like Republicans is what Council Democrats do best.

Let’s take this from the beginning. On August 13, VTDigger published an opinion piece by Burlington’s Progressive Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak, in which she slammed the Scott administration for dramatically increasing the number of unsheltered people and failing to offer Vermont’s cities any help in dealing with the ensuing humanitarian crisis.

The governor’s response, delivered at a press conference last week, was akin to then-president Gerald Ford’s response to the financial troubles of New York City in the mid-1970s, as reflected in the greatest tabloid headline ever written. LIke Ford, Scott didn’t actually say that Burlington should Drop Dead, but he did argue that the city needed to step up and address its own problems before it could expect any outside help.

Even worse were comments made by Jennifer Morrison, Scott’s commissioner of public safety and former interim police chief of Burlington. According to VTDigger’s Shawn Robinson, Morrison described the city as “terrifying” without explaining what she meant by that, and sounded like someone carrying a grudge from her brief tenure as chief:

“The problems in Burlington did not occur overnight. They will not be fixed overnight. And it requires that everybody commit to principles of accountability — shifting the pendulum back to the middle so that the use of public spaces is just as important for law-abiding people and businesses to thrive as it is for service-resistant people who make others afraid or commit crimes.”

Those “principles of accountability” apply, obviously, not to the Scott administration, which has significantly increased the number of unsheltered folk and failed to take a comprehensive approach to Vermont’s substance use problems. No sirree, they apply solely to the Progressive city leaders who pursued policies Morrison didn’t approve of.

She makes that crystal clear with her phrase “shifting the pendulum back to the middle,” which puts the blame squarely on those damn permissive Progs.

And on the miscreants who are making it uncomfortable for The Great and Good of Burlington to amble freely in their downtown. You know, those “service-resistant people who make others afraid or commit crimes.” Yeah, it’s all their fault, those darn “service-resistant” types. As if comprehensive and sufficient services were being offered, and the only problem is their resistance to our help. That’s uncomfortably close to Donald Trump language, as reflected in his recent executive order on homelessness.

Hmm, I’m beginning to understand why Morrison turned out to be a poor fit for Burlington.

Meanwhile, the day after Scott’s press conference and Morrison’s law-n-order rant, Burlington City Council President Ben Traverse, a Democrat, unveiled a resolution urging a crackdown on illegal behavior in City Hall Park.

I’m sure the timing was coincidental, but it sure seemed like Council Democrats were acting in concert with our Republican governor. Traverse’s resolution, which had not been officially published by the time Seven Days reported on it, calls on city officials to…

“…enforce all applicable statutes, ordinances, and regulations to the fullest extent necessary to end criminality and other unwelcome behaviors.”

Aww, as if ending criminality was an actual possibility as long as human beings walk the Earth.

Traverse’s resolution is right in line with Scott and Morrison, placing the blame firmly on the “service-resistant” guilty of “criminality and other unwelcome behaviors” (such as sleeping in the park because there’s nowhere else to go) and offering no hint whatsoever that our inadequate social safety net is to blame for their plight.

Recently, on the always-engaging “There’s No ‘A’ in Creemee” podcast, cohosts Joanna Grossman (Chittenden County Democratic chair) and Andy Julow (former state senator from Grand Isle) discussed the obvious enthusiasm gap between activist groups like Indivisible and the Vermont Democratic Party. They had some good thoughts and some meh thoughts, but then, don’t we all.

But I’d suggest that Grossman should look in her own back yard for one big reason she didn’t talk about: The fact that Burlington Democrats often play the role of Republicans in city politics, seeming more concerned with the comfort level of the affluent than the survival struggles of the unfortunate. Also, in this year’s legislative session, Senate leadership (Pro Tem Phil Baruth and Majority Leader Kesha Ram Hinsdale, both from Chittenden County) was bound and determined to push across an education reform plan that seemed more Republican than Democratic. It certainly attracted the ire of the public education establishment and the teachers’ union. (Not to mention the Legislature’s refusal to even consider boosting the state’s tiny appropriation to Green Mountain Transit, at a time when service cuts are making life tougher for working Vermonters who can’t afford a car.)

Finally, I’ll throw this in for the history nerds out there. The only Democrat to win a gubernatorial election in deep-blue Vermont since Howard Dean a quarter-century ago was Peter Shumlin. And Shumlin ran hard on single-payer health care, a profoundly progressive policy. Maybe that’s a better formula for success than running like Republicans Lite.

Is it any surprise, that liberal Vermonters feel more enthusiastic about Indivisible and Lean Left and Third Act than they do about the VDP, which often seems to be following Commissioner Morrison’s advice and “shifting the pendulum back to the middle”? I don’t think so.