It will be interesting to see if voters in 2028 and 2032 have the same bias toward Republicans on the economy that characterized the early 21st century.
More pessimistically, the parties seem too optimized for Democrats to win a blowout victory on affordability. The party machines exist to extract concessions from the general public for their core voters as much as win elections, and if Democrats start to sense a blowout victory, they will probably adopt more extreme positions rather than run up the score. This in spite of the fact that structural factors (the Senate map, incumbency bias, etc) make the marginal benefit of winning more than a narrow victory pretty high.
I feel like I’m pretty informed on public policy and I’m genuinely not sure what the party pitch is on affordability. Like going all the way back to 22 it’s been hard to even get a clear explainable theory of how this gets solved.
Add to that that these kind of issues on social media don’t light up our brains the way social justice questions do and it seems bad.
Don't do tariffs, probably build some chip fabs, keep repeating how solar is totally cheaper than gas now, child tax credit, higher healthcare subsidies, loudly assert a favorable opinion about more housing construction? That's all I've got and, yeah, it ain't getting the job done.
I think about this all the time. I'm not sure if there is a clear, causal mechanism for political parties to improve the top line of the budget of people that are struggling financially. There isn't a "make everyone rich" button for Democrats to press, nor is there a "make goods cheap" button either. I think that's why I (and others) support the EK/Abundance folks. However, I don't think there is really an appetite in current US politics for dynamic economic growth or any sort of detailed thinking surround it. It's all about redistribution, which is a good and noble effort, but at some point we'll need new economic opportunity for people to be able to improve their lives.
Yeah, as a northern californian I do not trust democrats to do better with affordability. A lot of progressive/dem ideals are in conflict with affordability - more regulations, more taxes, more government oversight, etc. I'm not blanket against those things, but I have seen in my time in the Bay Area how they can hurt affordability and jobs.
I have not nor likely will not ever vote republican, but the dems haven't done a great job of proving they can control costs.
Maybe, just maybe, the Democrats are the same as Republicans in that on day 1 they all want to raise money, read polls, and get reelected. Also maybe having the Congressional leaders from NY and California is a bit tone deaf.
On the one hand, the growing Abundance faction of Democrats makes me optimistic - there really are Democrats with good ideas that fit into prioritizing affordability. On the other hand, there's resistance to Abundance (the Just-Change-the-Subject faction). They seem to think that if the Democrats don't TALK ABOUT their unpopular ideas that will be enough. I do think this polling suggests that it's not actually enough (certainly in the uphill battle for the Senate).
I would love any 2028 primary candidates to answer questions about hard tradeoffs. Do you support NEPA/permitting reform to make construction easier/remove procedural hurdles? Do you support constraining local government's zoning authority at the state/federal level to allow greater housing construction/density? Do you support removing small/minority-owned business requirements from government building projects? How about removing union labor requirements? Do you support an all-of-the-above approach to energy? If the answer to most/all of these questions is no, then they aren't really an affordability Democrat and voters would be right not to trust them on that.
It will be interesting to see if voters in 2028 and 2032 have the same bias toward Republicans on the economy that characterized the early 21st century.
More pessimistically, the parties seem too optimized for Democrats to win a blowout victory on affordability. The party machines exist to extract concessions from the general public for their core voters as much as win elections, and if Democrats start to sense a blowout victory, they will probably adopt more extreme positions rather than run up the score. This in spite of the fact that structural factors (the Senate map, incumbency bias, etc) make the marginal benefit of winning more than a narrow victory pretty high.
I feel like I’m pretty informed on public policy and I’m genuinely not sure what the party pitch is on affordability. Like going all the way back to 22 it’s been hard to even get a clear explainable theory of how this gets solved.
Add to that that these kind of issues on social media don’t light up our brains the way social justice questions do and it seems bad.
Don't do tariffs, probably build some chip fabs, keep repeating how solar is totally cheaper than gas now, child tax credit, higher healthcare subsidies, loudly assert a favorable opinion about more housing construction? That's all I've got and, yeah, it ain't getting the job done.
I think about this all the time. I'm not sure if there is a clear, causal mechanism for political parties to improve the top line of the budget of people that are struggling financially. There isn't a "make everyone rich" button for Democrats to press, nor is there a "make goods cheap" button either. I think that's why I (and others) support the EK/Abundance folks. However, I don't think there is really an appetite in current US politics for dynamic economic growth or any sort of detailed thinking surround it. It's all about redistribution, which is a good and noble effort, but at some point we'll need new economic opportunity for people to be able to improve their lives.
What about deep Blue states would make anyone think Democrats know anything about improving affordability?
Yeah, as a northern californian I do not trust democrats to do better with affordability. A lot of progressive/dem ideals are in conflict with affordability - more regulations, more taxes, more government oversight, etc. I'm not blanket against those things, but I have seen in my time in the Bay Area how they can hurt affordability and jobs.
I have not nor likely will not ever vote republican, but the dems haven't done a great job of proving they can control costs.
Maybe, just maybe, the Democrats are the same as Republicans in that on day 1 they all want to raise money, read polls, and get reelected. Also maybe having the Congressional leaders from NY and California is a bit tone deaf.
On the one hand, the growing Abundance faction of Democrats makes me optimistic - there really are Democrats with good ideas that fit into prioritizing affordability. On the other hand, there's resistance to Abundance (the Just-Change-the-Subject faction). They seem to think that if the Democrats don't TALK ABOUT their unpopular ideas that will be enough. I do think this polling suggests that it's not actually enough (certainly in the uphill battle for the Senate).
I would love any 2028 primary candidates to answer questions about hard tradeoffs. Do you support NEPA/permitting reform to make construction easier/remove procedural hurdles? Do you support constraining local government's zoning authority at the state/federal level to allow greater housing construction/density? Do you support removing small/minority-owned business requirements from government building projects? How about removing union labor requirements? Do you support an all-of-the-above approach to energy? If the answer to most/all of these questions is no, then they aren't really an affordability Democrat and voters would be right not to trust them on that.