MSNBC’s Joy Reid wants to talk about how residents of West Virginia and Kentucky are poor but their senators are rich. Perhaps this would be a good time to reevaluate the liberal policies that she holds so dear.

Obviously upset by West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin tanking President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better bill, Reid decided to take a shot at him and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Reid implied that McConnell and Manchin were funneling money away from their states, which are “overwhelmingly poor.”

And yet, another state with “powerful senators” where residents are struggling would be New York, represented by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. Using the U.S. Census Bureau’s supplemental poverty measure, which more accurately measures poverty by factoring in the cost of living and the effects of government aid, New York has a poverty rate of 13.3%. That is higher than both Kentucky (10.9%) and West Virginia (10.5%).

The state with the highest poverty rate? That would be California, at 15.4%. One of California’s two senators is Dianne Feinstein, who has been in the Senate for 29 years now. Vice President Kamala Harris also served as a senator from the Golden State, and California hasn’t had a Republican governor since 2011. (New York has been governed by Democrats since 2007).

What’s more, California and New York both have higher homelessness rates and lower literacy rates than Kentucky and West Virginia. In fact, New York has the highest homelessness rate of any state (California is third), and California has the lowest literacy rate (New York has the second-lowest).

Liberal pundits love to paint residents of GOP states as uneducated, poor suckers who vote against their own interests. Yet we never get a discussion about liberal bastions such as New York and California, which are worse by multiple major metrics. But Reid will not raise any questions about what Feinstein, Schumer, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, or others are doing with their money and power in liberal states.

Reid is a despicable political voice and a toxic partisan, so none of this is surprising. But it is worth remembering that the Democratic Party’s charade about being the party of the working class and the poor is exactly that. The Democratic Party is governed by elite wealthy liberals for elite wealthy liberals, and its shining models of New York and California prove it.