Affordability and abundance seem synonymous, given how supply and demand works. Which makes me worried that the same issues that plague abundance agendas are going to plague affordability agendas: fealty to unions and special interest groups.
This is a great analysis of the outcome and driving force from these disparate elections. I guess I would offer two critiques: regarding Trump not focusing on affordability, I would say he is but not in ways Democrats would recognize. Removing illegal immigrants will bring down home prices if simple supply/demand economics is to be believed. Focusing on energy production has brought down gas prices which will reduce costs. And the tariff theory is that more manufacturing can be done in this country, bringing with it more jobs, higher wages and better economic stability and equality. Will these materialize? I’m not sure, but I think that’s the theory and we’ll see if things play out that way. That said, they’re longer-term market effects, not overnight policy wins. At some point they need to result in the benefits Trump is promising, obviously, but I think it needs more time to play out, personally.
I also was curious whether ‘no enemies to the left’ is a thing? For me, as an independent but more of a small government person, Mamdani and the rise of the DSA terrifies me. I equate socialism with Nazism, both are authoritarian governments that lead to death and destruction. I just don’t see how we’ve gotten to the point in this country that socialism is normalized and acceptable.
DSA is nothing to do with Nazis or authoritarian governments. Think the Nordic countries. Strong legal frameworks for capitalism and a similarly strong safety net. There is a reason these countries rank in the top five of happiest countries every year. :)
Those Nordic countries also have REALLY high taxes rates on the middle class. I don't see any evidence that Americans want to pay tax rates like that.
Moreover, those countries are fairly homogenous both racially and culturally which is important for building the trust that people won't take advantage of the system
If you look at your overall tax rate it's not that much higher and you actually get something. This country was great when we taxed the rich. They are the ones who used the cold war to convince America the new deal was bad and that if we gave them the money it would trickle down to everyone else. Now here we are back in the age of the robber barons. Time to take back our country from the people who would only plunder it. There is no need for trust of abuse when everyone gets the same benefits so the homogeneous doesn't matter. That is just another far right/billionaire talking point. They will do anything to not have to pay taxes.
They should pay most of the taxes when they have most of the money. If you look at the effective rate they pay less of their income than you. Our progressive rates that funded our Industrial Revolution and created the middle class were slashed for the myth of trickle down.
America’s Industrial Revolution was built when we had no income taxes and only tariff revenue. The high rates you are referring to were put in place during World War II and survived a couple of decades when we had the only large economy left intact after that war. We can’t recreate that era. (Either from the right or the left)
How many illegals immigrants do you really think are getting mortgages and buying homes?
The tariff strategy on manufacturing just doesn’t work. I’ve worked in solar for a decade, and we have had high tariffs on solar panels for 15 years. We only started manufacturing panels once the last admin passed manufacturing tax incentives, which led to tens of billions of dollars in investment in domestic manufacturing. Which this admin is trying to reverse and destroy with their anti-clean energy policies.
If you talk to anyone trying to manufacture locally, tariffs only hurt. Because even the manufacturing equipment and key components all come from abroad. This tariff approach (hardly a strategy) is haphazard, unscientific, and harmful to the economy, especially those struggling from inflation already.
My friends that live in the EU would disagree. I have one in Finland and he showed us his paystubs. My friend in Slovenia is horrified by how much we pay in taxes plus health care.
He’s not doing it in ways that pre-MAGA GOP would recognize either. There’s extremely little evidence that tariff will boost manufacturing, energy production is not a long term solution (and one which Biden was already on) and as someone else said, there’s not anywhere near enough undocumented immigrants in this country ( and Trump will not be able to remove anywhere near enough anyway) to significantly affect home prices. Which, of course, are affected by much more than just supply and demand from a home purchasing perspective.
Your comment is very polite and has a veneer of responsibility, but I fear you’re just one of those right wing “independents.”
I admire your restraint regarding not including Abundance as a mechanism so I will for you. The smartest thing the party would do is to merge affordability with reform. Show people you can learn from mistakes and then make sure you are constantly telling them how. Say how more houses are coming because you removed a useless layer of bureaucracy Give them clear time tables and updates on reforms and what they are going to bring. Dems have a real chance to bring about a new progressive era. The people are ready, but are they?
What you're suggesting is great, but it requires strong communication -- definitely not a strong suit for the Dems. The only way we get there is usher in a new era of Dem leaders that understand how to communicate. In other words, Schumer and many others have to go.
Currently I feel like many are not able to communicate because they’ve been paid to keep the status quo. I’ve been calling for a consultant class cleanse. Totally agree the current party is not capable of this. It’s kind of why we’re here
I don’t disagree on the politics. But this brings me back to issues I’ve had for a while: what do you do if the/a popular “solution” to voters’ problems isn’t a solution at all? And what if voters are just wrong about the world?
On the first question, take Mandani’s promise of rent control. Seems like that was popular! And why wouldn’t it be with the cost of apartments in NYC? Except, we have a mountains of empirical evidence that rent control RAISES rents overall.
On the second, it seems voters’ perception of the economy has, at least for a while, been unmoored from reality in many places. While I completely agree housing is a terrible anomaly of very important and having price growth wildly outstripping baseline inflation numbers, it’s an outlier.
Looking at the 2024 election timing, real incomes were up! Individual debt to gdp was down! Measures of household disposable income/savings were up! Unemployment rates were in a period of historic lows for a historically long stretch of time!
Now, it’s possible housing price rises are the colossus that overwhelms all of that. But even if I weren’t skeptical of that on its face, almost 70% of Americas own a home! So this massive problem is making 2/3rds of Americans richer!!!
There’s a million ways to continue making this point, but the best is probably something I know you’ve seen and cited: all the surveys where Americans say their finances are good but the economy is bad for everyone else anyway.
As a politician is the only thing to do about this to lie? To say, “I’ll fix this thing that largely isn’t broken!” And hope that everyone wakes up in the time you’re in power saying it?
92% of Americans own cars. But if the prevailing sentiment in the electorate was anger that “I actually don’t own a car and the government is preventing me from owning a car and I’m mad as hell!” I’m not sure what the honest move is (which is why I’d be a shit politician).
In the energy space, Virginia has an opportunity to demonstrate the confluence between energy affordability and climate by scaling up virtual power plants - the rooftop solar, batteries, and EVs loved by environmentalists made revenue-positive by the hefty power needs of AI data centers. Would love you to dive into this, Derek!
I agree that affordability is a great message. And while we've seen some small improvements in places, I've yet to see the needed changes to really drive down costs.
Because to do so you will need to gut local control, and also say no to unions, and other special interests that use red tape to protect themselves against competition.
Yes, affordability is a good message, an evergreen message. But especially with Mamdani, it will be an effective message to oust him next election, as his policies will not create broad affordability. If he is able to freeze the rent on current tenants, vacancies will dwindle and the price of new leases will soar. The only way to really lower prices is increase supply, and Democrats have shown little interest in that.
Anyone studying Marjorie Taylor Greene's heterodox turn who can provide an explanation how it fits with her worldview? She seems to have her finger on the pulse of elections maybe more than her brethren.
She’s an unprincipled grifter who seeks power and notoriety, much like Tucker Carlson. Rather than standing on principles she’s willing to tell the electorate what they want to get elected. She’s unwilling to have the tough conversations on government funding that principled conservatives care about and instead is a head-in-the-sand populist type who’ll promise her constituents justice and affordability, much like many progressive types. I’m not quite sure what MAGA is going to morph into over the next few years but whatever she’s selling I’m not buying.
What concerns me about Mamdani’s win is it shows the Democrats are still pushing far to the left, and now they will feel validated in doing so. Not great when that tendency has produced two Trump presidencies.
According to realclearpolling.com, an indispensable site that aggregates and averages the major polls, the president's approval rating was 44.8% last Thursday and 43.4% on Tuesday. That might not seem like a lot, but when you actually view the week-by-week chart front and center on the home page, you see what a nose-dive it is.
He picked a terrible week to go to war with SNAP funding because that had been the biggest story heading into election day. I don't know how big a difference that would have made on Tuesday, but it certainly didn't help.
Aggregates and averages -- uncritically with conservative bias.
Look at Trafalgar and Atlas polls for NJ/VA governor (which G Elliott Morris called out in his substack this week). I would look elsewhere for unbiased polling.
Morris substack is great and links out to other sources. Just to be clear Trafalgar and Atlas made some bad decisions in treatment of their polling results.
Largely agree. However, we tend to talk about 'affordability' in somewhat abstract terms with largely anecdotal data in support. In contrast our 'economic health' (i.e. how well capitalism is doing) is monitored in myriad ways together with large institutions in place (e.g. the Federal Reserve) to keep things humming. This latter effort has been very successful, though it has arguably had (perhaps inadvertent) adverse effects on affordability for a large portion of the population.
The first step in addressing this issue should be generating quantitative data on affordability at localities across the country. This would serve in two ways. One, it would highlight the issue in black and white terms at the local level thereby prompting action. Secondly, it would provide a metric to monitor the effects of policy changes.
It might sound like a difficult challenge to monitor affordability across the country, but it is already being done. There is a group at MIT (https://livingwage.mit.edu) that monitors 'living wage' at a great many sites across the country. I have absolutely no connection to this group, nor am I an expert in these measurements, however I am convinced that whatever shortcomings exist in their methodology could be addressed by a dedicated effort of the sort we make on measuring inflation, unemployment etc.
We always go back and forth in this country because basically all problems are out of our control. Trump couldn't lower prices, neither will any of the Democrats or antisemitic socialists.
So, Democrats, enjoy your sugar high. When reality strikes, people will vote against you.
I don’t doubt that affordability played a big role in the 2025 elections, but it seems very odd behavior to be very concerned about affordability and then vote for the party already in power. Affordability is largely due to bad government policy. Parties that keep winning elections have no incentive to change those policies.
At some point, voters are going to have to realize that the affordability issue is not going to change by repeatedly voting for the same party.
Wait… Did you just write about GOOD news? In POLITICS?!? I need to re-read this. You must have pulled some kind of sophistry; there’s no way something good actually happened.
Many party faithful--Dems and Repubs--love the purity tests. I wonder if our Puritan DNA is stronger than our Can-Do DNA. I'm encouraged by your article--that people are thinking more about the latter--their pocketbooks and their children's welfare.
Affordability and abundance seem synonymous, given how supply and demand works. Which makes me worried that the same issues that plague abundance agendas are going to plague affordability agendas: fealty to unions and special interest groups.
This is a great analysis of the outcome and driving force from these disparate elections. I guess I would offer two critiques: regarding Trump not focusing on affordability, I would say he is but not in ways Democrats would recognize. Removing illegal immigrants will bring down home prices if simple supply/demand economics is to be believed. Focusing on energy production has brought down gas prices which will reduce costs. And the tariff theory is that more manufacturing can be done in this country, bringing with it more jobs, higher wages and better economic stability and equality. Will these materialize? I’m not sure, but I think that’s the theory and we’ll see if things play out that way. That said, they’re longer-term market effects, not overnight policy wins. At some point they need to result in the benefits Trump is promising, obviously, but I think it needs more time to play out, personally.
I also was curious whether ‘no enemies to the left’ is a thing? For me, as an independent but more of a small government person, Mamdani and the rise of the DSA terrifies me. I equate socialism with Nazism, both are authoritarian governments that lead to death and destruction. I just don’t see how we’ve gotten to the point in this country that socialism is normalized and acceptable.
DSA is nothing to do with Nazis or authoritarian governments. Think the Nordic countries. Strong legal frameworks for capitalism and a similarly strong safety net. There is a reason these countries rank in the top five of happiest countries every year. :)
Those Nordic countries also have REALLY high taxes rates on the middle class. I don't see any evidence that Americans want to pay tax rates like that.
Moreover, those countries are fairly homogenous both racially and culturally which is important for building the trust that people won't take advantage of the system
If you look at your overall tax rate it's not that much higher and you actually get something. This country was great when we taxed the rich. They are the ones who used the cold war to convince America the new deal was bad and that if we gave them the money it would trickle down to everyone else. Now here we are back in the age of the robber barons. Time to take back our country from the people who would only plunder it. There is no need for trust of abuse when everyone gets the same benefits so the homogeneous doesn't matter. That is just another far right/billionaire talking point. They will do anything to not have to pay taxes.
Actually America has one of the most progressive tax structures. Those European countries all have high VAT's (consumption taxes).
Moreover, even though the top marginal rates have come down, the actual tax revenue has been remarkably steady around 17-18% of GDP
https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/united-states/tax-revenue--of-gdp
https://taxproject.org/marginal-tax-rates-timeline/
For example, the top 1% earn 26% of the income, but pay 46% of the taxes (and that's just federal it excludes state and local taxes)
https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-income-tax-data-2024/
They should pay most of the taxes when they have most of the money. If you look at the effective rate they pay less of their income than you. Our progressive rates that funded our Industrial Revolution and created the middle class were slashed for the myth of trickle down.
America’s Industrial Revolution was built when we had no income taxes and only tariff revenue. The high rates you are referring to were put in place during World War II and survived a couple of decades when we had the only large economy left intact after that war. We can’t recreate that era. (Either from the right or the left)
How many illegals immigrants do you really think are getting mortgages and buying homes?
The tariff strategy on manufacturing just doesn’t work. I’ve worked in solar for a decade, and we have had high tariffs on solar panels for 15 years. We only started manufacturing panels once the last admin passed manufacturing tax incentives, which led to tens of billions of dollars in investment in domestic manufacturing. Which this admin is trying to reverse and destroy with their anti-clean energy policies.
If you talk to anyone trying to manufacture locally, tariffs only hurt. Because even the manufacturing equipment and key components all come from abroad. This tariff approach (hardly a strategy) is haphazard, unscientific, and harmful to the economy, especially those struggling from inflation already.
My friends that live in the EU would disagree. I have one in Finland and he showed us his paystubs. My friend in Slovenia is horrified by how much we pay in taxes plus health care.
He’s not doing it in ways that pre-MAGA GOP would recognize either. There’s extremely little evidence that tariff will boost manufacturing, energy production is not a long term solution (and one which Biden was already on) and as someone else said, there’s not anywhere near enough undocumented immigrants in this country ( and Trump will not be able to remove anywhere near enough anyway) to significantly affect home prices. Which, of course, are affected by much more than just supply and demand from a home purchasing perspective.
Your comment is very polite and has a veneer of responsibility, but I fear you’re just one of those right wing “independents.”
I admire your restraint regarding not including Abundance as a mechanism so I will for you. The smartest thing the party would do is to merge affordability with reform. Show people you can learn from mistakes and then make sure you are constantly telling them how. Say how more houses are coming because you removed a useless layer of bureaucracy Give them clear time tables and updates on reforms and what they are going to bring. Dems have a real chance to bring about a new progressive era. The people are ready, but are they?
What you're suggesting is great, but it requires strong communication -- definitely not a strong suit for the Dems. The only way we get there is usher in a new era of Dem leaders that understand how to communicate. In other words, Schumer and many others have to go.
Currently I feel like many are not able to communicate because they’ve been paid to keep the status quo. I’ve been calling for a consultant class cleanse. Totally agree the current party is not capable of this. It’s kind of why we’re here
I don’t disagree on the politics. But this brings me back to issues I’ve had for a while: what do you do if the/a popular “solution” to voters’ problems isn’t a solution at all? And what if voters are just wrong about the world?
On the first question, take Mandani’s promise of rent control. Seems like that was popular! And why wouldn’t it be with the cost of apartments in NYC? Except, we have a mountains of empirical evidence that rent control RAISES rents overall.
On the second, it seems voters’ perception of the economy has, at least for a while, been unmoored from reality in many places. While I completely agree housing is a terrible anomaly of very important and having price growth wildly outstripping baseline inflation numbers, it’s an outlier.
Looking at the 2024 election timing, real incomes were up! Individual debt to gdp was down! Measures of household disposable income/savings were up! Unemployment rates were in a period of historic lows for a historically long stretch of time!
Now, it’s possible housing price rises are the colossus that overwhelms all of that. But even if I weren’t skeptical of that on its face, almost 70% of Americas own a home! So this massive problem is making 2/3rds of Americans richer!!!
There’s a million ways to continue making this point, but the best is probably something I know you’ve seen and cited: all the surveys where Americans say their finances are good but the economy is bad for everyone else anyway.
As a politician is the only thing to do about this to lie? To say, “I’ll fix this thing that largely isn’t broken!” And hope that everyone wakes up in the time you’re in power saying it?
92% of Americans own cars. But if the prevailing sentiment in the electorate was anger that “I actually don’t own a car and the government is preventing me from owning a car and I’m mad as hell!” I’m not sure what the honest move is (which is why I’d be a shit politician).
In the energy space, Virginia has an opportunity to demonstrate the confluence between energy affordability and climate by scaling up virtual power plants - the rooftop solar, batteries, and EVs loved by environmentalists made revenue-positive by the hefty power needs of AI data centers. Would love you to dive into this, Derek!
I agree that affordability is a great message. And while we've seen some small improvements in places, I've yet to see the needed changes to really drive down costs.
Because to do so you will need to gut local control, and also say no to unions, and other special interests that use red tape to protect themselves against competition.
Yes, affordability is a good message, an evergreen message. But especially with Mamdani, it will be an effective message to oust him next election, as his policies will not create broad affordability. If he is able to freeze the rent on current tenants, vacancies will dwindle and the price of new leases will soar. The only way to really lower prices is increase supply, and Democrats have shown little interest in that.
Anyone studying Marjorie Taylor Greene's heterodox turn who can provide an explanation how it fits with her worldview? She seems to have her finger on the pulse of elections maybe more than her brethren.
She’s an unprincipled grifter who seeks power and notoriety, much like Tucker Carlson. Rather than standing on principles she’s willing to tell the electorate what they want to get elected. She’s unwilling to have the tough conversations on government funding that principled conservatives care about and instead is a head-in-the-sand populist type who’ll promise her constituents justice and affordability, much like many progressive types. I’m not quite sure what MAGA is going to morph into over the next few years but whatever she’s selling I’m not buying.
She's looking to run for POTUS in 2028. And that means she has some image remediation to do. It's as simple as that.
What concerns me about Mamdani’s win is it shows the Democrats are still pushing far to the left, and now they will feel validated in doing so. Not great when that tendency has produced two Trump presidencies.
According to realclearpolling.com, an indispensable site that aggregates and averages the major polls, the president's approval rating was 44.8% last Thursday and 43.4% on Tuesday. That might not seem like a lot, but when you actually view the week-by-week chart front and center on the home page, you see what a nose-dive it is.
He picked a terrible week to go to war with SNAP funding because that had been the biggest story heading into election day. I don't know how big a difference that would have made on Tuesday, but it certainly didn't help.
Aggregates and averages -- uncritically with conservative bias.
Look at Trafalgar and Atlas polls for NJ/VA governor (which G Elliott Morris called out in his substack this week). I would look elsewhere for unbiased polling.
Thanks for the info. I'm always open to looking for new sources.
Morris substack is great and links out to other sources. Just to be clear Trafalgar and Atlas made some bad decisions in treatment of their polling results.
Largely agree. However, we tend to talk about 'affordability' in somewhat abstract terms with largely anecdotal data in support. In contrast our 'economic health' (i.e. how well capitalism is doing) is monitored in myriad ways together with large institutions in place (e.g. the Federal Reserve) to keep things humming. This latter effort has been very successful, though it has arguably had (perhaps inadvertent) adverse effects on affordability for a large portion of the population.
The first step in addressing this issue should be generating quantitative data on affordability at localities across the country. This would serve in two ways. One, it would highlight the issue in black and white terms at the local level thereby prompting action. Secondly, it would provide a metric to monitor the effects of policy changes.
It might sound like a difficult challenge to monitor affordability across the country, but it is already being done. There is a group at MIT (https://livingwage.mit.edu) that monitors 'living wage' at a great many sites across the country. I have absolutely no connection to this group, nor am I an expert in these measurements, however I am convinced that whatever shortcomings exist in their methodology could be addressed by a dedicated effort of the sort we make on measuring inflation, unemployment etc.
We always go back and forth in this country because basically all problems are out of our control. Trump couldn't lower prices, neither will any of the Democrats or antisemitic socialists.
So, Democrats, enjoy your sugar high. When reality strikes, people will vote against you.
I don’t doubt that affordability played a big role in the 2025 elections, but it seems very odd behavior to be very concerned about affordability and then vote for the party already in power. Affordability is largely due to bad government policy. Parties that keep winning elections have no incentive to change those policies.
At some point, voters are going to have to realize that the affordability issue is not going to change by repeatedly voting for the same party.
Wait… Did you just write about GOOD news? In POLITICS?!? I need to re-read this. You must have pulled some kind of sophistry; there’s no way something good actually happened.
Many party faithful--Dems and Repubs--love the purity tests. I wonder if our Puritan DNA is stronger than our Can-Do DNA. I'm encouraged by your article--that people are thinking more about the latter--their pocketbooks and their children's welfare.
Great campaign promise, hard to deliver on.