40 percent off in November
The case for a centrist revival and one of our biggest discounts of the year
Every few months we like to welcome our new free subscribers and offer you the chance to try out a one-year paid membership at a steep 40 percent discount. Our hope, of course, is that you’ll like it and want to stick around.
Even though I think our articles are great and worth the time (and money), I know there are plenty of other ways you could be spending that same time (and money). But I believe that Slow Boring members join not just because they enjoy the content, but because the ideas themselves are worth supporting.
What are those ideas?
One that I’ve been thinking about lately is the desperate need in this country for a kind of dual-use revival of center-left politics, two conceptually distinct but mutually reenforcing tasks.
One of those tasks is a blue state reform agenda: making the public school systems function better (meaning a return to the basics like teaching kids how to read rather than having schools be a fulcrum of radical politics), increasing housing supply, and pairing gun control with real enforcement from police and prosecutors. America’s blue states are richer than our red ones — they’re by most measures the richest places in the world — and in some key respects, like life expectancy, they clearly outperform the red ones. But their populations are growing more slowly, and despite the more progressive political culture, the extent to which the public services are actually better is mixed.
The other is a red state electability agenda. Every jurisdiction has a median voter, and yet right-wing knuckle-draggers are winning easily across huge swathes of the country. And it’s not as simple as Democrats forgetting to meaningfully contest the races (though that does happen sometimes). It’s refusing to acknowledge that the electorate is genuinely more conservative in these places, and you need to offer them candidates who’ll align with public opinion on things like immigration, gun control, and affirmative action in order to secure the future of democracy and build governing majorities that can take meaningful action on health care and taxes.
We’re in an odd moment where Joe Biden is president, but Pramila Jayapal and Elizabeth Warren have largely won the battle to staff the administration.
And even if I’m not thrilled about that, I have to admit they won that battle fair and square. The last well-organized set of moderate Democratic institutions got a lot fundamentally right about American politics, but shredded their credibility over Iraq and Obama-era austerity, leaving progressives as the only truly vital voices on issues Democrats care about. We need a larger project of renewal, with networks of political entrepreneurs, policy hands, media people, and donors capable of building brands, sustaining institutions, and developing ideas.
I like to think Slow Boring is on the cutting edge of that project of renewal, and I hope you’ll consider joining us.
Paid members get full access to all articles, of course, as well as the ability to participate in the comments sections and to ask questions in weekly mailbags. We also invite paid subscribers to our occasional in-person and virtual events. And I always like to remind people that we participate in Stripe Climate carbon removal with 5 percent of our revenue (making us what I believe to be a rare carbon-negative business) and support the GiveWell Top Charities Fund with 10 percent. It’s a great product that also supports some great causes.