What if blue state Dem coalitions just can’t do this? I live in a ‘nice’ town in NJ where every yard sign has a ‘in this home we [insert progressive platitudes]’ and black lives matter signs. But when a new apartment building is up for development you get 3-400 facebook posts of complaints about traffic and changing neighborhood character. I think these people are willing to read some books about racism and feel bad about themselves but any concrete steps would be a bridge too far.
Same thing with child care, public option, etc. They will never support a change in the status quo - they just want to ride out their good lives for the next 30 years while the state hollows out.
The subsidiarity of zoning decisions is a massive problem, and not just in the suburbs, in San Francisco a single individual can delay any project months to years merely by filing an environmental complaint.
New Jersey's situation is complicated and I wonder if this holds true throughout Blue America. For instance, we also live in a "nice" town in NJ in a county that has voted overwhelmingly blue the last several presidential cycles and has elected a Democrat to Congress the last two years by solid margins. Despite that, our town council is dominated by Republicans, including a GOP mayor.
The schools are solid and the services are perfectly acceptable. Taxes are, by NJ suburb standards, relatively low. I've even voted for the GOP candidates, not because of orthodoxy, but just because the town is obviously well run and functional.
Yeah I grew up in such a town (in Monmouth, though, so we went republican nationally too). This might be a decent example of where the two issues Matt presents diverge: NJ is in some ways well run (my understanding is our construction situation is better than NY’s as well), but still, the state is extremely expensive, losing middle class residents, and is highly segregated. Those problems will swamp our other advantages eventually
I'm curious to see if these types of towns experience another generation of growth and success without having to make major changes (ie improve NJ transit and allow apartment construction) with the influx of Manhattan and Brooklyn residents seeking out suburban houses due to the pandemic. I grew up in (deeply red) Sussex county, and even that far from the city the housing market appears to be bouyed by some new demand after years of a lid on prices due to NJ's weak recovery from the recession and the terrible commute to job centers.
With the switch to remote work happening in some version or another for the foreseeable future, the housing market even out in the redder parts of the state is certainly accelerating. We’re in this boat. We like our town quite a bit, but if I don’t have to commute to NYC/Newark more than twice a week, there’s no reason not to look further out for nicer, newer houses on bigger plots. The number of all cash buyers we’ve seen coming from NYC and paying $30-50k above ask is astounding. That’s not sustainable, but it may give new life to those areas, which in turn could create more construction and a broader tax base.
Or they could just end up like we did, voting their values at the state and federal level while voting with their pocketbooks at the local level.
My "nice" town in CT is pretty much the same as yours - deep blue at the federal level but red at the local level. In some ways, it's reassuring to see that that level of national-local disconnect can still happen! But I think many of these folks who vote blue-red like this understand that these blue states have been run by Democrats for decades in which the financial situations of those states have generally worsened, and so there's not much appetite for paying even more in state taxes when there's no faith that the existing taxes have been allocated particularly well (as compared to local property taxes which are going to the very high-quality schools). CT is a particularly good example of this, with the pension crisis which has been looming for decades and is almost entirely due to Dem state governments failing to grapple with the public-sector unions.
I'm not one for union-busting, but when you see stuff like that and the exorbitant gouging Matt illustrated in his post, I think it does raise some very hard questions about the role of public-sector unions, as distinct from private-sector unions.
As someone who also lives square in the Greater NYC Red Zone from Matt's map, I tend to agree on many of these points. I think many, if not most of the folks who put the "Black Lives Matter" signs in their yards would positively howl to their local mayor or selectman if somebody housed actual low-income black families in a development on their streets.
I will say that re: Matt's point on infrastructure, I do think that public infrastructure, child care, etc is one place where these folks can still be convinced to cooperate. For a family with children, THE single biggest appeal to these places, bar none, and the reason people are willing to pay through the nose (besides being within commuting distance of NYC) is that the public schools are absolutely fantastic. Given that, and given that many of these same upscale white-collar workers rely on public transit to commute to the city, whether for work or pleasure, I think there'd be lots of appetite for anything that delivers more services to children and that makes it easier, faster, and nicer to go into the city.
I also live in a "nice" town in NJ with all the same yard signs. My town council just banned Airbnb (or rather, enacted an ordinance so restrictive that it's pointless to do it) because they didn't want "transients" in town. I spoke at several council meetings about it there was just no movement at all. I feel like "progressives" are more conservative than we usually assume when it comes to anything that could actually change things.
And Seattle. I grew up in Chicago, and agree with you, and Seattle is very similar. Super liberal people here are up in arms about identity issues, but as soon as you talk about issues of money and back yard (neighborhood changes), you get silence at best and active opposition in many cases. Many people around me reveal themselves as progressive only on the surface.
While there is a certain degree of obvious hypocrisy with these voters re: NIMBYism, I do think that refusing local tax increases/etc is eminently reasonable, and not at all out of line with progressive values. Many of these blue state/local governments struggle to efficiently allocate the tax revenue they already earn, and are often shot through with public-sector corruption and graft, as illustrated in Matt's post. It should first be incumbent upon Democratic governments to demonstrate that they can effectively use their existing tax revenue before voters should be expected to fork over more.
There's a think a lot of these nominally progressive localities (especially in the zones of affluence within) suffer from "Wrigley Field" syndrome. That is, for a long time there was a contention that Wrigley Field itself was such an attraction and moneymaker that it perverted the Cubs' incentives to actually field a competitive team and win the World Series. Complacency disease, if you will.
I think of lots of these neighborhoods the same way. If you're life is pretty nice, and everyone on your block has a lawn sign enumerating progressive values, how compelled do you truly feel to support transformational policies? Probably not very, given that you're getting most of what you want already
Democrats in Massachusetts certainly need a new vision to sell that sort of change. We (Priorities For Progress) polled Ayanna Pressley in a Democratic gubernatorial primary in a hypothetical 2022 matchup where Baker runs as a Democrat - he gets 62% of the vote, the Democrats get a total of 25% (AG Maura Healey gets 13%, Pressley 7%, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh 4%). SurveyUSA, A-rated pollster from 538, sample of 558 likely 2018 Dem primary voters fielded 8/12-8/16.
What we've found over multiple polls is a gap in values (voters mostly trust Democrats on values) and results (voters don't really think Democrats will make their life better. There are roughly three equal groups of voters in MA - straight GOP, Baker/Warren voters, straight Dem.
We certainly have the featherbedding stuff down - 1/3 of MBTA retirees are under 55 and the pension fund has some quirky/sketchy exemption from transparency and underperforms the state pension fund.
"voters don't really think Democrats will make their life better" is such a killer. And not wrong? But that's a huge problem. People want to say that skeptical voters in places like Iowa should take a chance on Democrats, but even in places like Massachusetts the voters don't really trust Democrats to run things if they can get a decent-seeming Republican instead.
Yeah and, to your point about on making blue states test cases, "Democrats make life better" would be easier nationally if we had things to point to in Dem states. I'm supposed to tell someone in Harris County how they should be Democrats when our housing is unaffordable, transportation atrocious, there's intense racial segregation, and most kids in Boston can't read on grade level at a cost of $21,000 per student.
We export politicians, activists, and operatives at an astounding rate - maybe we should fix up a little around here and people will want to be Democrats like us?
Massachusetts is one of the most Democratically branded states, we have a bit of a responsibility for the brand.
BTW this is awesome! I missed the first blogging era but people's replies have been great and seems better for my brain than Twitter.
I have trouble even thinking of an area where Democrats or Republicans want to make my life better. Most proposals from Democrats are all means-tested so a person with middle-class income can't benefit at all and just ends up paying for it. Even if Biden cancels student debt, I'm extremely skeptical that my student debt will count. I don't know why. I just know I'm not the kind of person they want to help. A covid relief bill would help me, but that's a temporary fix. M4A would help, but Bidencare (ACA + public option, but only for people without employer coverage available) would not. Things that would genuinely help me are ideas like UBI, free (non means tested!) childcare, and the ability to opt out of the terrible public school system (i.e. not paying for it), but those are not even on the table for either party. It doesn't surprise me that some people prefer Republicans despite the incompetence and corruption. At least they want to cut my taxes. Democrats seem to have no interest in helping anyone but the poor.
Yes! Even three weeks of paid vacation is more than most people get, but why not four? Or even six? It could be the most popular position in the country if anyone bothered advocating for it. Who doesn't want more vacation?
I feel this I’m regards to the student debt cancellation thing. Like, I’m very much for it, but I also assume I won’t benefit from it. Which I don’t know what to think about. I come from a poor household but managed to go to a really good college with scholarships and come out with about $25k in debt (total costs of the years of schooling were above $100k, so that’s a win for me). I have a good job but it’s in DC so it’s a high housing cost place, so nothing ever seems to benefit me anymore. I’ll never be able to buy property here, but I do have a good job that I never want to leave.
I’m a dyed in the wool Democrat, but I also consistently assume that no new Democratic policy ever benefits me personally.
I find it super weird that people think California, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, etc. are super-liberal and have been run by Democrats for all recent history, when it is empirically not true.
NY - Republican George Pataki was NY Governor from 1995-2006. Republican Rudy Guiliani was NYC mayor from 1994 - 2001. Bloomberg was mayor from 2002- 2013, he ran as a Republican for his first and second term as NYC mayor, and as a Independant aligned with the GOP to win a third term in 2008. NYC did not have a Democrat as mayor for 20 years, from 1994 - 2013.
California: From 1983-2010, California had a GOP Governor for 23 out of 27 years.
Republican Richard J. Riordan was Mayor of Los Angeles from 1993-2001.
Massachussetts - From 1991-present, the Governor has been a member of the GOP for 21 of 28 years, including the last 6 years. One of those Governors went on to become the GOP nominee for President in 2012, and currently serves as a GOP Senator from Utah.
New Jersey - Since 1982, a Republican has held the office of Governor for 23 of 38 years, including from 2010-2017.
Sure, it's more complicated than that. There's been split government for most of that time. My point is that Republicans currently or have recently have held executive position in the states and major metros that are often referenced when someone wants to point to policy failure of Democrats ("Democrat-run cities", e.g.) It's just not true that progressives have been running the show.
Heck, NY Dems have only had a trifecta statewide (Gov + both state legislatures) for 4 of the last 29 years (09-10 & 19-20). [1]
In comparison - "battleground" Pennsylvannia has a a GOP trifecta for 12 of the last 29 years (and 1 year of Dem trifecta back in '93).
I would love to see someone do a deep dive into the recent history of state government control, policy implementations, and give tangible evidence of what either party has done when it gained control.
Yeah In our 2018 poll of GE voters, independents were breakeven (-1) on being Democrats are "representative of your values" and down big (-22) on things being better/worse if Democrats controlled all branches of state government. Registered Dems had a 10 point gap. No single group - youth, registered Dems, Warren voters, Sanders 2016 primary voters - cracked 20% for saying Massachusetts Democrats are 'not liberal enough'.
MA is a microcosm of the Democratic Party right now. Far-left is so detached from mainstream voters they suck up the energy/attention with a vision that cannot win statewide.
The far-left advocacy groups have won big in primaries in what we call "Left Decile" districts (10% of districts that are most Democrat, places Warren beat Scott Brown by 50+ points. Cambridge, JP, etc). They went 3-0 beating state legislative incumbents in that Left Decile in 2016-2018. But they went 0-3 this year, and all 3 primary challenges were in the other 90% of districts (same held at the federal level - Morse/Neal was outside that; Pressley/Capuano is the only Left Decile congressional district). And they won 2 of 10 GEs. A bunch of mini Kara Eastmans.
This is fascinating and it creates a real conundrum for the party. On one hand, Democrats want to have young, articulate, and compelling candidates. On the other hand, those candidates are in uncompetitive districts and, as you put it, "suck up all the energy/attention."
What do you do when your best bets for seats are the Tom Malinowski's and Max Rose's of the world, but the face of your party proudly proclaim themselves Democratic Socialists?
One thing could be to build a meaningful brand for a wing of the Democratic Party that is about delivering concrete results (that doesn't just avoid but explicitly, loudly rejects highly unpopular policy stances and/or hashtags) a la "Future is Faction" https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-future-is-faction
Another thing would be to aggressively and relentlessly elevate the voices that can win swing voters (Conor Lamb, Abigail Spanberger, etc) and that can hopefully deliver a message to the base (Jim Clyburn) while putting the whole picture into its proper context: Justice Democrats have flipped zero seats, if you want to follow the values they espouse the only rational course of action is to elevate the the much larger group of Democrats needed to win & govern.
Matt had a good tweet about the older Dem leadership not being able to get free media. Jim Clyburn needs to get the RBG treatment. Lets make shirts. The man is the most important person of 2020! Should be a pop culture icon. Do Whatever Clyburn Says.
Max Rose is fantastic and, unfortunately, suffered the same plight as every other successful Staten Island Democrat - after voters punished Republicans for failing once, they weren't willing to do so again. I hope he finds a way to stick around in a meaningful way.
I agree with this but have some concerns about how effective this is. I don't agree with AOC in a lot of ways, even though I think she has a place in the party. She does undoubtedly have a watchability factor. She's great on social media, she's a very impressive speaker and is able to give a full throated defense to progressive policy. The platforms that allow her to speak to such a broad audience have a real bias toward that kind of appeal. None of Lamb, Spanberger, Malinowski, or Rose has the same kind of charisma that gets rewarded through social media. Does a 2020 version of the DLC have the juice to change the narrative?
Those seem like two separate (both important!) questions. "Does a 2020 version of the DLC have the juice" ... well, I think one thing going for the center-left in 2020 vs. 1990 is that there is not a values gap. It's not like the center-left right now is denying climate change and opposing marriage equality. It is more a difference of degree and approach than values and long-term goals. And moderate Democrats have, without question, the better path to achieving the goals everyone on the left shares on healthcare, environment, judges, economy, etc.
To the question of is there a figure on the center-left with that dynamism and appeal ... well, there are ~100 center-left Dems for every 5 Democratic Socialists. So you'd like to think the odds are for it, even if some of the social following is not as strong. More infrastructure to facilitate would help.
I imagine this was aggravated by the recent near full employment especially benefitting those likely to be skeptical. If we insist on making it a tradeoff between policies that encourage full employment and social programs (which granted may well be super helpful,) this is likely to stay the case.
Featherbedding and graft by public sector unions, in my eyes, is probably the single biggest issue which will hold back state and local Democrats in blue states. I live cross the border in CT, and we've got a massive underfunded pension crisis which stems from successive Democratic legislatures' failure to adequately grapple with the public-sector unions. Even for wealthier folks who understand on an intellectual level that they're going to be very comfortable in retirement, people will viscerally dislike on an emotional level the idea of working till 65 or 70 to subsidize graft-ridden public-sector employee retirements at 45 or 50. Any serious agenda of advancing progressive policies in blue states needs to grapple with the fact that blue-state governments are often riddled with public-sector corruption and deeply mistrusted by their voters as a result.
Yeah the current focus in MA is on the underfunded MBTA, which a ton of those Baker/Warren voters recall as Mr Bulger's Transit Authority (from the jobs handed out by Whitey's brother, who was president of the state senate).
One local Democrat, recently elected to higher office , actually has a bold vision like the type you outline. He is probably the Massachusetts Democrat most in-line with you:
"The Democratic Party is optimistic about the future of America and of Massachusetts. Speaking to the median-aged Bay State resident, who is 39, we can tell you how we are going to expand opportunity for you, for your kids, and for your grandkids.
For you: Housing, transportation, and health care are curbing opportunity by reducing your economic mobility. The Democratic Party will reduce the cost of homes near good jobs by loosening zoning restrictions in suburbs and by subsidizing housing, instead of vehicles, in urban cores. One third of metropolitan land is set aside for parking; autonomous vehicles and congestion pricing will reduce that footprint and allow for more walkable, affordable development. The revenue from congestion pricing, which is the only proven method to reduce traffic, and from an increase in the gas tax, will be directed towards multi-modal transportation improvements that aim for two metrics: reduce your commute to fewer than 40 minutes and your annual transportation budget to less than $8,000."
Auchincloss just got elected to Congress though, so he's not likely to do much in the state. He's also a bit of a character because he's a former Republican who won a plurality in the primary by splitting the vote between progressive candidates.
Charlie Baker is getting 62% of the vote of Democratic primary voters and has an 80% approval rating - Auchincloss working for him doesn't seem like a huge problem? Also, candidates who support Medicare For All got less than 50% of the vote in that primary. The "progressives splitting the vote" narrative was quite overstated - Khazei and others also took votes away from Auchincloss.
Great article! Arlington, VA is a very well run blue county, and the taxes here aren’t even that high as compared to other places in the DMV, but it’s the housing costs that drive people out and into farther away places. I loved what one of our churches near the Clarendon metro did about a decade ago - it got permission from the county to expand upwards and build low/middle-income apartment housing on top of the church. After several years fighting off lawsuits from the surrounding neighbors (NIMBY), once they did it, it’s been extremely successful all around (for the church too). Always makes me wonder if other metropolitan religious institutions should get into the low/middle income housing business...
I agree 100%. As a former Mayor of an affluent Bay Area suburb, I always felt that our way to contribute to the national debate was by setting an example of effective local government.
In my neck of the woods there are some positive things happening, including the electrification of Caltrain and some softening of NIMBYism.
But there are a couple of challenges. First, ambitious young local government officials are way more interested in performative politics on national issues than on making tangible progress on less sexy projects. The incentives are difficult to overcome.
Second, despite a great quality of life, good economy, low crime, etc, the public's distrust of government continues to rise, driven by national politics. Affluent progressives complain constantly about their property values and the mismanagement of their taxes. It's quite depressing, and it's hard for local officials to believe they can make a dent in that perception.
Given the choice between grinding away at some incremental meaningful change for years, or making a quick symbolic splash on a national cultural issue, it's easy to see why people make the choices they do (although they are not necessarily mutually exclusive).
We need to change local politicians' incentives so that focusing on creating good government also helps their political careers. Anyone have any ideas? :)
I'm a young Bay Area resident who wants to get into local politics and focus on the less sexy things, but I don't really know where to begin. As of right now, I'm just a guy with a laptop haha.
But yeah, I know exactly the sort of thing you're talking about. It's the world I live in 24/7.
Thanks. Mainly I'd just like to know where to go/who to talk to/what to do to even begin working in these sorts of things. I look at the tangle of activist groups and get scared to even begin, since I don't know which are good and which are the kind we like to complain about. Or even what sort of local offices to volunteer/work for. I'm in Alameda Co., for reference.
I would focus on building relationships & credentials. Attend local democratic party meetings and volunteer. Volunteer for a local bond measure campaign. Look for a local government board or commission to join. Volunteer for a non-profit that is engaged in local public policy.
Seeing a lot of this locally in Chicago as well. I think it's an effect of the "nationalization" of politics via Social Media. I mean, we literally have city council candidates issuing public position papaers on Israel & Palestine. Very little oxygen left for curb cut regulations or zoning reform (which typically ends up being seen in idelogical, rather than developmental terms)
The absolutely dogmatic focus on Israel-Palestine from the progressive left is honestly baffling to me. I get that it's a human-rights concern, but the amount of oxygen it sucks up among the Squad and their ilk seems wildly out of proportion to its impact on the average American citizen, which is basically nil, especially when Israel itself is a necessary partner for US interests in the region. Seems like one of those dogmatic issues which progressives would probably benefit from talking about less in favor of pocketbook issues.
The other point is that sometimes this is how national progressive policies get done. Canada’s single-payer system was not initially a national policy- Saskatchewan did it first at the provincial level. Other provinces waited and watched and after seeing its success decided to jump in as well.
Yeah, the Canadian health care saga is a great example of this. They faced some big hurdles in Saskatchewan but showing those hurdles could be overcome became a huge impetus for change.
I think this is a great point that gets at some of the nitty-gritty of Matt's thesis.
The CCF was the (true) democratic socialist party that ran Saskatchewan for more than a decade. The party and their leader, Tommy Douglas, saw power as an opportunity to prove to the world that the government can run the economy more efficiently than the private sector. They completely failed. They were far too ambitious - the government didn't just take over the health insurance sector, but also the rest of the insurance sector (!), as well as many goods and services providers. The government, for example, owned shoe factories and box factories. They planned to eventually take over the entire finance industry, though that never happened. Note that the current incarnation of the CCF, the New Democrats, officially calls itself a coalition of social democrats and democratic socialists, but the democratic socialists have been marginal for decades.
But one of the CCF's implemented policies did indeed go national: the state takeover of the health insurance industry at a time when most of the country didn't have health insurance. (The casualty of the spread of single-payer was promising marked-based solutions in places like Ontario. The single-payer system in Canada became terribly expensive [second in the world at one point] and required very technocratic fixes to get health inflation under control, and only after several decades.) Canada's Medicare is incredibly popular today, and is why Tommy Douglas is so revered.
Which is why the idea of Ayanna Pressley running for governor of MA, while it partially makes me cringe, also makes me hopeful. You can be crazy-lefty ideologues when in power, but if you succeed at a few good policies that are replicable elsewhere (technically and politically), you've done everyone a favor. (It would probably help to not demonize your allies and say or do things that completely turn off potential voters.)
1. Most mainstream media publications have really foregone any focus of accountability on the efficacy of government programs which has understandably left a void that conservatives can fill with the message of “Democrats run government programs like their own patronage systems with YOUR money and don’t face any consequences.” As incompetent as Trump is; the message of “Democrats have been running some of these cities for decades and none of the problems they supposedly care about have been solved,” I was silently sympathetic to. NYT had that great article a few years back titled “The Most Expensive Mile of Subway Track on Earth.” Those types of stories should be as frequent and ubiquitous as cultural critique articles are today. Without that, I think it becomes impossible to feel like there is anyone holding government accountable to executing and therefore people default to being against these things no differently than if you were asked to buy shares in a company without any promise of shareholder reporting or accountability.
2. I think Democrats suffer from trying to do too many things at the same time when designing these programs. “We need to build this transit line, but the firms involved must be American or based in (insert municipality), a certain percentage of the work must come from small businesses, it must create a certain number of jobs, it must take into account (racial, class, etc.) equity. That is a recipe for failure execution wise. This is a bipartisan problem when thinking about DoD programs at a national level. Executing to solve a problem becomes almost secondary to all the other goals that have more direct political benefits.
One other thought: sometimes the compromises made to control for costs or appease constituencies on these projects are ass backwards which further hampers confidence. As a fellow DC resident, the design of the H Street streetcar without a dedicated right-of-way almost defeats the point of wasting money it in the first place (I know you very much agree with that). Example #2 is Gavin Newsom paring the CHSR line to a section connecting nowhere to nowhere (no offense to the Central Valley). Like, I wish public officials were more brave to say “Look if we can’t do this project in this way, it doesn’t make sense to have it at all.”
My sense is some of these Republican Governors in very blue states win because people trust them not to be afraid to turn down certain programs or projects they believe won’t actually solve the problem they are seeking to solve in the first place.
The CASHR is such a train wreck (har har). Its a true embarrassment to Democrats nationwide. If it's not running between the bay and LA what purpose does it serve?
In my opinion, none honestly, other than public officials being able to save face and say they “created” jobs. It’s literally a higher brow twist on paying people to dig ditches with shovels. Like who in their right mind is going to pick HSR over driving in the Central Valley?
It'd be nice if there was any hope of the project being actually finished, but I don't think there is. Sadly, any such project will be tarred with that particular brush. Maybe one day we can actually build infrastructure in this country.
I had a different experience. I led the production transfer of the Siemens propulsion system for the NYCTA R160B project to meet the Buy America requirement. We built the traction motors in Norwood, OH and the propulsion invertor in Alpharetta, Georgia. Given the choice Siemens would have produced both components in Nuremberg. Both the production lines created longterm sticky revenue the factories could expand around. At the time too, Siemens was shutting down most of their US factories and moving them to Mexico.
But did that decision accomplish either: making the project cheaper or accelerating the project timeline compared to doing it through their existing process? Also, did Siemens have to hire outside firms to help them locate, source, and comply with buy American provisions?
Meeting the Buy America provisions didn't impact the timelines. In these transit projects the timelines are tied to funding cycles so that's the pacing function and far outside the production windows.
Hard to say on cost ... as a transit authority you're evaluating both upfront and lifetime costs. Most of these Buy America provisions were tied to reducing maintenance and operational risks over ~ 30 year lifecycles (e.g., foreign supplier exits US market after the contract). That's a real risk based on some outcomes of low-cost winner contracts from the 80s.
There's also the political jobs creation angle. I'm most familiar with transit and wind industries but there's been a lot of net new greenfield factories tied to these contracts ... Siemens built a light rail factory in Sacramento and a wind turbine gearbox factory in Elgin, IL, Kawasaki built a shell fabrication facility in Lincoln, NE, Alstom is nearly vertically integrated now in the US.
Yeah it’s definitely attractive politically. If it makes sense beyond just sloganeering I’m all for it. I’m more so speaking to program requirements that are included not because it’s the most cost effective, fastest, or efficient, but because politicians are looking at these things as jobs programs rather than infrastructure programs. I’m all for programs that help create domestic industrial capacity but think they should be done separate from other programs where the primary goal should be to execute on a project in the fastest amount of time for best value. DoD is the worst for this honestly...so many weapons systems we overbuy or keep around not for need but because they provide jobs. But I also recognize this is a fantasy separate from the political reality of selling these things.
As a German guy with Austrian parents, I found the part about the sewer socialists in Milwaukee particularly fascinating. I think it'd be fun if you expanded on that in a future post. In any case, the comparison to Vienna public housing seems apt - Vienna really showed the power of left-wing ideals if applied courageously and with a focus on practicability. Austria is pretty much a center-right country, but socialists/Social-Democrats in Vienna are still easily winning municipial elections a hundred years later without really having to do much for it. Turns out it's really hard to dismiss left-wing ideas if you see their positive ramifications everyday in your commute to work.
The idea of "sewer socialism" was incredibly common in Britan and Europe, where muncipal elections tended to have a more equal franchise than national ones, and less aristocratic control over the government. Birmingham became a major city in the UK, because its council led a major programme of taking public utilities into public hands and running them well.
I'm honestly curious as to whether it was multicultural?
I also am honestly curious as to how Germans are managing to live amongst 3rd world immigrants who don't respect their rules of decorum. Ride a train across Europe and you used to know when you were in Germany by how orderly, quiet, and polite the loading and unloading process was.
Which I just really wonder if you can make American cities care about their shared infrastructure. I like to walk cities when I visit and American cities invariably are trashy compared to what European cities, at least Anglo Saxon haha Europe used to be.
I'm seriously suggesting you have to stop the enormous waste inherent in having an active part of your community disregard property rights and responsibilities.
Great post, and if anything an even bigger priority for New York, which has been losing population (forecast to lose 2 congressional seats after the census is done). In addition to the housing policy driven cost of living issues that Matt identified, these blue states have higher tax rates than a lot of the destination states that their population outflow is going to. You can maintain higher tax rates, but only if you are perceived as providing higher quality public services, and that’s not happening in New York now.
The tax issues are connected to the housing issues IMO. Pension costs get much higher in real terms when your population isn't growing, and the much-derided "luxury" housing is a great way to generate revenue without needing to impose ever-higher rates.
It's absurd to pay 6% of your salary to the city of New York and get absolutely nothing back for it. Which is true for the vast majority of working professionals paying that tax. At least in other high tax countries you know that your money is being spent helping people, not paying the 3rd pension who's realistic title would be "professional boondoggle consultant."
This is exactly the kind of insightful commentary I'm here for. I live in Berkeley, CA, which one might say is to California as California is to the nation. We have a pretty constant ultra left (relatively speaking) mandate and can try things here that won't get traction in other places. We were the first community in the nation to voluntarily bus our students (as VP-Elect Harris has spoken proudly of), we were one of the first places to tax sugary soda, one of the first places to have curbside recycling pickup, and many more. We have also tried things that failed, which is fine - I'm glad we tried them.
We are also in the crosshairs of the controversy over zoning restrictions and density that you often discuss, Matt. I serve as Chairperson of our Zoning Adjustments Board, so I see the conflict play out firsthand. Unlike the above examples, we are not exactly on the forefront of YIMBYism, but are doing our best to balance the obvious need to build more housing with preserving neighborhood character (I know that phrase is probably like nails on a chalkboard to you, Matt, but it's a real thing that I can't dismiss in our community).
Anyway, I appreciate your insights as always. I'm especially interested if you have any ideas how we could realistically reform some of the issues you highlight regarding expenses of using union labor while still promoting living wages and workers' rights. You bring up real problems, but politically, it seems like a nonstarter. I don't know the way out, but I imagine you have thoughts!
I'll give another example of progressives shooting themselves in the foot. "Single payer" Germany has universal coverage with most people getting their healthcare paid for by a system of non-profit sickness funds linked to their employer. If you don't have a job or can't afford insurance you're routed to the German equivalent of Medicare. A similar system exists in Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, etc.
There sure was a lot of ink spilled on "single payer" vs. universal coverage when there doesn't seem to be any great advantage to one system over the other. Again way too much focus on a meaningless shibboleth and not nearly enough focus on the operational outcome.
100% This. The fight of Medicare For All vs Public Option took up so much space... and yet the principle of wanting universal coverage is basically the end goal of both - yet people scream for M4A.
Dems shot themselves in the foot by placing emphasis on the mechanisms of universal coverage and not focusing on the the outcome!
Agree on moving the Overton Window, and I agree somewhat on policy merits. I have read about some possible things that could be done via executive action, but it seems like a stretch to expect a huge change via executive action. But I'd lopve to see the Biden admin try to use whatever levers it can to deliver.
Good article, about the sorts of things that really aggravate me about Blue America. We really do have a problem of talking the talk but only walking the walk a little bit on issues other than some social policy issues. I feel like a dive into the specifics of these metro areas is worth doing, since a lot of the issues are very local indeed.
There are multiple problems, as I see things. The first is that, in a lot of these states, the Democratic Party is so dominant that they don't have much incentive to go with bold fix-it initiatives. Instead of jumping on the obvious opportunity, a lot of the state GOPs (thinking about CAGOP specifically) have decided to run as far to the right as they possibly can, dooming them to be even worse and more irrelevant. The lack of competition can stifle things, though obviously this is different in MA with Baker and MD with Hogan, but I'm less familiar with how things are in those states.
The second is when you consider who the most politically powerful group is in most of these metro areas-upper middle class suburbanites (including, admittedly, my own family), who have little to no incentive to change things for their own benefit. Given how much sway these groups have over local and state politics, it's no wonder how stuff like land use policy ends up being so skewed in their favor. My neighborhood, in the suburban East Bay, is 100% one of those "progressive platitudes on lawn signs but will turn around and oppose densification" places. There are a great deal of such places in the US (and Canada). These are also the newest converts to the Democratic agenda on the federal level, which I think creates more weird incentives on both ends.
The nationalization of politics creates a situation where a lot of activism is focused purely on national-level stuff, or general social policy. This is all fine and good, and still very much a good thing to work towards these goals, particularly during the disaster that has been the last four years, but it also creates a situation where the lawn-sign people can feel progressive by believing in a federal-level progressive platform while opposing or being apathetic to things that would actually have a direct impact in their own life in any way. The unholy alliance between NIMBYs and left-wing groups who have somehow convinced themselves that any development is bad because of the environment/gentrification/capitalism is particularly aggravating in this regard.
Conservatives may always make fun of us anyway, but they'd make fun of us a hell of a lot less if we actually delivered on the social democratic stuff or infrastructure we keep saying we want. I have no idea what the holdup is for some of these things. Is it a lack of ambition or imagination? Bad budgeting issues? Just general bungling (CAHSR or just everything about the NY coronavirus response comes to mind)? In any case, it needs to be fixed. I just wish I knew how.
Feels to me like progressive Democrats are almost scared of actually ever enacting their agenda. I've been thinking about the primary debates a lot, and just the insanity that the issue of whether or not to abolish private healthcare got exponentially more airtime than the Senate filibuster/democracy reform writ large. I'm a young progressive but I feel very distrustful of the Democratic party leaders because I feel like their progressive policy talk disguises a true, secret inertia. I'm encouraged by Biden's student loan debt exec. order, but it sort of feels like nothing else on his campaign website is really going to...happen? And on the state level, I would love to see something like you proposed coming out of Mass, but it seems like there's inertia with Dem state leaders as well. Why hasn't New York legalized weed? Why is the NYC municipal government so dysfunctional even though it's dominated by self-avowed progressives? It feels like as Democrats we're constantly negotiating against ourselves to try to produce a moderate, watered-down version of a progressive policy that might be palatable to Republicans, and I suspect part of the reason behind it as that our party leaders are actually not entirely convinced of the agenda they claim to support.
I don't think it's exactly that progressive Democrats are "scared" of enacting their agenda so much as it is that the nationalization of media and attention has led rank-and-file progressives to neglect concrete governance issues in progressive areas.
Your statement, "led rank-and-file progressives to neglect concrete governance issues in progressive areas." Deserves an entire *book unto itself. The entire way we "debate" and "discuss" policy has very little focus on measuring, tracking, or improving outcomes.
To give you a MA transportation politics example, there once was a three hour hearing about replacing the BU viaduct on the Mass Pike (I-90). Which desperately needs to be replaced b/c it's structurally deficient under load and used by ~250,000 people each morning and then ~250,000 people each afternoon. Or at least it was until covid.
Everyone who spoke at the hearing argued about the layout of local parks and roadways. The questions being debated ended up being "how many parks should we build around the replacement viaduct?"
Of the 250,000+ drivers, who use the road. No spoke. No drivers showed up. Not a single one :)
If you managed a product, with that type of "user" surveys, you'd be fired from your product management job :)
And my comment is in no way a criticism of the people involved in holding the hearing or transportation department. It's just the entire system isn't organized around the correct goal! And that's just one example.
I don't believe progressives are "scared" of enacting their agenda, so much as the agenda they want to enact is not overwhelmingly popular. Democratic party leaders are not untrustworthy because of a secret inertia. It turns out that there are lots of votes out there for well-managed, competent inertia.
Governing is hard and requires a give and take between stakeholders with fundamentally different beliefs. The New York City municipal government is dysfunctional because it has a ton of different stakeholders (many of whom are not progressives) and Bill DeBlasio is incapable of managing the politics of those relationships. He can speak about progressive values from his podium all he wants, but making things happen requires more than that.
This is a place where Democrats took the wrong lessons from 2016 and the 2016 primary. Significant portions of the party saw the rise of Bernie Sanders and thought it indicated that a broad swath of the electorate wanted revolutionary change. It seems to me, though, that there were lots of voters that did not like Hillary Clinton. Whatever the reason for that distaste (and there's a lengthy discussion to be had about that), a number of voters in both the 2016 primary and the general saw her as a problem they just couldn't overcome. But that doesn't tell me that if progressives just go bigger and bolder with unapologetically progressive policy that voters will flock to them. By all accounts, it's much the opposite.
Feel like the "Democrats misread the 2016 primary and took the wrong lessons into 2020" story needs more play. The primary played out in a kind of absurd way given where the narrative was in Fall 2019.
Fun Massachusetts polling tidbit on that - nearly half (48%) of Bernie Sanders 2016 primary voters went on to vote for Charlie Baker in 2018. These weren't socialists!
Parts of the agenda are unpopular, but parts outrun Democrat candidates themselves in both elections and polls. I think for the popular aspects of the agenda, what's happening is voters don't actually trust Democrat leaders to implement them well or at all.
I agree, although it's difficult to tell what parts of the agenda are popular and what parts are progressive. We've seen instances where Medicare for All polls well, but polls also show that it was extraordinarily popular when voters believed M4A referred to a public option, rather than a full single-payer program.
The Trump economic approval numbers brought this into perspective for me. His handling of the virus is catastrophic, but large portions of the electorate still believed he did a fine job on the economy. So do voters want to enact the progressive agenda, or do they want to elect a person with liberal values that will help make people's lives better but won't fundamentally alter the system in which they live?
Seems like people generally prefer stability and the slow boring of hard boards, to quote our host.
That's true, but that's where the being-good-at-politics part comes in. I think Matt's take about a blue state needing to enact, for instance, some sort of public option is a really smart one and will help boost the popularity of currently not-so-popular programs. Then there's a second class of policies: in an emergency like the pandemic, the creative policies we actually end up implementing, even though they seem like emergency measures, catch on as people enjoy innovative progressive governance. Locally, Open Streets in New York City is a great example. Nationally, it seems like the stimulus checks have really boosted the popularity overall of UBI (https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/512099-poll-majority-of-voters-now-say-the-government-should-have-a). Then there's a third, smaller class of things that are *just flat-out popular* but progressives don't seem to want to take action on, such as weed legalization in NY.
This is well said. Seems as though there's a real eagerness to wave away Chesterton's Fence. The inconvenient truth is that lots of people just don't want what is on offer
"But that doesn't tell me that if progressives just go bigger and bolder with unapologetically progressive policy that voters will flock to them. By all accounts, it's much the opposite."
This is fair enough - particularly at the national level. But MY's thesis is that you can try to do things at the state level as laboratories for new policies that are successful politically and technically. You can go big in a bigly liberal state, and that'll be a model for successful national reform, or at least, reform in other states.
Of course there are limits to that. No US state has anything close to single payer (and I'm not sure why that would be a goal anyway). Same with UBI. But that's just data that's useful for us going forward. Those don't work. Other policy ideas will. And that becomes evidence of (and inspiration for) what can be done nationally.
I was responding to the specifics of Elias' post, but I hear you. I'm just not certain that the "laboratories of democracy" theory works in these instances. The states that have Democratic trifectas are theoretically good places to run this play. If someone is a promoter of big progressive policies as ways to make people's lives better, then these are good places to do so. I'm not convinced, though, on a practical level, that success by the progressive movement in these states will have any impact on other states because of their reputation as liberal bastions.
I mentioned in a different thread that there are significant cultural divides between very blue and very red states. Even assuming that voters in Oklahoma saw the success of big progressive governance in New York/Massachusetts/California, the reputations of those states precede them. My impression is that the best way for progressives to get the nation's attention on policies that work is to get them to work on state's that don't carry that same cultural baggage. I suggested Ohio as a good model for that, but you could probably even do so in a place like Virginia, which has become reliably blue but is not seen as a leftist haven.
You would think that with the local control of police and the overwhelming support for BLM in major cities that there would be a ton of great examples where people are really happy with their policing reforms. I'm not sure I could point to that city that has implemented any change, much less is getting praised for it.
California said no to cash bail. This is something that Philadelphia and New York City have made some reforms to, but this is simple and logical, but the list is still pretty small.
"Why is the NYC municipal government so dysfunctional even though it's dominated by self-avowed progressives?"
Because the base on both sides weighs policy and platitudes higher than actual managerial competence. DeBlasio on the left and Trump on the right are perfect examples of this. They say the right things to get their base excited but have no ability to execute. To be successful progressive voters have to focus more on managerial competence and less of being told what they want to hear.
I think that's mostly right, but I don't even think the progressive establishment (can't believe I'm using that phrase) weights policy all that highly. I live in NYC, paying a lot of attention to the mayor's race and city council races, and people are talking in those platitudes and talking about policy ostensibly, but seem to have no intention of actually implementing anything. It's all about the aesthetic of politics, about the entertainment. There's definitely poor management present, but it's really just an apathy toward *actually governing*.
As someone who is extremely plugged into NYC land use, I would say that part of the problem is on the civic society end. For example, there's basically no civic group arguing for better construction costs in transit, or better organizational efficiency of the transit agencies.
On the land use side I can say that many politicians do want to approve new buildings, so YIMBY groups showing up to public hearings gives them space to do so. And while de Blasio obviously isn't perfect, when Open New York (the local YIMBY group) made it clear he would have public support in rezoning SoHo for more housing, he went for it. So I do think that organizing in these spaces can make space for the change we want to see happen, even if the executives aren't your ideal politicians.
I think you have the answer here, though. Actually governing is very much about management. Managing relationships, managing people, managing organizations. It's not just about legislating, particularly through the executive.
No that's totally true, but we never get the chance to govern or to manage because we never attempt in a real way to implement our agenda in the first place. (And when we do, we often mismanage it!)
I think you have it backwards. You aren't going to be able to fully implement your agenda because it's just not popular enough. But parts of it are. So you really need to execute on those parts. Then you can say, "See how well X worked? Now let us try Y." That's the only path forward that I can see.
What I'm trying to get at is what I feel like is inertia at the very beginning of the process you're laying out: Democratic governments in Democratic places seem unwilling to commit to implement even the most popular parts of the Democrat agenda...why? It would be for the benefit of the locality and the country if they did!
I think we're saying largely the same thing: imo, people don't trust democratic leaders to execute even the most popular parts of the agenda. So you follow through and implement it well in a place like NY or MA, and instill trust that a) it's a good policy and b) we can execute it well. We can do that at the same time as trying to win the debate on the parts of our agenda that are not yet popular.
I don't like De Blasio, but I give his administration credeit for universal pre-k, expanded paid sick leave, etc.
On a state level, NY Dems have raised the minimum wage, expanded early childhood education, increased paid sick leave and paid family leave, repealed a police secrect law, and created a program for free college ("Excelsior Scholarship" - in state SUNY/CUNY with income cap).
So while NY isn't perfect, it has implemented some of the most progressive policies in the nation.
I don't really believe that NYC government is unusually dysfunctional. They operate a much higher level of benefits for residents than most US municipal governments. They have very low crime rates, and a strong economy. The police are out of control, but they have an objectively low amount of police shootings for the US. The problems with the MTA seem mostly to arise from the shared governance with the state. NYCHA is bad, though, for sure. But even well-run governments have problem areas.
The MTA has almost nothing to do with the city, it's entirely a state issue. A big part of the problem with the MTA is that nobody thinks of this as the governor's area of responsibility so he has no incentive to do a good job.
I agree that NYC is better run than many US municipalities, but I think if you compare it to international peer cities or even itself historically it can be quite dysfunctional––we legitimately have levels of homelessness unseen since the Great Depression. And of top of that we can't build basic infrastructure at a reasonable cost––Matt brings up subway lines, but the problem is in everything from pedestrian bridges to new libraries to protected bike lanes. I think there's something deeply concerning and dysfunctional when your city can't execute on something that it used to do fairly easily.
"we legitimately have levels of homelessness unseen since the Great Depression"
Can we solve that problem without mandating treatment for those with sever mental health or substance abuse issues. From what I understand there is some agreement on the left and right that mandatory treatment in a supervised facility is warranted in many cases. But then you have the libertarians on the right and a certain type of progressive on the left who find the idea abhorrent.
I was reading something about homelessness in San Francisco and you had people who were so profoundly menially ill and so incapable of caring for themselves than their life expectancy was measured in months. Someone suggested mandatory treatment in a supportive environment and homeless advocates were up in arms. The homeless had to chose treatment. But these were people who were as unable to function as someone with dementia. If someone is 82 and wandering around in their pajamas we send them back to the memory care unit. When someone is 28 and equally as disabled we just let them wander.
If we actually built housing and rent was far lower, you'd have far fewer people pushed into these kinds of precarious and psychologically taxing situations, while giving more people the opportunity to remain productive members of society. Japan––which has functioning housing markets, with zoning policy set on the national level––has fewer than 5000 people living on the street in the entire country. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/07/14/national/social-issues/number-homeless-japan-falls-15-year-low-5000/
Some of that is because they have policies like universal healthcare, but a lot of it is simply that we have a pure housing shortage, on top of banning the most affordable housing typologies, like SROs, which also helped people stay off the streets in the past.
Sure, but similar to the institutional GOP, the joke is kinda on you if voters trust their bluster more than your policy talk. As Yglesias has written on the BA bubble last Friday, people love being told what they want to hear no matter who they are, so a political problem can't be easily handwaved away as a bunch of rubes.
I feel like a deep problem specifically in NYS is our absolutely pathetic voter turnout––consequential state and local elections are on off-years, early voting is not nearly as established or well-funded as other states, the process is overseen by a patronage system. On top of that, as NYC has become steadily more progressive, people haven't always understood that the decisive election is now the Democratic primary. The most consequential election in New York City for the better part of a decade will be the 2021 Mayoral and City Council Democratic primaries, as the majority of incumbent council members are hitting their term limits, yet few know how decisive their vote could be, especially when compared to the presidential race––we will definitively see far lower turnout. You basically have a system where democratic accountability is not to the public, but rather the considerably smaller percentage of voters that dependably turnout in the primaries––and who in many times are activated by reactionary positions on extremely local issues. Think car owners show up to stop busways that will benefit thousands more people, homeowners turning out to prevent affordable housing or homeless shelters that they fear could impact their property values. As an aside, I think Alon Levy did an excellent job describing some of the other structural issues causing a local democratic deficit here: https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/05/25/informed-voting-and-the-democratic-deficit/
Until we can get some sort of structural reform of elections, running a campaign with the public at large in mind will be considerably more difficult.
Matt, have you considered actually reaching out to the sandhog unions and having a policy conversation with them about the tunneling cost issue? If there was a serious proposal to, e.g., cut tunneling costs in half but build four times as many tunnels (and therefore employ twice as many sandhogs) would that appeal to them, or are they genuinely wedded to the current system? Those unions must employ some policy people who have some thoughts re why moving to a German cost structure is or is not feasible.
A union with dozens-to-low-hundreds of members, that produces no-work and no-show jobs, and whose members can be described as "third-generation" or "fourth-generation" is about as wedded to the current system as you can get.
Doubling in size means handing out enough union votes to lose control, and handing them out to people without generations of loyalty.
That raises a separate question about whether unions are incentivized towards maintaining an incumbency advantage or towards growing their membership. The former might be the case with many unions, but I would argue that the latter is critical for the long term future of organized labor.
From a purely cynical and entirely understandable perspective, there is no incentive for public-sector employees to want to do more work for less pay. They will have to be made to do so, which is why public-sector union influence over policy makers is problematic.
I don't think less pay would really be on the table, more efficient work might be. Also, to my knowledge tunnel construction workers are really direct public sector employees, they usually work for large construction companies that specialize in doing public sector projects.
If you're slashing the absolutely exorbitant overtime rates (where "overtime" really becomes the normal salary while doing a lot of make-work), than that absolutely amounts to a pay cut and will be seen as such by these employees. Overtime is also crucial to inflating pensions by pulling huge amounts of highly-paid overtime in the last few years before retirement, at least in the police sector, and I assume the others which can get away with it are much the same.
Having followed California housing politics (and, tangentially, high-speed rail), I'm really pessimistic that progressives in blue states can realistically deliver public works projects that require major new infrastructure.
Obviously the implacability and structural power of the NIMBY forces is formidable. What's even more dispiriting is the unholy alliance they've been able to make with the activist left, which here in the Bay Area mobilizes against everything from market-rate housing to, I shit you not, *bus lanes*, in the name of anti-gentrification and -displacement. It's remarkably counterproductive--at least the NIMBYs arguably advance their underlying goals when they block this stuff--but worse, it gives the NIMBY entrenched-homeowner camp both political cover and a story they can tell themselves about why they're doing what they're doing. The result is that the lane of folks who broadly speaking *want stuff to happen*, and not in a massively-contingent way, is actually really small. And you have multimillionaire mansion-dwellers like Dean Preston who become Supervisors, tirelessly advocate in their own self-interest, and become hailed as "progressive" heroes.
I don't know how to fix that, other than something like SB50, which *sad trombone*. The local YIMBY leaders think that there's a coalition to be had with the left-activist set, and so if you go to meetings you will hear them make mouth noises around how the folks fighting for social justice and against displacement aren't the enemy, it is instead rich people on the west side who talk about "neighborhood character." But the two are sadly symbiotic.
All of which is just to say that the people we think of as being in the "progressive" camp--the big-city-dwelling "we" in Matt's post--seem to overwhelmingly have commitments that are going to override major zoning reform and building public-services infrastructure, even if they can be convinced it's a good idea in the abstract.
I'd love to know how this sort of thing plays out elsewhere. Would also love to read more on the union angle, about which I know next to nothing beyond the sketch in Matt's post.
Kevin Drum had a series of posts on some train they were trying to build connecting LA and San Francisco. Just continual cost over-runs until it was shut down is my understanding.
To me, your thinking on the housing issue is predictably backwards. The key to making America a better (and bluer) place is to increase the number of great places to live, rather than making it so that everybody can afford to live in one of two great places. Your view is also very alienating to those who live in and enjoy other parts of the country. Did you know that Chicago has museums that rival anything in New York? Did you know that Cleveland has one of the world's top orchestras? From your coastal bubble, you probably don't know these things. Rather than peddling in "how can EVERYONE afford to live in New York or California?!" rhetoric, you should explore solutions that address the geographic inequities that plague us ... especially if you want to fit 1 billion people in this country! And from a political standpoint ... move a few million urbanites to midwestern cities, and the entire midwest is blue forever, with fewer wasted votes in already-blue states.
Let me quote from my book ONE BILLION AMERICANS: "Cleveland, conversely, has an airport, three pro sports teams, a few excellent museums, a major orchestra, and a great theater district, but disinvestment has left it incredibly cheap."
But Blue states also have plenty of shrinking cities that could use a boost in population! In CT alone: Bridgeport, New Haven, Hartford...Stamford has actually been building quite a few new high-density apartment buildings downtown near transit in recent years, but a bit different because they're part of NYC metro area.
Sort of along these lines, I keep wondering if blue states could do a state-level version of the idea of dispersing federal offices to support economic growth in other metro areas outside of DC. Could MA move MassHousing from pricey downtown Boston to the more struggling Pittsfield? Would it make a difference if it did?
Or have an ice cream party and do both! NY/CA and the other high cost/high demand metros should have more housing and become more affordable, *and* lower cost/lower demand metros (e.g., in the Rust Belt) should be repopulated and revitalized with the goal of making them more desirable. Do it all and maybe we can have one billion Americans! But whatever you do don't play the problems off each other -- "there's lots of room in Cleveland" isn't a helpful to "NYC is too expensive," nor is "we can put more people in NYC if we just build more" a helpful response to "it's too bad Cleveland is declining." Both are problems *and* opportunities.
I think Matt's point is that progressives need a strong use case for their policies on a national level. Winning national power requires a state like Mass or California adopting a lot of the progressive policies and then making the case that it's worth it for the country to do so. The fact that California's housing crisis exists is proof that a Democratic trifecta on the national level isn't going to be this massive change. There will still be problems.
You have much more massive problems in my opinion. even though having 5 viable political parties enabled a nutjob like Hitler to win nationally, I agree with those who feel the two party system has failed us.
Look, seriously, the dems have a tent full of people who hate each other and agree to pretend in public that they don't. The problem is, they don't run on any ideas because there aren't any on which they are agreed. So they pretend to the moral high ground and take empty slogan positions to elevate the social capital of marginalized members.
Of course Joy Reid hates homos. Of course, she pretends she doesn't but the minute she no longer has to observe that pretense, homos are fair game, much like YT and Jews has become.
Gay marriage rights couldn't pass a democratic vote in California.
let that sink in. We don't need your leadership. To my view, being an old homo, you all will use our vote to install haters like Reid and Omar Ilhan, pretending to a liberalism they actually have contempt for, and then ditch us when their more militant friends literally move to throw us off the rooftops.
The Hillary coalition has been "Karen-ized". It wouldn't surprise me if the whole thing weren't a set up. So much for the women power, and the me too power.... now it's just black womens that save the world.
I'm also not sure I agree with the premise. There are significant cultural divides in the image of New York, Massachusetts, California (and New Jersey/Oregon/insert other Blue state here) and much of Red America. Even if New York/Massachusetts/California were the best run states in the union as models of progressive governance, it seems to me that they'd still be dismissed as outliers. Conservatives don't like "San Francisco values"; the fact that San Francisco has significant housing/homeless issues gives conservatives something specific to yell about, but if it wasn't that, they'd find something else.
If you want to make a strong use case for progressive policies on a national level through state examples, progressives are going to have to win power in a state that doesn't carry that kind of baggage. One of Ohio/GA/PA, perhaps.
Also, I hope you can understand this. I'm pissed the DNC lies so consistently to young people. Because the truth is, you're importing those who lynch homos and like Obammy in Miami .. haha ... you don't even have the integrity or the balls to confront them on their barbaric, unevolved 1200 year old sky Gawd bullshit when you do so.
Not to protect homos do you confront the problems of Islam.
not even to protect little girls, as over a million adult women alive today without clitties can attest, you won't even confront the barbarism to protect little girls.
What good are you? You demonise and raise money by calling other Americans fascist whilst you import homo lynching, infidel terrorizing, heretic murdering, women oppressing and child abusing religious nutjobs without challenge.
because dat way dere Cletus, him can raise big big money fighting the red state fascists so's they can pay each others campaign machine to run another campaign to end all campaigns in two years because Democracy will be over if they lose the House, even if the House don't accomplish shit.
I think the idea is that no major metropolitan area should be out of reach for middle class people. It’s not that people shouldn’t live in Cleveland, Chicago, etc. but they definitely shouldn’t HAVE to live there because a huge swath of the country with many economic opportunities is out of reach due to NIMBYism. Ideally all of our metro areas are affordable and people can move wherever they see fit.
Fair point ... people should be able to afford to live where they like, but I feel like there's a bit of intellectual inconsistency here ... on the one hand it's "well, those are market forces ... if there's more economic opportunity in D.C. than Detroit, tough ..." and then at the same times it's "we can't let market forces dictate that people can't all afford to live in New York City!" If Detroit or St. Louis or wherever can be screwed for decades by market forces, than New York and D.C. can get screwed a bit by market forces as well. *shrug*
They shouldn’t have to live their because of NIMBYISM, but we should actually want to spread out the middle class throughout the country. As we’re seeing in election results, the overconcentration of college educated liberals in a few enclaves is a small d-democracy problem.
Shouldn't we want to maximize the number of people living in great places, if not making all the places where people live to be great? NYC is home to 8+ million people. The population has been roughly stagnant since 2010 and has actually declined during the Trump era. [1] In fact, net domestic migration has NYC losing ~900k people from 2010-2019, which has been offset by net international immigration (500k) and net natural pop groeth (births - deaths, 560k). [2] When you dig into the Trump era decline, you can see a sharp drop in both net immigration and net natural increase, which is related to immigration (immigrants are younger and have higher birth rates) [3].
This is meant to demonstrate that NYC has been a net loser of domestic population for a while now, and immigration has played a huge factor in keeping the population steady. That isn't the marker of a place that is great to live in for all Americans. For the 8+ million who call NYC home - approximately 2.5% of the US population - it would make a measurable impact in their lives to have bold government policy changes that improve living conditions. For example - improving transportation infrastructure and operations. The NYC subways had a sharp decline in on-time rates over the last 10-15 years, though it has turned around somewhat since the nadir in 2018 [4][5][6].
Perhaps the number one issue is housing costs, which skyrocketed from 2010-2019 as the population barely increased. [7] There has been some relief for housing costs in 2020 as the market has softened in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic [8], but it remains to be seen how this affects long term affordability.
The issue isn't just New York and California. Look at medium sized cities that are growing rapidly: Nashville, Raleigh, Tampa, Orlando, Denver, Austin; you have to be making a great salary to be able to afford a house in the city or you're stuck in the surrounding suburbs with a 1hr+ commute to work.
I grew up in the suburbs and I currently live in the city and I love it so much more. I wish I could buy something instead of renting but that seems out of reach for the foreseeable future. The vast majority of new units being built where I live is either for-rent apartments or expensive condos so it doesn't seem like there's any hope that I will be able to afford a decent sized house/town-house in the city.
Yeah. I don’t disagree with Matt on let’s build more market rate housing but I’m also more interested in “ways to drive down market rate in DC, NYC, Boston SF, etc by convincing college grad liberals to move to Cleveland/Detroit/Phoenix/etc”
As someone who has worked remotely in a tech job for the past 3.5 years, I can tell you that no one who's ambitious, extroverted, or wants a larger space than one room will want to work remotely. I don't think the current small boomlet in remote work will last.
Lower cost-of-living is the most effective way to address geographic inequities, and it's already in full effect, especially with the increase in remote work. People are always going to congregate on coastal counties to a certain extent because of the more pleasant climate and access to the ocean.
Not as good as some other coastal areas of the country, but being on or near the ocean tilts things something like ~4-5 degrees in the nicer direction in any given season relative to a similar area upstate, which really does make a big difference.
That's a fair point, but there are some things to explain ... like how Toronto is the second most populous city on the continent, or how may bad-weather cities were dominant at points in the 20th century. It seems like the role of weather is complicated ...
Toronto is on the Great Lakes as well, which have a similar impact on local temperatures as the ocean due to their size. It’s quite reductive to suggest that only weather matters, of course, you’re right about that. But the coast has always had strong appeal and will likely continue to do so. People love beaches and the water.
What if blue state Dem coalitions just can’t do this? I live in a ‘nice’ town in NJ where every yard sign has a ‘in this home we [insert progressive platitudes]’ and black lives matter signs. But when a new apartment building is up for development you get 3-400 facebook posts of complaints about traffic and changing neighborhood character. I think these people are willing to read some books about racism and feel bad about themselves but any concrete steps would be a bridge too far.
Same thing with child care, public option, etc. They will never support a change in the status quo - they just want to ride out their good lives for the next 30 years while the state hollows out.
The subsidiarity of zoning decisions is a massive problem, and not just in the suburbs, in San Francisco a single individual can delay any project months to years merely by filing an environmental complaint.
Yes, exactly — these decisions are made on a hyper-local level in a way that gives everyone bad incentives.
Agreed. It boggles my mind that "Things that would reduce C02 emissions, like dense house, don't qualify for *accelerated environmental zoning"
New Jersey's situation is complicated and I wonder if this holds true throughout Blue America. For instance, we also live in a "nice" town in NJ in a county that has voted overwhelmingly blue the last several presidential cycles and has elected a Democrat to Congress the last two years by solid margins. Despite that, our town council is dominated by Republicans, including a GOP mayor.
The schools are solid and the services are perfectly acceptable. Taxes are, by NJ suburb standards, relatively low. I've even voted for the GOP candidates, not because of orthodoxy, but just because the town is obviously well run and functional.
Yeah I grew up in such a town (in Monmouth, though, so we went republican nationally too). This might be a decent example of where the two issues Matt presents diverge: NJ is in some ways well run (my understanding is our construction situation is better than NY’s as well), but still, the state is extremely expensive, losing middle class residents, and is highly segregated. Those problems will swamp our other advantages eventually
I'm curious to see if these types of towns experience another generation of growth and success without having to make major changes (ie improve NJ transit and allow apartment construction) with the influx of Manhattan and Brooklyn residents seeking out suburban houses due to the pandemic. I grew up in (deeply red) Sussex county, and even that far from the city the housing market appears to be bouyed by some new demand after years of a lid on prices due to NJ's weak recovery from the recession and the terrible commute to job centers.
With the switch to remote work happening in some version or another for the foreseeable future, the housing market even out in the redder parts of the state is certainly accelerating. We’re in this boat. We like our town quite a bit, but if I don’t have to commute to NYC/Newark more than twice a week, there’s no reason not to look further out for nicer, newer houses on bigger plots. The number of all cash buyers we’ve seen coming from NYC and paying $30-50k above ask is astounding. That’s not sustainable, but it may give new life to those areas, which in turn could create more construction and a broader tax base.
Or they could just end up like we did, voting their values at the state and federal level while voting with their pocketbooks at the local level.
I think that's pretty likely as they get that first 20k property tax bill on a relatively modest house.
My "nice" town in CT is pretty much the same as yours - deep blue at the federal level but red at the local level. In some ways, it's reassuring to see that that level of national-local disconnect can still happen! But I think many of these folks who vote blue-red like this understand that these blue states have been run by Democrats for decades in which the financial situations of those states have generally worsened, and so there's not much appetite for paying even more in state taxes when there's no faith that the existing taxes have been allocated particularly well (as compared to local property taxes which are going to the very high-quality schools). CT is a particularly good example of this, with the pension crisis which has been looming for decades and is almost entirely due to Dem state governments failing to grapple with the public-sector unions.
I'm not one for union-busting, but when you see stuff like that and the exorbitant gouging Matt illustrated in his post, I think it does raise some very hard questions about the role of public-sector unions, as distinct from private-sector unions.
As someone who also lives square in the Greater NYC Red Zone from Matt's map, I tend to agree on many of these points. I think many, if not most of the folks who put the "Black Lives Matter" signs in their yards would positively howl to their local mayor or selectman if somebody housed actual low-income black families in a development on their streets.
I will say that re: Matt's point on infrastructure, I do think that public infrastructure, child care, etc is one place where these folks can still be convinced to cooperate. For a family with children, THE single biggest appeal to these places, bar none, and the reason people are willing to pay through the nose (besides being within commuting distance of NYC) is that the public schools are absolutely fantastic. Given that, and given that many of these same upscale white-collar workers rely on public transit to commute to the city, whether for work or pleasure, I think there'd be lots of appetite for anything that delivers more services to children and that makes it easier, faster, and nicer to go into the city.
I also live in a "nice" town in NJ with all the same yard signs. My town council just banned Airbnb (or rather, enacted an ordinance so restrictive that it's pointless to do it) because they didn't want "transients" in town. I spoke at several council meetings about it there was just no movement at all. I feel like "progressives" are more conservative than we usually assume when it comes to anything that could actually change things.
You are describing Chicago as well
And Seattle. I grew up in Chicago, and agree with you, and Seattle is very similar. Super liberal people here are up in arms about identity issues, but as soon as you talk about issues of money and back yard (neighborhood changes), you get silence at best and active opposition in many cases. Many people around me reveal themselves as progressive only on the surface.
While there is a certain degree of obvious hypocrisy with these voters re: NIMBYism, I do think that refusing local tax increases/etc is eminently reasonable, and not at all out of line with progressive values. Many of these blue state/local governments struggle to efficiently allocate the tax revenue they already earn, and are often shot through with public-sector corruption and graft, as illustrated in Matt's post. It should first be incumbent upon Democratic governments to demonstrate that they can effectively use their existing tax revenue before voters should be expected to fork over more.
Lots in common between New Jersey and Illinois.
There's a think a lot of these nominally progressive localities (especially in the zones of affluence within) suffer from "Wrigley Field" syndrome. That is, for a long time there was a contention that Wrigley Field itself was such an attraction and moneymaker that it perverted the Cubs' incentives to actually field a competitive team and win the World Series. Complacency disease, if you will.
I think of lots of these neighborhoods the same way. If you're life is pretty nice, and everyone on your block has a lawn sign enumerating progressive values, how compelled do you truly feel to support transformational policies? Probably not very, given that you're getting most of what you want already
Democrats in Massachusetts certainly need a new vision to sell that sort of change. We (Priorities For Progress) polled Ayanna Pressley in a Democratic gubernatorial primary in a hypothetical 2022 matchup where Baker runs as a Democrat - he gets 62% of the vote, the Democrats get a total of 25% (AG Maura Healey gets 13%, Pressley 7%, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh 4%). SurveyUSA, A-rated pollster from 538, sample of 558 likely 2018 Dem primary voters fielded 8/12-8/16.
http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReport.aspx?g=b890989d-b447-45a9-a949-d56eae84f8d6
What we've found over multiple polls is a gap in values (voters mostly trust Democrats on values) and results (voters don't really think Democrats will make their life better. There are roughly three equal groups of voters in MA - straight GOP, Baker/Warren voters, straight Dem.
We certainly have the featherbedding stuff down - 1/3 of MBTA retirees are under 55 and the pension fund has some quirky/sketchy exemption from transparency and underperforms the state pension fund.
"voters don't really think Democrats will make their life better" is such a killer. And not wrong? But that's a huge problem. People want to say that skeptical voters in places like Iowa should take a chance on Democrats, but even in places like Massachusetts the voters don't really trust Democrats to run things if they can get a decent-seeming Republican instead.
Yeah and, to your point about on making blue states test cases, "Democrats make life better" would be easier nationally if we had things to point to in Dem states. I'm supposed to tell someone in Harris County how they should be Democrats when our housing is unaffordable, transportation atrocious, there's intense racial segregation, and most kids in Boston can't read on grade level at a cost of $21,000 per student.
We export politicians, activists, and operatives at an astounding rate - maybe we should fix up a little around here and people will want to be Democrats like us?
Massachusetts is one of the most Democratically branded states, we have a bit of a responsibility for the brand.
BTW this is awesome! I missed the first blogging era but people's replies have been great and seems better for my brain than Twitter.
I have trouble even thinking of an area where Democrats or Republicans want to make my life better. Most proposals from Democrats are all means-tested so a person with middle-class income can't benefit at all and just ends up paying for it. Even if Biden cancels student debt, I'm extremely skeptical that my student debt will count. I don't know why. I just know I'm not the kind of person they want to help. A covid relief bill would help me, but that's a temporary fix. M4A would help, but Bidencare (ACA + public option, but only for people without employer coverage available) would not. Things that would genuinely help me are ideas like UBI, free (non means tested!) childcare, and the ability to opt out of the terrible public school system (i.e. not paying for it), but those are not even on the table for either party. It doesn't surprise me that some people prefer Republicans despite the incompetence and corruption. At least they want to cut my taxes. Democrats seem to have no interest in helping anyone but the poor.
I think that's fair. I've always wondered why 6 weeks of paid vacation has never been a position advocated by an US politician that I can recall.
Yes! Even three weeks of paid vacation is more than most people get, but why not four? Or even six? It could be the most popular position in the country if anyone bothered advocating for it. Who doesn't want more vacation?
I feel this I’m regards to the student debt cancellation thing. Like, I’m very much for it, but I also assume I won’t benefit from it. Which I don’t know what to think about. I come from a poor household but managed to go to a really good college with scholarships and come out with about $25k in debt (total costs of the years of schooling were above $100k, so that’s a win for me). I have a good job but it’s in DC so it’s a high housing cost place, so nothing ever seems to benefit me anymore. I’ll never be able to buy property here, but I do have a good job that I never want to leave.
I’m a dyed in the wool Democrat, but I also consistently assume that no new Democratic policy ever benefits me personally.
I find it super weird that people think California, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, etc. are super-liberal and have been run by Democrats for all recent history, when it is empirically not true.
NY - Republican George Pataki was NY Governor from 1995-2006. Republican Rudy Guiliani was NYC mayor from 1994 - 2001. Bloomberg was mayor from 2002- 2013, he ran as a Republican for his first and second term as NYC mayor, and as a Independant aligned with the GOP to win a third term in 2008. NYC did not have a Democrat as mayor for 20 years, from 1994 - 2013.
California: From 1983-2010, California had a GOP Governor for 23 out of 27 years.
Republican Richard J. Riordan was Mayor of Los Angeles from 1993-2001.
Massachussetts - From 1991-present, the Governor has been a member of the GOP for 21 of 28 years, including the last 6 years. One of those Governors went on to become the GOP nominee for President in 2012, and currently serves as a GOP Senator from Utah.
New Jersey - Since 1982, a Republican has held the office of Governor for 23 of 38 years, including from 2010-2017.
Would you say NYC was run by a Republican for 11 years because Bloomberg was mayor? It's more complicated than that.
Sure, it's more complicated than that. There's been split government for most of that time. My point is that Republicans currently or have recently have held executive position in the states and major metros that are often referenced when someone wants to point to policy failure of Democrats ("Democrat-run cities", e.g.) It's just not true that progressives have been running the show.
Heck, NY Dems have only had a trifecta statewide (Gov + both state legislatures) for 4 of the last 29 years (09-10 & 19-20). [1]
In comparison - "battleground" Pennsylvannia has a a GOP trifecta for 12 of the last 29 years (and 1 year of Dem trifecta back in '93).
I would love to see someone do a deep dive into the recent history of state government control, policy implementations, and give tangible evidence of what either party has done when it gained control.
[1] https://ballotpedia.org/Party_control_of_New_York_state_government
[2] https://ballotpedia.org/Party_control_of_Pennsylvania_state_government
I believe this book by Matt Grossman focuses on exactly that topic: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/red-state-blues/79FF52A9FCDDE94A9D6948044EE86662 (though I haven't read it, just heard the podcast summary)
Yeah In our 2018 poll of GE voters, independents were breakeven (-1) on being Democrats are "representative of your values" and down big (-22) on things being better/worse if Democrats controlled all branches of state government. Registered Dems had a 10 point gap. No single group - youth, registered Dems, Warren voters, Sanders 2016 primary voters - cracked 20% for saying Massachusetts Democrats are 'not liberal enough'.
MA is a microcosm of the Democratic Party right now. Far-left is so detached from mainstream voters they suck up the energy/attention with a vision that cannot win statewide.
The far-left advocacy groups have won big in primaries in what we call "Left Decile" districts (10% of districts that are most Democrat, places Warren beat Scott Brown by 50+ points. Cambridge, JP, etc). They went 3-0 beating state legislative incumbents in that Left Decile in 2016-2018. But they went 0-3 this year, and all 3 primary challenges were in the other 90% of districts (same held at the federal level - Morse/Neal was outside that; Pressley/Capuano is the only Left Decile congressional district). And they won 2 of 10 GEs. A bunch of mini Kara Eastmans.
This is fascinating and it creates a real conundrum for the party. On one hand, Democrats want to have young, articulate, and compelling candidates. On the other hand, those candidates are in uncompetitive districts and, as you put it, "suck up all the energy/attention."
What do you do when your best bets for seats are the Tom Malinowski's and Max Rose's of the world, but the face of your party proudly proclaim themselves Democratic Socialists?
One thing could be to build a meaningful brand for a wing of the Democratic Party that is about delivering concrete results (that doesn't just avoid but explicitly, loudly rejects highly unpopular policy stances and/or hashtags) a la "Future is Faction" https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-future-is-faction
Another thing would be to aggressively and relentlessly elevate the voices that can win swing voters (Conor Lamb, Abigail Spanberger, etc) and that can hopefully deliver a message to the base (Jim Clyburn) while putting the whole picture into its proper context: Justice Democrats have flipped zero seats, if you want to follow the values they espouse the only rational course of action is to elevate the the much larger group of Democrats needed to win & govern.
Matt had a good tweet about the older Dem leadership not being able to get free media. Jim Clyburn needs to get the RBG treatment. Lets make shirts. The man is the most important person of 2020! Should be a pop culture icon. Do Whatever Clyburn Says.
Also, Max Rose is hilarious! Put him on TV!
Max Rose is fantastic and, unfortunately, suffered the same plight as every other successful Staten Island Democrat - after voters punished Republicans for failing once, they weren't willing to do so again. I hope he finds a way to stick around in a meaningful way.
I agree with this but have some concerns about how effective this is. I don't agree with AOC in a lot of ways, even though I think she has a place in the party. She does undoubtedly have a watchability factor. She's great on social media, she's a very impressive speaker and is able to give a full throated defense to progressive policy. The platforms that allow her to speak to such a broad audience have a real bias toward that kind of appeal. None of Lamb, Spanberger, Malinowski, or Rose has the same kind of charisma that gets rewarded through social media. Does a 2020 version of the DLC have the juice to change the narrative?
Those seem like two separate (both important!) questions. "Does a 2020 version of the DLC have the juice" ... well, I think one thing going for the center-left in 2020 vs. 1990 is that there is not a values gap. It's not like the center-left right now is denying climate change and opposing marriage equality. It is more a difference of degree and approach than values and long-term goals. And moderate Democrats have, without question, the better path to achieving the goals everyone on the left shares on healthcare, environment, judges, economy, etc.
To the question of is there a figure on the center-left with that dynamism and appeal ... well, there are ~100 center-left Dems for every 5 Democratic Socialists. So you'd like to think the odds are for it, even if some of the social following is not as strong. More infrastructure to facilitate would help.
I imagine this was aggravated by the recent near full employment especially benefitting those likely to be skeptical. If we insist on making it a tradeoff between policies that encourage full employment and social programs (which granted may well be super helpful,) this is likely to stay the case.
Featherbedding and graft by public sector unions, in my eyes, is probably the single biggest issue which will hold back state and local Democrats in blue states. I live cross the border in CT, and we've got a massive underfunded pension crisis which stems from successive Democratic legislatures' failure to adequately grapple with the public-sector unions. Even for wealthier folks who understand on an intellectual level that they're going to be very comfortable in retirement, people will viscerally dislike on an emotional level the idea of working till 65 or 70 to subsidize graft-ridden public-sector employee retirements at 45 or 50. Any serious agenda of advancing progressive policies in blue states needs to grapple with the fact that blue-state governments are often riddled with public-sector corruption and deeply mistrusted by their voters as a result.
Yeah the current focus in MA is on the underfunded MBTA, which a ton of those Baker/Warren voters recall as Mr Bulger's Transit Authority (from the jobs handed out by Whitey's brother, who was president of the state senate).
One local Democrat, recently elected to higher office , actually has a bold vision like the type you outline. He is probably the Massachusetts Democrat most in-line with you:
"The Democratic Party is optimistic about the future of America and of Massachusetts. Speaking to the median-aged Bay State resident, who is 39, we can tell you how we are going to expand opportunity for you, for your kids, and for your grandkids.
For you: Housing, transportation, and health care are curbing opportunity by reducing your economic mobility. The Democratic Party will reduce the cost of homes near good jobs by loosening zoning restrictions in suburbs and by subsidizing housing, instead of vehicles, in urban cores. One third of metropolitan land is set aside for parking; autonomous vehicles and congestion pricing will reduce that footprint and allow for more walkable, affordable development. The revenue from congestion pricing, which is the only proven method to reduce traffic, and from an increase in the gas tax, will be directed towards multi-modal transportation improvements that aim for two metrics: reduce your commute to fewer than 40 minutes and your annual transportation budget to less than $8,000."
https://commonwealthmagazine.org/economy/democrats-platform-of-opportunity/
Auchincloss just got elected to Congress though, so he's not likely to do much in the state. He's also a bit of a character because he's a former Republican who won a plurality in the primary by splitting the vote between progressive candidates.
Charlie Baker is getting 62% of the vote of Democratic primary voters and has an 80% approval rating - Auchincloss working for him doesn't seem like a huge problem? Also, candidates who support Medicare For All got less than 50% of the vote in that primary. The "progressives splitting the vote" narrative was quite overstated - Khazei and others also took votes away from Auchincloss.
"Here’s a recent article in a tunnel-building trade publication..."
"Slow Boring" is officially the most brilliant blog title ever
Hoping we can bore more quickly than that.
Of course! The goal should be to *accelerate* the boring and produce as much boring as possible
Great article! Arlington, VA is a very well run blue county, and the taxes here aren’t even that high as compared to other places in the DMV, but it’s the housing costs that drive people out and into farther away places. I loved what one of our churches near the Clarendon metro did about a decade ago - it got permission from the county to expand upwards and build low/middle-income apartment housing on top of the church. After several years fighting off lawsuits from the surrounding neighbors (NIMBY), once they did it, it’s been extremely successful all around (for the church too). Always makes me wonder if other metropolitan religious institutions should get into the low/middle income housing business...
Sure looks like St. Charles is going to try and copy it if they can get the Sector Plan revisions they need.
That St. Charles property is full of potential.
I agree 100%. As a former Mayor of an affluent Bay Area suburb, I always felt that our way to contribute to the national debate was by setting an example of effective local government.
In my neck of the woods there are some positive things happening, including the electrification of Caltrain and some softening of NIMBYism.
But there are a couple of challenges. First, ambitious young local government officials are way more interested in performative politics on national issues than on making tangible progress on less sexy projects. The incentives are difficult to overcome.
Second, despite a great quality of life, good economy, low crime, etc, the public's distrust of government continues to rise, driven by national politics. Affluent progressives complain constantly about their property values and the mismanagement of their taxes. It's quite depressing, and it's hard for local officials to believe they can make a dent in that perception.
Given the choice between grinding away at some incremental meaningful change for years, or making a quick symbolic splash on a national cultural issue, it's easy to see why people make the choices they do (although they are not necessarily mutually exclusive).
We need to change local politicians' incentives so that focusing on creating good government also helps their political careers. Anyone have any ideas? :)
I'm a young Bay Area resident who wants to get into local politics and focus on the less sexy things, but I don't really know where to begin. As of right now, I'm just a guy with a laptop haha.
But yeah, I know exactly the sort of thing you're talking about. It's the world I live in 24/7.
That's great to hear. Let me know if I can be helpful to you.
Thanks. Mainly I'd just like to know where to go/who to talk to/what to do to even begin working in these sorts of things. I look at the tangle of activist groups and get scared to even begin, since I don't know which are good and which are the kind we like to complain about. Or even what sort of local offices to volunteer/work for. I'm in Alameda Co., for reference.
I would focus on building relationships & credentials. Attend local democratic party meetings and volunteer. Volunteer for a local bond measure campaign. Look for a local government board or commission to join. Volunteer for a non-profit that is engaged in local public policy.
Seeing a lot of this locally in Chicago as well. I think it's an effect of the "nationalization" of politics via Social Media. I mean, we literally have city council candidates issuing public position papaers on Israel & Palestine. Very little oxygen left for curb cut regulations or zoning reform (which typically ends up being seen in idelogical, rather than developmental terms)
The absolutely dogmatic focus on Israel-Palestine from the progressive left is honestly baffling to me. I get that it's a human-rights concern, but the amount of oxygen it sucks up among the Squad and their ilk seems wildly out of proportion to its impact on the average American citizen, which is basically nil, especially when Israel itself is a necessary partner for US interests in the region. Seems like one of those dogmatic issues which progressives would probably benefit from talking about less in favor of pocketbook issues.
Gets to Matt's "BA Bubble" construct. All that education and awareness has to be litigated in some type of public discussion it seems like
Indeed!
The other point is that sometimes this is how national progressive policies get done. Canada’s single-payer system was not initially a national policy- Saskatchewan did it first at the provincial level. Other provinces waited and watched and after seeing its success decided to jump in as well.
Yeah, the Canadian health care saga is a great example of this. They faced some big hurdles in Saskatchewan but showing those hurdles could be overcome became a huge impetus for change.
I think this is a great point that gets at some of the nitty-gritty of Matt's thesis.
The CCF was the (true) democratic socialist party that ran Saskatchewan for more than a decade. The party and their leader, Tommy Douglas, saw power as an opportunity to prove to the world that the government can run the economy more efficiently than the private sector. They completely failed. They were far too ambitious - the government didn't just take over the health insurance sector, but also the rest of the insurance sector (!), as well as many goods and services providers. The government, for example, owned shoe factories and box factories. They planned to eventually take over the entire finance industry, though that never happened. Note that the current incarnation of the CCF, the New Democrats, officially calls itself a coalition of social democrats and democratic socialists, but the democratic socialists have been marginal for decades.
But one of the CCF's implemented policies did indeed go national: the state takeover of the health insurance industry at a time when most of the country didn't have health insurance. (The casualty of the spread of single-payer was promising marked-based solutions in places like Ontario. The single-payer system in Canada became terribly expensive [second in the world at one point] and required very technocratic fixes to get health inflation under control, and only after several decades.) Canada's Medicare is incredibly popular today, and is why Tommy Douglas is so revered.
Which is why the idea of Ayanna Pressley running for governor of MA, while it partially makes me cringe, also makes me hopeful. You can be crazy-lefty ideologues when in power, but if you succeed at a few good policies that are replicable elsewhere (technically and politically), you've done everyone a favor. (It would probably help to not demonize your allies and say or do things that completely turn off potential voters.)
Two (Long) Thoughts:
1. Most mainstream media publications have really foregone any focus of accountability on the efficacy of government programs which has understandably left a void that conservatives can fill with the message of “Democrats run government programs like their own patronage systems with YOUR money and don’t face any consequences.” As incompetent as Trump is; the message of “Democrats have been running some of these cities for decades and none of the problems they supposedly care about have been solved,” I was silently sympathetic to. NYT had that great article a few years back titled “The Most Expensive Mile of Subway Track on Earth.” Those types of stories should be as frequent and ubiquitous as cultural critique articles are today. Without that, I think it becomes impossible to feel like there is anyone holding government accountable to executing and therefore people default to being against these things no differently than if you were asked to buy shares in a company without any promise of shareholder reporting or accountability.
2. I think Democrats suffer from trying to do too many things at the same time when designing these programs. “We need to build this transit line, but the firms involved must be American or based in (insert municipality), a certain percentage of the work must come from small businesses, it must create a certain number of jobs, it must take into account (racial, class, etc.) equity. That is a recipe for failure execution wise. This is a bipartisan problem when thinking about DoD programs at a national level. Executing to solve a problem becomes almost secondary to all the other goals that have more direct political benefits.
One other thought: sometimes the compromises made to control for costs or appease constituencies on these projects are ass backwards which further hampers confidence. As a fellow DC resident, the design of the H Street streetcar without a dedicated right-of-way almost defeats the point of wasting money it in the first place (I know you very much agree with that). Example #2 is Gavin Newsom paring the CHSR line to a section connecting nowhere to nowhere (no offense to the Central Valley). Like, I wish public officials were more brave to say “Look if we can’t do this project in this way, it doesn’t make sense to have it at all.”
My sense is some of these Republican Governors in very blue states win because people trust them not to be afraid to turn down certain programs or projects they believe won’t actually solve the problem they are seeking to solve in the first place.
The CASHR is such a train wreck (har har). Its a true embarrassment to Democrats nationwide. If it's not running between the bay and LA what purpose does it serve?
In my opinion, none honestly, other than public officials being able to save face and say they “created” jobs. It’s literally a higher brow twist on paying people to dig ditches with shovels. Like who in their right mind is going to pick HSR over driving in the Central Valley?
It'd be nice if there was any hope of the project being actually finished, but I don't think there is. Sadly, any such project will be tarred with that particular brush. Maybe one day we can actually build infrastructure in this country.
I had a different experience. I led the production transfer of the Siemens propulsion system for the NYCTA R160B project to meet the Buy America requirement. We built the traction motors in Norwood, OH and the propulsion invertor in Alpharetta, Georgia. Given the choice Siemens would have produced both components in Nuremberg. Both the production lines created longterm sticky revenue the factories could expand around. At the time too, Siemens was shutting down most of their US factories and moving them to Mexico.
But did that decision accomplish either: making the project cheaper or accelerating the project timeline compared to doing it through their existing process? Also, did Siemens have to hire outside firms to help them locate, source, and comply with buy American provisions?
Meeting the Buy America provisions didn't impact the timelines. In these transit projects the timelines are tied to funding cycles so that's the pacing function and far outside the production windows.
Hard to say on cost ... as a transit authority you're evaluating both upfront and lifetime costs. Most of these Buy America provisions were tied to reducing maintenance and operational risks over ~ 30 year lifecycles (e.g., foreign supplier exits US market after the contract). That's a real risk based on some outcomes of low-cost winner contracts from the 80s.
There's also the political jobs creation angle. I'm most familiar with transit and wind industries but there's been a lot of net new greenfield factories tied to these contracts ... Siemens built a light rail factory in Sacramento and a wind turbine gearbox factory in Elgin, IL, Kawasaki built a shell fabrication facility in Lincoln, NE, Alstom is nearly vertically integrated now in the US.
Yeah it’s definitely attractive politically. If it makes sense beyond just sloganeering I’m all for it. I’m more so speaking to program requirements that are included not because it’s the most cost effective, fastest, or efficient, but because politicians are looking at these things as jobs programs rather than infrastructure programs. I’m all for programs that help create domestic industrial capacity but think they should be done separate from other programs where the primary goal should be to execute on a project in the fastest amount of time for best value. DoD is the worst for this honestly...so many weapons systems we overbuy or keep around not for need but because they provide jobs. But I also recognize this is a fantasy separate from the political reality of selling these things.
As a German guy with Austrian parents, I found the part about the sewer socialists in Milwaukee particularly fascinating. I think it'd be fun if you expanded on that in a future post. In any case, the comparison to Vienna public housing seems apt - Vienna really showed the power of left-wing ideals if applied courageously and with a focus on practicability. Austria is pretty much a center-right country, but socialists/Social-Democrats in Vienna are still easily winning municipial elections a hundred years later without really having to do much for it. Turns out it's really hard to dismiss left-wing ideas if you see their positive ramifications everyday in your commute to work.
The idea of "sewer socialism" was incredibly common in Britan and Europe, where muncipal elections tended to have a more equal franchise than national ones, and less aristocratic control over the government. Birmingham became a major city in the UK, because its council led a major programme of taking public utilities into public hands and running them well.
I'm honestly curious as to whether it was multicultural?
I also am honestly curious as to how Germans are managing to live amongst 3rd world immigrants who don't respect their rules of decorum. Ride a train across Europe and you used to know when you were in Germany by how orderly, quiet, and polite the loading and unloading process was.
Which I just really wonder if you can make American cities care about their shared infrastructure. I like to walk cities when I visit and American cities invariably are trashy compared to what European cities, at least Anglo Saxon haha Europe used to be.
Does Annnngala hold them ahfter clahs?
I'm seriously suggesting you have to stop the enormous waste inherent in having an active part of your community disregard property rights and responsibilities.
yeah. Rome made one feel they were in the 3rd world. haha
Great post, and if anything an even bigger priority for New York, which has been losing population (forecast to lose 2 congressional seats after the census is done). In addition to the housing policy driven cost of living issues that Matt identified, these blue states have higher tax rates than a lot of the destination states that their population outflow is going to. You can maintain higher tax rates, but only if you are perceived as providing higher quality public services, and that’s not happening in New York now.
The tax issues are connected to the housing issues IMO. Pension costs get much higher in real terms when your population isn't growing, and the much-derided "luxury" housing is a great way to generate revenue without needing to impose ever-higher rates.
It's absurd to pay 6% of your salary to the city of New York and get absolutely nothing back for it. Which is true for the vast majority of working professionals paying that tax. At least in other high tax countries you know that your money is being spent helping people, not paying the 3rd pension who's realistic title would be "professional boondoggle consultant."
This is exactly the kind of insightful commentary I'm here for. I live in Berkeley, CA, which one might say is to California as California is to the nation. We have a pretty constant ultra left (relatively speaking) mandate and can try things here that won't get traction in other places. We were the first community in the nation to voluntarily bus our students (as VP-Elect Harris has spoken proudly of), we were one of the first places to tax sugary soda, one of the first places to have curbside recycling pickup, and many more. We have also tried things that failed, which is fine - I'm glad we tried them.
We are also in the crosshairs of the controversy over zoning restrictions and density that you often discuss, Matt. I serve as Chairperson of our Zoning Adjustments Board, so I see the conflict play out firsthand. Unlike the above examples, we are not exactly on the forefront of YIMBYism, but are doing our best to balance the obvious need to build more housing with preserving neighborhood character (I know that phrase is probably like nails on a chalkboard to you, Matt, but it's a real thing that I can't dismiss in our community).
Anyway, I appreciate your insights as always. I'm especially interested if you have any ideas how we could realistically reform some of the issues you highlight regarding expenses of using union labor while still promoting living wages and workers' rights. You bring up real problems, but politically, it seems like a nonstarter. I don't know the way out, but I imagine you have thoughts!
I'll give another example of progressives shooting themselves in the foot. "Single payer" Germany has universal coverage with most people getting their healthcare paid for by a system of non-profit sickness funds linked to their employer. If you don't have a job or can't afford insurance you're routed to the German equivalent of Medicare. A similar system exists in Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, etc.
There sure was a lot of ink spilled on "single payer" vs. universal coverage when there doesn't seem to be any great advantage to one system over the other. Again way too much focus on a meaningless shibboleth and not nearly enough focus on the operational outcome.
100% This. The fight of Medicare For All vs Public Option took up so much space... and yet the principle of wanting universal coverage is basically the end goal of both - yet people scream for M4A.
Dems shot themselves in the foot by placing emphasis on the mechanisms of universal coverage and not focusing on the the outcome!
Agree on moving the Overton Window, and I agree somewhat on policy merits. I have read about some possible things that could be done via executive action, but it seems like a stretch to expect a huge change via executive action. But I'd lopve to see the Biden admin try to use whatever levers it can to deliver.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21562986/president-joe-biden-health-care-plan-obamacare-medicaid
Good article, about the sorts of things that really aggravate me about Blue America. We really do have a problem of talking the talk but only walking the walk a little bit on issues other than some social policy issues. I feel like a dive into the specifics of these metro areas is worth doing, since a lot of the issues are very local indeed.
There are multiple problems, as I see things. The first is that, in a lot of these states, the Democratic Party is so dominant that they don't have much incentive to go with bold fix-it initiatives. Instead of jumping on the obvious opportunity, a lot of the state GOPs (thinking about CAGOP specifically) have decided to run as far to the right as they possibly can, dooming them to be even worse and more irrelevant. The lack of competition can stifle things, though obviously this is different in MA with Baker and MD with Hogan, but I'm less familiar with how things are in those states.
The second is when you consider who the most politically powerful group is in most of these metro areas-upper middle class suburbanites (including, admittedly, my own family), who have little to no incentive to change things for their own benefit. Given how much sway these groups have over local and state politics, it's no wonder how stuff like land use policy ends up being so skewed in their favor. My neighborhood, in the suburban East Bay, is 100% one of those "progressive platitudes on lawn signs but will turn around and oppose densification" places. There are a great deal of such places in the US (and Canada). These are also the newest converts to the Democratic agenda on the federal level, which I think creates more weird incentives on both ends.
The nationalization of politics creates a situation where a lot of activism is focused purely on national-level stuff, or general social policy. This is all fine and good, and still very much a good thing to work towards these goals, particularly during the disaster that has been the last four years, but it also creates a situation where the lawn-sign people can feel progressive by believing in a federal-level progressive platform while opposing or being apathetic to things that would actually have a direct impact in their own life in any way. The unholy alliance between NIMBYs and left-wing groups who have somehow convinced themselves that any development is bad because of the environment/gentrification/capitalism is particularly aggravating in this regard.
Conservatives may always make fun of us anyway, but they'd make fun of us a hell of a lot less if we actually delivered on the social democratic stuff or infrastructure we keep saying we want. I have no idea what the holdup is for some of these things. Is it a lack of ambition or imagination? Bad budgeting issues? Just general bungling (CAHSR or just everything about the NY coronavirus response comes to mind)? In any case, it needs to be fixed. I just wish I knew how.
As an aside: I'm curious as to how the WA public option is going to go.
Feels to me like progressive Democrats are almost scared of actually ever enacting their agenda. I've been thinking about the primary debates a lot, and just the insanity that the issue of whether or not to abolish private healthcare got exponentially more airtime than the Senate filibuster/democracy reform writ large. I'm a young progressive but I feel very distrustful of the Democratic party leaders because I feel like their progressive policy talk disguises a true, secret inertia. I'm encouraged by Biden's student loan debt exec. order, but it sort of feels like nothing else on his campaign website is really going to...happen? And on the state level, I would love to see something like you proposed coming out of Mass, but it seems like there's inertia with Dem state leaders as well. Why hasn't New York legalized weed? Why is the NYC municipal government so dysfunctional even though it's dominated by self-avowed progressives? It feels like as Democrats we're constantly negotiating against ourselves to try to produce a moderate, watered-down version of a progressive policy that might be palatable to Republicans, and I suspect part of the reason behind it as that our party leaders are actually not entirely convinced of the agenda they claim to support.
I don't think it's exactly that progressive Democrats are "scared" of enacting their agenda so much as it is that the nationalization of media and attention has led rank-and-file progressives to neglect concrete governance issues in progressive areas.
I love this entire post.
Your statement, "led rank-and-file progressives to neglect concrete governance issues in progressive areas." Deserves an entire *book unto itself. The entire way we "debate" and "discuss" policy has very little focus on measuring, tracking, or improving outcomes.
To give you a MA transportation politics example, there once was a three hour hearing about replacing the BU viaduct on the Mass Pike (I-90). Which desperately needs to be replaced b/c it's structurally deficient under load and used by ~250,000 people each morning and then ~250,000 people each afternoon. Or at least it was until covid.
Everyone who spoke at the hearing argued about the layout of local parks and roadways. The questions being debated ended up being "how many parks should we build around the replacement viaduct?"
Of the 250,000+ drivers, who use the road. No spoke. No drivers showed up. Not a single one :)
If you managed a product, with that type of "user" surveys, you'd be fired from your product management job :)
And my comment is in no way a criticism of the people involved in holding the hearing or transportation department. It's just the entire system isn't organized around the correct goal! And that's just one example.
I don't believe progressives are "scared" of enacting their agenda, so much as the agenda they want to enact is not overwhelmingly popular. Democratic party leaders are not untrustworthy because of a secret inertia. It turns out that there are lots of votes out there for well-managed, competent inertia.
Governing is hard and requires a give and take between stakeholders with fundamentally different beliefs. The New York City municipal government is dysfunctional because it has a ton of different stakeholders (many of whom are not progressives) and Bill DeBlasio is incapable of managing the politics of those relationships. He can speak about progressive values from his podium all he wants, but making things happen requires more than that.
This is a place where Democrats took the wrong lessons from 2016 and the 2016 primary. Significant portions of the party saw the rise of Bernie Sanders and thought it indicated that a broad swath of the electorate wanted revolutionary change. It seems to me, though, that there were lots of voters that did not like Hillary Clinton. Whatever the reason for that distaste (and there's a lengthy discussion to be had about that), a number of voters in both the 2016 primary and the general saw her as a problem they just couldn't overcome. But that doesn't tell me that if progressives just go bigger and bolder with unapologetically progressive policy that voters will flock to them. By all accounts, it's much the opposite.
Feel like the "Democrats misread the 2016 primary and took the wrong lessons into 2020" story needs more play. The primary played out in a kind of absurd way given where the narrative was in Fall 2019.
Fun Massachusetts polling tidbit on that - nearly half (48%) of Bernie Sanders 2016 primary voters went on to vote for Charlie Baker in 2018. These weren't socialists!
Parts of the agenda are unpopular, but parts outrun Democrat candidates themselves in both elections and polls. I think for the popular aspects of the agenda, what's happening is voters don't actually trust Democrat leaders to implement them well or at all.
I agree, although it's difficult to tell what parts of the agenda are popular and what parts are progressive. We've seen instances where Medicare for All polls well, but polls also show that it was extraordinarily popular when voters believed M4A referred to a public option, rather than a full single-payer program.
The Trump economic approval numbers brought this into perspective for me. His handling of the virus is catastrophic, but large portions of the electorate still believed he did a fine job on the economy. So do voters want to enact the progressive agenda, or do they want to elect a person with liberal values that will help make people's lives better but won't fundamentally alter the system in which they live?
Seems like people generally prefer stability and the slow boring of hard boards, to quote our host.
That's true, but that's where the being-good-at-politics part comes in. I think Matt's take about a blue state needing to enact, for instance, some sort of public option is a really smart one and will help boost the popularity of currently not-so-popular programs. Then there's a second class of policies: in an emergency like the pandemic, the creative policies we actually end up implementing, even though they seem like emergency measures, catch on as people enjoy innovative progressive governance. Locally, Open Streets in New York City is a great example. Nationally, it seems like the stimulus checks have really boosted the popularity overall of UBI (https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/512099-poll-majority-of-voters-now-say-the-government-should-have-a). Then there's a third, smaller class of things that are *just flat-out popular* but progressives don't seem to want to take action on, such as weed legalization in NY.
This is well said. Seems as though there's a real eagerness to wave away Chesterton's Fence. The inconvenient truth is that lots of people just don't want what is on offer
"But that doesn't tell me that if progressives just go bigger and bolder with unapologetically progressive policy that voters will flock to them. By all accounts, it's much the opposite."
This is fair enough - particularly at the national level. But MY's thesis is that you can try to do things at the state level as laboratories for new policies that are successful politically and technically. You can go big in a bigly liberal state, and that'll be a model for successful national reform, or at least, reform in other states.
Of course there are limits to that. No US state has anything close to single payer (and I'm not sure why that would be a goal anyway). Same with UBI. But that's just data that's useful for us going forward. Those don't work. Other policy ideas will. And that becomes evidence of (and inspiration for) what can be done nationally.
I was responding to the specifics of Elias' post, but I hear you. I'm just not certain that the "laboratories of democracy" theory works in these instances. The states that have Democratic trifectas are theoretically good places to run this play. If someone is a promoter of big progressive policies as ways to make people's lives better, then these are good places to do so. I'm not convinced, though, on a practical level, that success by the progressive movement in these states will have any impact on other states because of their reputation as liberal bastions.
I mentioned in a different thread that there are significant cultural divides between very blue and very red states. Even assuming that voters in Oklahoma saw the success of big progressive governance in New York/Massachusetts/California, the reputations of those states precede them. My impression is that the best way for progressives to get the nation's attention on policies that work is to get them to work on state's that don't carry that same cultural baggage. I suggested Ohio as a good model for that, but you could probably even do so in a place like Virginia, which has become reliably blue but is not seen as a leftist haven.
You would think that with the local control of police and the overwhelming support for BLM in major cities that there would be a ton of great examples where people are really happy with their policing reforms. I'm not sure I could point to that city that has implemented any change, much less is getting praised for it.
California said no to cash bail. This is something that Philadelphia and New York City have made some reforms to, but this is simple and logical, but the list is still pretty small.
"Why is the NYC municipal government so dysfunctional even though it's dominated by self-avowed progressives?"
Because the base on both sides weighs policy and platitudes higher than actual managerial competence. DeBlasio on the left and Trump on the right are perfect examples of this. They say the right things to get their base excited but have no ability to execute. To be successful progressive voters have to focus more on managerial competence and less of being told what they want to hear.
I think that's mostly right, but I don't even think the progressive establishment (can't believe I'm using that phrase) weights policy all that highly. I live in NYC, paying a lot of attention to the mayor's race and city council races, and people are talking in those platitudes and talking about policy ostensibly, but seem to have no intention of actually implementing anything. It's all about the aesthetic of politics, about the entertainment. There's definitely poor management present, but it's really just an apathy toward *actually governing*.
As someone who is extremely plugged into NYC land use, I would say that part of the problem is on the civic society end. For example, there's basically no civic group arguing for better construction costs in transit, or better organizational efficiency of the transit agencies.
On the land use side I can say that many politicians do want to approve new buildings, so YIMBY groups showing up to public hearings gives them space to do so. And while de Blasio obviously isn't perfect, when Open New York (the local YIMBY group) made it clear he would have public support in rezoning SoHo for more housing, he went for it. So I do think that organizing in these spaces can make space for the change we want to see happen, even if the executives aren't your ideal politicians.
I think you have the answer here, though. Actually governing is very much about management. Managing relationships, managing people, managing organizations. It's not just about legislating, particularly through the executive.
No that's totally true, but we never get the chance to govern or to manage because we never attempt in a real way to implement our agenda in the first place. (And when we do, we often mismanage it!)
I think you have it backwards. You aren't going to be able to fully implement your agenda because it's just not popular enough. But parts of it are. So you really need to execute on those parts. Then you can say, "See how well X worked? Now let us try Y." That's the only path forward that I can see.
What I'm trying to get at is what I feel like is inertia at the very beginning of the process you're laying out: Democratic governments in Democratic places seem unwilling to commit to implement even the most popular parts of the Democrat agenda...why? It would be for the benefit of the locality and the country if they did!
I think we're saying largely the same thing: imo, people don't trust democratic leaders to execute even the most popular parts of the agenda. So you follow through and implement it well in a place like NY or MA, and instill trust that a) it's a good policy and b) we can execute it well. We can do that at the same time as trying to win the debate on the parts of our agenda that are not yet popular.
I don't like De Blasio, but I give his administration credeit for universal pre-k, expanded paid sick leave, etc.
On a state level, NY Dems have raised the minimum wage, expanded early childhood education, increased paid sick leave and paid family leave, repealed a police secrect law, and created a program for free college ("Excelsior Scholarship" - in state SUNY/CUNY with income cap).
So while NY isn't perfect, it has implemented some of the most progressive policies in the nation.
I don't really believe that NYC government is unusually dysfunctional. They operate a much higher level of benefits for residents than most US municipal governments. They have very low crime rates, and a strong economy. The police are out of control, but they have an objectively low amount of police shootings for the US. The problems with the MTA seem mostly to arise from the shared governance with the state. NYCHA is bad, though, for sure. But even well-run governments have problem areas.
The MTA has almost nothing to do with the city, it's entirely a state issue. A big part of the problem with the MTA is that nobody thinks of this as the governor's area of responsibility so he has no incentive to do a good job.
I agree that NYC is better run than many US municipalities, but I think if you compare it to international peer cities or even itself historically it can be quite dysfunctional––we legitimately have levels of homelessness unseen since the Great Depression. And of top of that we can't build basic infrastructure at a reasonable cost––Matt brings up subway lines, but the problem is in everything from pedestrian bridges to new libraries to protected bike lanes. I think there's something deeply concerning and dysfunctional when your city can't execute on something that it used to do fairly easily.
"we legitimately have levels of homelessness unseen since the Great Depression"
Can we solve that problem without mandating treatment for those with sever mental health or substance abuse issues. From what I understand there is some agreement on the left and right that mandatory treatment in a supervised facility is warranted in many cases. But then you have the libertarians on the right and a certain type of progressive on the left who find the idea abhorrent.
I was reading something about homelessness in San Francisco and you had people who were so profoundly menially ill and so incapable of caring for themselves than their life expectancy was measured in months. Someone suggested mandatory treatment in a supportive environment and homeless advocates were up in arms. The homeless had to chose treatment. But these were people who were as unable to function as someone with dementia. If someone is 82 and wandering around in their pajamas we send them back to the memory care unit. When someone is 28 and equally as disabled we just let them wander.
If we actually built housing and rent was far lower, you'd have far fewer people pushed into these kinds of precarious and psychologically taxing situations, while giving more people the opportunity to remain productive members of society. Japan––which has functioning housing markets, with zoning policy set on the national level––has fewer than 5000 people living on the street in the entire country. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/07/14/national/social-issues/number-homeless-japan-falls-15-year-low-5000/
Some of that is because they have policies like universal healthcare, but a lot of it is simply that we have a pure housing shortage, on top of banning the most affordable housing typologies, like SROs, which also helped people stay off the streets in the past.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-22/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-american-sro
Here's a good thread on the libraries: https://twitter.com/MarketUrbanism/status/1318636624536797185?s=20
Sure, but similar to the institutional GOP, the joke is kinda on you if voters trust their bluster more than your policy talk. As Yglesias has written on the BA bubble last Friday, people love being told what they want to hear no matter who they are, so a political problem can't be easily handwaved away as a bunch of rubes.
I feel like a deep problem specifically in NYS is our absolutely pathetic voter turnout––consequential state and local elections are on off-years, early voting is not nearly as established or well-funded as other states, the process is overseen by a patronage system. On top of that, as NYC has become steadily more progressive, people haven't always understood that the decisive election is now the Democratic primary. The most consequential election in New York City for the better part of a decade will be the 2021 Mayoral and City Council Democratic primaries, as the majority of incumbent council members are hitting their term limits, yet few know how decisive their vote could be, especially when compared to the presidential race––we will definitively see far lower turnout. You basically have a system where democratic accountability is not to the public, but rather the considerably smaller percentage of voters that dependably turnout in the primaries––and who in many times are activated by reactionary positions on extremely local issues. Think car owners show up to stop busways that will benefit thousands more people, homeowners turning out to prevent affordable housing or homeless shelters that they fear could impact their property values. As an aside, I think Alon Levy did an excellent job describing some of the other structural issues causing a local democratic deficit here: https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/05/25/informed-voting-and-the-democratic-deficit/
Until we can get some sort of structural reform of elections, running a campaign with the public at large in mind will be considerably more difficult.
Matt, have you considered actually reaching out to the sandhog unions and having a policy conversation with them about the tunneling cost issue? If there was a serious proposal to, e.g., cut tunneling costs in half but build four times as many tunnels (and therefore employ twice as many sandhogs) would that appeal to them, or are they genuinely wedded to the current system? Those unions must employ some policy people who have some thoughts re why moving to a German cost structure is or is not feasible.
A union with dozens-to-low-hundreds of members, that produces no-work and no-show jobs, and whose members can be described as "third-generation" or "fourth-generation" is about as wedded to the current system as you can get.
Doubling in size means handing out enough union votes to lose control, and handing them out to people without generations of loyalty.
Also, do you want trouble with the mob? Because this is how you get trouble with the mob.
That raises a separate question about whether unions are incentivized towards maintaining an incumbency advantage or towards growing their membership. The former might be the case with many unions, but I would argue that the latter is critical for the long term future of organized labor.
From a purely cynical and entirely understandable perspective, there is no incentive for public-sector employees to want to do more work for less pay. They will have to be made to do so, which is why public-sector union influence over policy makers is problematic.
I don't think less pay would really be on the table, more efficient work might be. Also, to my knowledge tunnel construction workers are really direct public sector employees, they usually work for large construction companies that specialize in doing public sector projects.
If you're slashing the absolutely exorbitant overtime rates (where "overtime" really becomes the normal salary while doing a lot of make-work), than that absolutely amounts to a pay cut and will be seen as such by these employees. Overtime is also crucial to inflating pensions by pulling huge amounts of highly-paid overtime in the last few years before retirement, at least in the police sector, and I assume the others which can get away with it are much the same.
Having followed California housing politics (and, tangentially, high-speed rail), I'm really pessimistic that progressives in blue states can realistically deliver public works projects that require major new infrastructure.
Obviously the implacability and structural power of the NIMBY forces is formidable. What's even more dispiriting is the unholy alliance they've been able to make with the activist left, which here in the Bay Area mobilizes against everything from market-rate housing to, I shit you not, *bus lanes*, in the name of anti-gentrification and -displacement. It's remarkably counterproductive--at least the NIMBYs arguably advance their underlying goals when they block this stuff--but worse, it gives the NIMBY entrenched-homeowner camp both political cover and a story they can tell themselves about why they're doing what they're doing. The result is that the lane of folks who broadly speaking *want stuff to happen*, and not in a massively-contingent way, is actually really small. And you have multimillionaire mansion-dwellers like Dean Preston who become Supervisors, tirelessly advocate in their own self-interest, and become hailed as "progressive" heroes.
I don't know how to fix that, other than something like SB50, which *sad trombone*. The local YIMBY leaders think that there's a coalition to be had with the left-activist set, and so if you go to meetings you will hear them make mouth noises around how the folks fighting for social justice and against displacement aren't the enemy, it is instead rich people on the west side who talk about "neighborhood character." But the two are sadly symbiotic.
All of which is just to say that the people we think of as being in the "progressive" camp--the big-city-dwelling "we" in Matt's post--seem to overwhelmingly have commitments that are going to override major zoning reform and building public-services infrastructure, even if they can be convinced it's a good idea in the abstract.
I'd love to know how this sort of thing plays out elsewhere. Would also love to read more on the union angle, about which I know next to nothing beyond the sketch in Matt's post.
Kevin Drum had a series of posts on some train they were trying to build connecting LA and San Francisco. Just continual cost over-runs until it was shut down is my understanding.
To me, your thinking on the housing issue is predictably backwards. The key to making America a better (and bluer) place is to increase the number of great places to live, rather than making it so that everybody can afford to live in one of two great places. Your view is also very alienating to those who live in and enjoy other parts of the country. Did you know that Chicago has museums that rival anything in New York? Did you know that Cleveland has one of the world's top orchestras? From your coastal bubble, you probably don't know these things. Rather than peddling in "how can EVERYONE afford to live in New York or California?!" rhetoric, you should explore solutions that address the geographic inequities that plague us ... especially if you want to fit 1 billion people in this country! And from a political standpoint ... move a few million urbanites to midwestern cities, and the entire midwest is blue forever, with fewer wasted votes in already-blue states.
Cleveland!
Let me quote from my book ONE BILLION AMERICANS: "Cleveland, conversely, has an airport, three pro sports teams, a few excellent museums, a major orchestra, and a great theater district, but disinvestment has left it incredibly cheap."
Okay, you've finally sold me on the book! 😉
But Blue states also have plenty of shrinking cities that could use a boost in population! In CT alone: Bridgeport, New Haven, Hartford...Stamford has actually been building quite a few new high-density apartment buildings downtown near transit in recent years, but a bit different because they're part of NYC metro area.
Sort of along these lines, I keep wondering if blue states could do a state-level version of the idea of dispersing federal offices to support economic growth in other metro areas outside of DC. Could MA move MassHousing from pricey downtown Boston to the more struggling Pittsfield? Would it make a difference if it did?
Y'all lost me at saying positive things about Cleveland
Or have an ice cream party and do both! NY/CA and the other high cost/high demand metros should have more housing and become more affordable, *and* lower cost/lower demand metros (e.g., in the Rust Belt) should be repopulated and revitalized with the goal of making them more desirable. Do it all and maybe we can have one billion Americans! But whatever you do don't play the problems off each other -- "there's lots of room in Cleveland" isn't a helpful to "NYC is too expensive," nor is "we can put more people in NYC if we just build more" a helpful response to "it's too bad Cleveland is declining." Both are problems *and* opportunities.
I think Matt's point is that progressives need a strong use case for their policies on a national level. Winning national power requires a state like Mass or California adopting a lot of the progressive policies and then making the case that it's worth it for the country to do so. The fact that California's housing crisis exists is proof that a Democratic trifecta on the national level isn't going to be this massive change. There will still be problems.
You have much more massive problems in my opinion. even though having 5 viable political parties enabled a nutjob like Hitler to win nationally, I agree with those who feel the two party system has failed us.
Look, seriously, the dems have a tent full of people who hate each other and agree to pretend in public that they don't. The problem is, they don't run on any ideas because there aren't any on which they are agreed. So they pretend to the moral high ground and take empty slogan positions to elevate the social capital of marginalized members.
Of course Joy Reid hates homos. Of course, she pretends she doesn't but the minute she no longer has to observe that pretense, homos are fair game, much like YT and Jews has become.
Gay marriage rights couldn't pass a democratic vote in California.
let that sink in. We don't need your leadership. To my view, being an old homo, you all will use our vote to install haters like Reid and Omar Ilhan, pretending to a liberalism they actually have contempt for, and then ditch us when their more militant friends literally move to throw us off the rooftops.
The Hillary coalition has been "Karen-ized". It wouldn't surprise me if the whole thing weren't a set up. So much for the women power, and the me too power.... now it's just black womens that save the world.
Gay white men - purveyors of putrid patriarchal privilege.
hahahaha... probably the most "lynched" group of people in America in the last 40 years and they have been painted as privileged.
I understand ... My comment was directed towards a pretty specific part of the post. I agree with the larger point.
I'm also not sure I agree with the premise. There are significant cultural divides in the image of New York, Massachusetts, California (and New Jersey/Oregon/insert other Blue state here) and much of Red America. Even if New York/Massachusetts/California were the best run states in the union as models of progressive governance, it seems to me that they'd still be dismissed as outliers. Conservatives don't like "San Francisco values"; the fact that San Francisco has significant housing/homeless issues gives conservatives something specific to yell about, but if it wasn't that, they'd find something else.
If you want to make a strong use case for progressive policies on a national level through state examples, progressives are going to have to win power in a state that doesn't carry that kind of baggage. One of Ohio/GA/PA, perhaps.
Also, I hope you can understand this. I'm pissed the DNC lies so consistently to young people. Because the truth is, you're importing those who lynch homos and like Obammy in Miami .. haha ... you don't even have the integrity or the balls to confront them on their barbaric, unevolved 1200 year old sky Gawd bullshit when you do so.
Not to protect homos do you confront the problems of Islam.
not even to protect little girls, as over a million adult women alive today without clitties can attest, you won't even confront the barbarism to protect little girls.
What good are you? You demonise and raise money by calling other Americans fascist whilst you import homo lynching, infidel terrorizing, heretic murdering, women oppressing and child abusing religious nutjobs without challenge.
Get outta here.. you don't deserve to govern.
I know it was Orlando. Miami rhymes with Obammy. haha
Again. What are San Francisco values? Because if they include Gay Marriage, the rest of California didn't like San Francisco values either.
Why you talking 'bout conservatives when you cain't convince so called liberals?
because dat way dere Cletus, him can raise big big money fighting the red state fascists so's they can pay each others campaign machine to run another campaign to end all campaigns in two years because Democracy will be over if they lose the House, even if the House don't accomplish shit.
it's a merry go round from which one never exits to actually legislate.
I think the idea is that no major metropolitan area should be out of reach for middle class people. It’s not that people shouldn’t live in Cleveland, Chicago, etc. but they definitely shouldn’t HAVE to live there because a huge swath of the country with many economic opportunities is out of reach due to NIMBYism. Ideally all of our metro areas are affordable and people can move wherever they see fit.
Fair point ... people should be able to afford to live where they like, but I feel like there's a bit of intellectual inconsistency here ... on the one hand it's "well, those are market forces ... if there's more economic opportunity in D.C. than Detroit, tough ..." and then at the same times it's "we can't let market forces dictate that people can't all afford to live in New York City!" If Detroit or St. Louis or wherever can be screwed for decades by market forces, than New York and D.C. can get screwed a bit by market forces as well. *shrug*
The thing is that New York's high prices are not caused by market forces. They're caused by overly strict land use regs.
They shouldn’t have to live their because of NIMBYISM, but we should actually want to spread out the middle class throughout the country. As we’re seeing in election results, the overconcentration of college educated liberals in a few enclaves is a small d-democracy problem.
Did none of you read the book?? He literally calls out Cleveland's orchestra. Large parts of the book are about repopulating the rust belt.
Shouldn't we want to maximize the number of people living in great places, if not making all the places where people live to be great? NYC is home to 8+ million people. The population has been roughly stagnant since 2010 and has actually declined during the Trump era. [1] In fact, net domestic migration has NYC losing ~900k people from 2010-2019, which has been offset by net international immigration (500k) and net natural pop groeth (births - deaths, 560k). [2] When you dig into the Trump era decline, you can see a sharp drop in both net immigration and net natural increase, which is related to immigration (immigrants are younger and have higher birth rates) [3].
This is meant to demonstrate that NYC has been a net loser of domestic population for a while now, and immigration has played a huge factor in keeping the population steady. That isn't the marker of a place that is great to live in for all Americans. For the 8+ million who call NYC home - approximately 2.5% of the US population - it would make a measurable impact in their lives to have bold government policy changes that improve living conditions. For example - improving transportation infrastructure and operations. The NYC subways had a sharp decline in on-time rates over the last 10-15 years, though it has turned around somewhat since the nadir in 2018 [4][5][6].
Perhaps the number one issue is housing costs, which skyrocketed from 2010-2019 as the population barely increased. [7] There has been some relief for housing costs in 2020 as the market has softened in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic [8], but it remains to be seen how this affects long term affordability.
[1] https://economics21.org/have-we-reached-the-end-of-cities
[2] https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/planning/download/pdf/planning-level/nyc-population/new-population/current-populatiion-estimattes.pdf
[3] https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2020/demo/p25-1144.pdf
[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/nyregion/new-york-subway-system-failure-delays.html
[5] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/nyregion/new-york-subways-on-time-performance-hits-new-low.html
[6] https://nypost.com/2020/01/20/subways-had-best-on-time-performance-in-six-years-during-2019/
[7] https://ny.curbed.com/2019/12/13/21009872/nyc-home-value-2010s-manhattan-apartments
[8] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/23/realestate/new-york-real-estate.html
The issue isn't just New York and California. Look at medium sized cities that are growing rapidly: Nashville, Raleigh, Tampa, Orlando, Denver, Austin; you have to be making a great salary to be able to afford a house in the city or you're stuck in the surrounding suburbs with a 1hr+ commute to work.
I grew up in the suburbs and I currently live in the city and I love it so much more. I wish I could buy something instead of renting but that seems out of reach for the foreseeable future. The vast majority of new units being built where I live is either for-rent apartments or expensive condos so it doesn't seem like there's any hope that I will be able to afford a decent sized house/town-house in the city.
Yeah. I don’t disagree with Matt on let’s build more market rate housing but I’m also more interested in “ways to drive down market rate in DC, NYC, Boston SF, etc by convincing college grad liberals to move to Cleveland/Detroit/Phoenix/etc”
I'm not trying to be a jerk but am genuinely curious. Do you live in a city like DC/NY or a city like Detroit?
In my experience most of the people who talk about convincing people to move to Cleveland are people already housed in LA.
Sorry if I missed it elsewhere in this thread.
No problem. I live in Phoenix.
With remote work, won't many people choose these cheaper options?
As someone who has worked remotely in a tech job for the past 3.5 years, I can tell you that no one who's ambitious, extroverted, or wants a larger space than one room will want to work remotely. I don't think the current small boomlet in remote work will last.
This is true for me. Sitting at home during covid as an extrovert is miserable.
I enjoy my personal life a lot less even though I theoretically have more time to devote to it.
I'm also less productive at work. I need the energy that comes with being around random people.
Seems to me that many employers will go outside the country for cheaper professionals, as they do in any other sector.
I hope so, and it should be encouraged.
Lower cost-of-living is the most effective way to address geographic inequities, and it's already in full effect, especially with the increase in remote work. People are always going to congregate on coastal counties to a certain extent because of the more pleasant climate and access to the ocean.
I get this, but at the same time, how good really is the weather in NYC or Boston??
Not as good as some other coastal areas of the country, but being on or near the ocean tilts things something like ~4-5 degrees in the nicer direction in any given season relative to a similar area upstate, which really does make a big difference.
That's a fair point, but there are some things to explain ... like how Toronto is the second most populous city on the continent, or how may bad-weather cities were dominant at points in the 20th century. It seems like the role of weather is complicated ...
Toronto is on the Great Lakes as well, which have a similar impact on local temperatures as the ocean due to their size. It’s quite reductive to suggest that only weather matters, of course, you’re right about that. But the coast has always had strong appeal and will likely continue to do so. People love beaches and the water.
Also being on the coast increases the likelihood a City will remain a hub of immigration/commerce.
If Chicago existed on the coast I suspect it would still be growing at a fairly large rate.