In much of SF, you can’t walk 20 feet without seeing a sign declaring that Black lives matter and no human being is illegal. Those signs sit in yards zoned for single families, in communities that organize against the new housing that would bring those values closer to reality.
Poorer families — disproportionately nonwhite and immigrant — are pushed into long commutes, overcrowded housing and homelessness. Those inequalities have turned deadly during the pandemic.

And it's not just SF:
"What we see at times is people with a Bernie Sanders sign and a ‘Black Lives Matter’ sign in their window, but they’re opposing an affordable housing project or an apartment complex down the street," @Scott_Wiener told me.
There is a danger — not just in California, but everywhere — that politics becomes an aesthetic rather than a program.

It’s a danger on the right, where Donald Trump modeled a presidency that cared more about retweets and owning the libs than passing bills.
It’s also a danger on the left, where the symbols of progressivism are often preferred to the sacrifices and risks those ideals demand.
California, as the biggest state in the nation, and one where Democrats hold total control of the government, carries a special burden. If progressivism cannot work here, why should the country believe it can work anywhere else?

More here: nytimes.com/2021/02/11/opi…
One thing I do want to draw out, though. This isn't all just a question of public opinion. As I argue in the piece, old governance structures and misused laws end up empowering organized incumbents over everyone else.
I remember sitting in an SF city meeting, watching a long line of people testify against a 5G tower. Most people in the community didn't care about the 5G tower, so they didn't show up. That happens on everything. When those meetings have a lot of power, paralysis results.
I'm writing about CA, because it's where I live. But this is a much broader problem. This piece on why New York keeps failing to fix Penn Station is one of the best pieces of the last few years, and a window into the split soul of progressive governance. politico.com/news/magazine/…

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More from @ezraklein

11 Feb
So I'd recommend reading this thread from Dave, but I thought about some of these policies, and how they fit into the whole, a lot, and want to offer a different interpretation.
I think California is world leading on progressivism that doesn't ask anyone to give anything up, or accept any major change, right now.

That's what I mean by symbolically progressive, operationally conservative.
Take the 100% renewable energy standard. As @leahstokes has written, these policies often fail in practice. I note our leadership on renewable energy in the piece, but the kind of politics we see on housing and transportation are going foil that if they don't change.
Read 13 tweets
9 Feb
So I've been reporting a story about how you'd fix the impeachment process. It doesn't work for removal, as currently designed. Impeachment was built for a political system without parties. It fails in a system with polarized parties.
The one time it functioned as intended, confusingly, was the time it didn't happen: Richard Nixon wasn't impeached! But the impeachment process, which came at the low ebb of party polarization in American history, convinced his party to force him to resign.
Would Republicans force Nixon to resign today?

Oh, you're cute. Thank you. I needed that.
Read 13 tweets
9 Feb
Wait, am I reading @kdrum's mind or is he reading mine? At any rate, this is pretty close to my thinking on the political path, and to the long-term scenario I fear. jabberwocking.com/in-2040-we-wil…
I'd only add — and this is something I took from "The Ministry For The Future" — that it's a mistake to extrapolate our current level of political apathy too far forward. At some point, some set of calamities will sharply change the reaction in specific countries.
Geoengineering is one possible response, including countries going it alone. But so too is largescale eco-violence, either by state or non-state actors. And I'm persuaded that there could be financial crises to come, that would also change the politics here in unpredictable ways.
Read 6 tweets
5 Feb
So putting aside the question of whether Matt is uncivil on Twitter (he often is, he admits it), I want to say this is a mean and uncivil way to think about how other people live their lives and make their decisions. aei.org/poverty-studie…
This idea that it's too cushy to be unemployed, or to be a single parent — or would be too cushy if we passed a child allowance so those families wouldn't live in poverty — is just awful. Dressing it up in technocratic language doesn't change that.

"Incentives matter." Ugh.
I believe "incentives matter," on the margin. But life circumstances matter more. Luck matters more.

I believe children shouldn't grow up in poverty. Every estimate we have suggests this policy would mean far fewer of them do. Scott doesn't have a credible estimate otherwise.
Read 13 tweets
5 Feb
“I don’t think conservatism can do its job in a free society in opposition to the institutions of that society,” Yuval Levin told me. “I think it can only function in defense of them.”

You can listen to — or read — our whole conversation here: nytimes.com/2021/02/05/opi…
One thing I'd pull out: A lot of our conversation is about the weakness of Republicans institutions.

When I brought this up, Levin responded that a reason Republicans have fled a lot of mainstream institutions is they've become more liberal.
Causality there is complicated, and we go back and forth on it in the full conversation. But even if you buy that explanation completely, it doesn't explain away the problem.
Read 6 tweets
5 Feb
Good thread by Matt. I’d just add that it’s bizarre to watch smart people treat the size of this package as some kind of math error. This is not just a package to close the output gap. It’s not 2009, economically or politically (and we failed in 2009 by going too small then!)
The point of the Build Back Better frame, which the Biden team has hardly been shy about, is coronavirus has shone light on savage, preexisting inequities in our society, and a moral response to this crisis requires addressing them too.
That will make the package bigger than the output gap because it is trying to do much more than close the output gap. And properly so.
Read 6 tweets

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