We supposedly live in one of the bluest states in the country – even our Republican governors could easily qualify as moderate Democrats in less enlightened regions.

So how is it that our state, long dominated by a self-avowed party of progress, finds itself increasingly paralyzed with traffic gridlock and seemingly stuck with a ramshackle public transportation system?

More than half of our commuter rail engineers, entrusted with 144-ton locomotives and the safety and lives of hundreds of passengers, have driving records that range from the simply poor to the outright hazardous, the Boston Globe recently reported.

The conventional answer is that the tight-fisted policies of a series of Republican governors, from Bill Weld in the early 1990s to Charlie Baker today, are to blame for the mess in which we find ourselves.

As reality sets in on Baker’s struggle raise the MBTA to at least a minimal level of competence, his would-be Democratic challenges in 2020 are taking pot shots at his claims to be a first-rate manager.

But that ignores the fact that Democrats have wielded overwhelming power on Beacon Hill for years. There are just seven Republicans in the 40-member state Senate, while the GOP claims just 34 seats in the 160-member House. And for eight key years, from 2006 to 2014, we had an extremely popular Democratic governor, Deval Patrick, to go along with the party’s iron control of the Legislature.

That’s not to say Baker’s Republican predecessors – Weld, Cellucci and Romney – haven’t played a role in the decline of our state’s overall transportation network, from roadways to rails, into Third World status. But lobbing criticism at our token Republican governors and letting the state’s powerful Democratic establishment off the hook does seem more than a little blinkered, even in a blue state like ours.

Scott Van Voorhis

Hearts in the Right Place

There’s no doubt the progressive wing of the Massachusetts Democratic Party truly wants to raise the money to fix our broken roads and rails and invest in our schools, among other worthy causes.

Instead of blasting Baker, progressives would be better off to force some soul searching in their own party. It’s time to pull the plug on what a reporter friend of mine likes to call the “hack progressive alliance.”

This catchy phrase refers to the blind obedience by the progressive activists to Beacon Hill’s corrupt party-boss leadership.

As they battle it out for state dollars for their health care, housing and social justice nonprofits, the progressive wing has long turned a blind eye to the corruption and abuse of power by party leaders on Beacon Hill.

Progressives have saved their outrage for our relatively weak Republican governors, letting a succession of House and Senate leaders off the hook even as they have departed for prison or under a dark cloud of scandal.

Why? By keeping their mouths shut, the state’s social justice warriors have managed to keep the dollars flowing for their own causes.

This knee-jerk reaction can be seen in the mounting criticism Baker is taking for the burgeoning State Police pay scandal, which has seen too many troopers pull down $200,000 to $300,000 paychecks by exploiting the system with fake overtime and other abusive practices.

Knowing how our wonderful state government works, it would be a real surprise if these ridiculous pay packages haven’t been going on for years, predating Baker’s ascension to the office in 2016.

Of course, no one in the state Democratic Party is asking where embattled former state Senate President Stan Rosenberg or House Speaker Robert DeLeo were when all this was going on.

Maybe it’s time for progressive firebrands of the state’s Democratic Party to take a hard look at their tactic alliance with their party’s entrenched leadership and ask whether it might be time for a well-deserved divorce.

Yes, they have gotten extra dollars here and there for their causes and programs. But on the bigger ticket items, especially public transit, which everyone from the poor to the middle class relies on to one degree or another, the record of our state’s legislative leaders is abysmal.

While governors come and go, there have been just three House speakers over the past 22 years, two of them now convicted felons.

During that time, the MBTA has been starved of state funding and saddled with debt from the Big Dig that hit $9 billion a couple years ago.

And with little or no effective oversight from Beacon Hill, the agency has made a hash of things with the money it has received from fares and government funding it does receive. Trains are late or break down, token and ticket prices have soared. In fact, the MBTA is the only major transit system in country to shed riders, losing millions over the last several years, according to a Pioneer Institute report.

The icing on the cake is the recent revelation that one-third of all MBTA employees now pull down at least $100,000 a year – nice work if you have the patronage connections to get it.

That news was poo-pooed by one Democratic consultant during a discussion of Baker’s management of various issues, including the MBTA, on WGBH’s Braude/Eagan show. The core issue with the MBTA is the lack of funding, not issues with unions or bloated payrolls, he asserted.

But here’s where our blue state progressives just don’t get it when they ignore or downplay the abuse of the public trust, not to mention hard-earned public dollars.

Yes, the T needs more money. But only a fool would willingly pump more money into a system as shoddily run as the MBTA. While it involves a separate agency, the State Police pay scandal only reinforces the perception that state government is a racket set up for the benefit of those with the right political connections. Until there is real reform at the MBTA, you can forget about winning public support for a bailout.

It’s not about ideology, it’s about common sense.

There was a time when progressives took the lead in pushing for good government and rooting out waste, fraud and abuse of the public dollar.

Maybe it’s time for progressives to go back to their good government roots and stop explaining away the hack culture that so clearly holds sway at the MBTA.

And for anyone who wants to see the T get the resources it truly needs to provide decent service, it may be the only way forward.

Scott Van Voorhis is Banker & Tradesman’s columnist; opinions expressed are his own. He may be reached at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com.