Noah Smith’s most recent Substack is a lament. Noting that Democrats’ approval rating is the lowest ever he declaims:
But beginning in the mid-2010s, I began to understand that my political “side” had evolved beyond the goals and beliefs of the late 20th century.
Like many liberals of the old school, I watched with concern as the quest to end discrimination against Black Americans evolved into a desire to institutionalize discrimination against White Americans in universities, nonprofits, government agencies, and many corporations — something the liberals of the 1990s swore they would never countenance. I felt uneasy as the desire to expand the welfare state and universalize health care morphed into endless deficit-funded subsidies for overpriced service industries. I watched as the gay rights movement gave way to a trans movement that was deeply out of step with both America’s beliefs and civil rights law.
I watched, too, as “progressive” governance hollowed out the great American metropolises whose revitalization had been one of the quiet triumphs of late 20th century liberalism. A small anecdote illustrates this. Recently, a homeless man attacked and blinded an elderly woman in Seattle. Despite dozens of violent arrests, this man had been allowed to live on the streets of the city, attacking passers-by. A cop on the scene told reporters that “He’s a regular…he usually punches.”
“He usually punches”??? How has progressive governance allowed the people of America’s greatest cities to live like this? After decades of mass incarceration, a loose alliance of progressive DAs, judges, and anti-police protesters shifted blue cities toward far more permissive policies toward property crime, public drug markets, and low-level assaults and harassment. The progressivism that emerged in the 2010s seems to view anarchy as a form of welfare, believing that the best way to help the poor and unfortunate was to allow the worst and most violent among them to terrorize the rest of them without restraint or reprisal.
And at the same time, progressive governance threw billions of dollars at unaccountable and sometimes fraudulent NGOs, allowing state capacity to degrade. Blue states spent lavishly on infrastructure projects that created many jobs but created little actual infrastructure. Environmental mandates in California built less solar and wind power than simply liberalizing land use regulation in Texas. Blue cities failed to build housing, choosing instead to embrace the progressive myth that new construction fuels “gentrification”.
As I have observed, most of today’s progressives aren’t progressive. The greatest likelihoods are that they are trying to use the levers of government to gain wealth and power or trying to obtain an undeserved handout we can’t afford. The evils to which he refers are not overreaches. They are the realization of stated objectives coupled with institutional realities. It can’t be rectified by continuing to vote for the same self-dealers but you have already decided they constitute the lesser evil.
Even though the democrat party’s approval rate has slumped to a low
level, they continue to win special elections, and are favored to take over the House after the midterm elections. This mystifies me….I wonder what does the average voter base their vote on? Are they that comfortable with street lawlessness becoming a common occurrence — randomly punching, pushing, stabbing people? Do they approve of having a governor like Walz presiding over enormous amounts of state fraud, with little outrage expressed from dem leaders? Did they think open borders under Biden strengthened this country? Do they like having our elections lose safeguards protecting them from the fraudulent processing of legal votes? Where does the democrat party have any limit lines remaining dealing with recasting genders of children, reverse racism towards whites, insuring only legal citizens vote in federal elections, or women sports isn’t compromised by men? There have been so many cultural traits and trademarks —-freedom of speech, property rights, —— making this country more unique and appealing from others, that are being challenged, changed or erased by the policies of the dem party. This has led to the recent election of Mamdani – a democrat socialist — to govern one of our most iconic cities, NYC. How many more Mamdani’s will there be who take over our already collapsing big blue cities?
Violent crime in Seattle, as in most American cities, is much lower than it was in the 1980s, and has been dropping from the pandemic high.
jan: How many more Mamdani’s will there be who take over our already collapsing big blue cities?
Most of your positions are based on exaggerations, allegations that you accept without any sort of skepticism; but even granting them, Trump has consolidated power into the executive that threatens the foundation of republican government. That’s reason enough to oppose him and the politicians that support him.