I don’t know man. I got this feeling like Han Solo turning back to Luke Skywalker after he shot down one Tie fighter, and saying “Great. Don’t get cocky, kid.”
Not so sure I'd shrug off the failure of California's billionaire tax as just another example of anti-tax rhetoric, since it was very deliberately designed not to be threatening to most voter's pocketbooks. It seems to complicate your assertion that the country is moving to the left on anti-rich politics.
Fair point. One reading of the California billionaire tax's apparent failure that ties both ideas together is: (1) Americans are frustrated that billionaires are behaving in corrupt and unaccountable ways, (2) they want this to be fixed by making life better for people like them in tangible ways, and (3) they aren't actually in favor of punitive "tax the rich" populism.
It's similar to the seemingly contradictory data on attitudes towards tech companies. Surveys regularly show 60-80% of Americans mistrusting tech companies in the abstract, but the approval ratings of specific companies whose products they regularly use rate very favorably: Amazon (75%), Apple (69%), Google (73%), and Microsoft (66%).
My takeaway is that Democratic politicians should be cautious about turning tech companies (including data centers) into a populist bogeyman - people's views on the subject are complex and often contradictory.
I don’t think that California’s billionaire tax failing is contradictory to the idea that America is moving to the left on anti-rich policies. One of the issues with any state-wide billionaire’s tax is the likely event this would cause billionaire’s to leave the state. For a wealth tax to be truly effective, it would have to be applied at a national level. I don’t have data to back this up, but I think there’s a decent number of people who opposed Prop 40 that would be in favor of a national, federal wealth tax. Additionally, California did vote to make a temporary tax on the top 2% of income earners permanent.
When it came to Prop 40 specifically, Democrats Xavier Becerra and Gavin Newsom both opposed it. The nature of it as a tax on assets, rather than income, made it harder to define how it would be enforced. It was unclear how assets that fluctuate in market value (ie stocks) would be assessed, similarly not clearly defined how it would be applied to illiquid assets (ie art, certain investments)
These results were 95% of a vote against the Trump corruption and the “let them eat cake” attitude that came over loud and clear from his cabinet and proxies. If the Democrats think that the country is broadly with them politically, they are setting themselves up for another Lucy football election In 2028.
Vance didn't repudiate Trumpism. He repudiated where Trump strayed from Trumpism. Not getting into a Middle East war was a key pillar to his platform, and on top of that the war exacerbated the inflation that killed his economic messaging. An economically populist, socially center-right platform could be electorally powerful (as it was in 2024). Economic Reaganism and neoconservatism are minority paths at this point.
There is a lot of potential alignment between the classic Trumpist agenda and the Abundance agenda. It could be the core of a bipartisan consensus.
Your post-Trump GOP take is fascinating to think about. To me, the neoconservative comeback is the only one that could build a coalition of voters that could win national elections, but previous autopsy reports did not send the GOP in that direction. I think a lot of those neoconservatives are centrist Abundance Democrats now. They may reconsider if far left Democrats can't keep a big tent or the Dems overall fail to govern with legit progress. And on the other side, no clue where MAGA folks go to find a new wildcard hero, but how much longer can the GOP really cater to these people if the data continues to support the "molten middle" of "loosely attached independent voters who can toggle from party to party?"
I am very curious what direction the GOP will take in a post-Trump era.
Like you said, Trump is very good at running for president. There's an "X factor" to him that can get low-propensity, disengaged voters to the polls solely to vote for him. There is something to these voters that seems to defy election polling and modeling in the years that he is on the ballot. I certainly don't think JD Vance has this charisma and draw to him, and I'm sure that the GOP knows this.
I just don't see the "glue" that will hold all these different sects of the GOP that you mapped out with Trump gone. I'm anticipating a period of warring factions within the party going into the 2028 presidential primaries. The biggest question for Republicans going forward is whether Trumpism can actually exist as a coherent political movement independent of Trump.
Great post, as always. I’d prefer not hear about personal projects (11. Abundance). I subscribe to you and a select few others on Substack to try to get takes that are agenda-less (or low agenda), which seems harder and harder to find. To get to the end of a great article with a call out to your book thesis (and indirectly your book) makes me wonder about the entire post. Still trust it and you, but doesn’t seem like the right place for that.
(I think a good friend of mine, Devin Coyle, taught tennis with you in the DC area twenty some odd years ago)
This is the dog wagging the tail, not the tail wagging the dog. Amazingly, you cannot tell the story of the 2026 midterms properly without talking about Abundance.
Respectfully, I subscribe here because I think Derek is great at what he does, which is writing (and podcasting) about important ideas, and abundance is by far his most significant contribution to the public sphere. I seriously doubt he's trying to sell more books - the economics pale in comparison to Substack. I wish he'd talk and write more about abundance, since it remains such a powerful movement, and I think many of us would love to hear him expand on it and engage with legitimate criticism.
I don’t know man. I got this feeling like Han Solo turning back to Luke Skywalker after he shot down one Tie fighter, and saying “Great. Don’t get cocky, kid.”
Not so sure I'd shrug off the failure of California's billionaire tax as just another example of anti-tax rhetoric, since it was very deliberately designed not to be threatening to most voter's pocketbooks. It seems to complicate your assertion that the country is moving to the left on anti-rich politics.
Fair point. One reading of the California billionaire tax's apparent failure that ties both ideas together is: (1) Americans are frustrated that billionaires are behaving in corrupt and unaccountable ways, (2) they want this to be fixed by making life better for people like them in tangible ways, and (3) they aren't actually in favor of punitive "tax the rich" populism.
It's similar to the seemingly contradictory data on attitudes towards tech companies. Surveys regularly show 60-80% of Americans mistrusting tech companies in the abstract, but the approval ratings of specific companies whose products they regularly use rate very favorably: Amazon (75%), Apple (69%), Google (73%), and Microsoft (66%).
My takeaway is that Democratic politicians should be cautious about turning tech companies (including data centers) into a populist bogeyman - people's views on the subject are complex and often contradictory.
I don’t think that California’s billionaire tax failing is contradictory to the idea that America is moving to the left on anti-rich policies. One of the issues with any state-wide billionaire’s tax is the likely event this would cause billionaire’s to leave the state. For a wealth tax to be truly effective, it would have to be applied at a national level. I don’t have data to back this up, but I think there’s a decent number of people who opposed Prop 40 that would be in favor of a national, federal wealth tax. Additionally, California did vote to make a temporary tax on the top 2% of income earners permanent.
When it came to Prop 40 specifically, Democrats Xavier Becerra and Gavin Newsom both opposed it. The nature of it as a tax on assets, rather than income, made it harder to define how it would be enforced. It was unclear how assets that fluctuate in market value (ie stocks) would be assessed, similarly not clearly defined how it would be applied to illiquid assets (ie art, certain investments)
These results were 95% of a vote against the Trump corruption and the “let them eat cake” attitude that came over loud and clear from his cabinet and proxies. If the Democrats think that the country is broadly with them politically, they are setting themselves up for another Lucy football election In 2028.
Vance didn't repudiate Trumpism. He repudiated where Trump strayed from Trumpism. Not getting into a Middle East war was a key pillar to his platform, and on top of that the war exacerbated the inflation that killed his economic messaging. An economically populist, socially center-right platform could be electorally powerful (as it was in 2024). Economic Reaganism and neoconservatism are minority paths at this point.
There is a lot of potential alignment between the classic Trumpist agenda and the Abundance agenda. It could be the core of a bipartisan consensus.
Your post-Trump GOP take is fascinating to think about. To me, the neoconservative comeback is the only one that could build a coalition of voters that could win national elections, but previous autopsy reports did not send the GOP in that direction. I think a lot of those neoconservatives are centrist Abundance Democrats now. They may reconsider if far left Democrats can't keep a big tent or the Dems overall fail to govern with legit progress. And on the other side, no clue where MAGA folks go to find a new wildcard hero, but how much longer can the GOP really cater to these people if the data continues to support the "molten middle" of "loosely attached independent voters who can toggle from party to party?"
I am very curious what direction the GOP will take in a post-Trump era.
Like you said, Trump is very good at running for president. There's an "X factor" to him that can get low-propensity, disengaged voters to the polls solely to vote for him. There is something to these voters that seems to defy election polling and modeling in the years that he is on the ballot. I certainly don't think JD Vance has this charisma and draw to him, and I'm sure that the GOP knows this.
I just don't see the "glue" that will hold all these different sects of the GOP that you mapped out with Trump gone. I'm anticipating a period of warring factions within the party going into the 2028 presidential primaries. The biggest question for Republicans going forward is whether Trumpism can actually exist as a coherent political movement independent of Trump.
Mamdani may want more housing, but rent freezes are not the way to get there.
Great post, as always. I’d prefer not hear about personal projects (11. Abundance). I subscribe to you and a select few others on Substack to try to get takes that are agenda-less (or low agenda), which seems harder and harder to find. To get to the end of a great article with a call out to your book thesis (and indirectly your book) makes me wonder about the entire post. Still trust it and you, but doesn’t seem like the right place for that.
(I think a good friend of mine, Devin Coyle, taught tennis with you in the DC area twenty some odd years ago)
Derek has been writing about Abundance since 2022 (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/scarcity-crisis-college-housing-health-care/621221/)
This is the dog wagging the tail, not the tail wagging the dog. Amazingly, you cannot tell the story of the 2026 midterms properly without talking about Abundance.
Respectfully, I subscribe here because I think Derek is great at what he does, which is writing (and podcasting) about important ideas, and abundance is by far his most significant contribution to the public sphere. I seriously doubt he's trying to sell more books - the economics pale in comparison to Substack. I wish he'd talk and write more about abundance, since it remains such a powerful movement, and I think many of us would love to hear him expand on it and engage with legitimate criticism.
I agree he is great at what he does