The Democratic Base Has Gotten More Progressive— But Elected Democratic Leaders, Not So Much

Bonus: The American Housing Crisis

Yesterday, Gallup’s Justin McCarthy reported that Americans— especially Democrats— have gotten more progressive in their views. Good— but… there are a couple of very real problems here that need to be dealt with seriously:

• Liberal on social issues, conservative on economic issues

• The Democratic base has moved left, while the party leadership hasn’t (not at all)

• Outside funding in primaries is skewering the congressional Democrats towards the right

McCarthy wrote that “Americans have become significantly more likely to identify as liberal in their views on social issues over the past quarter century. In most annual measures since 2015, they have been about equally likely to express having liberal views [33%] as moderate [32%] and conservative [32%] ones— reflecting a shift from Gallup’s earliest measures, when liberal perspectives on social issues were a firmly minority viewpoint. Meanwhile, Americans still lean conservative on economic issues, but the percentage leaning liberal has been trending up slightly. Both trends toward more liberal views than in the past are driven by U.S. Democrats; neither Republicans nor independents have become more liberal in their views over time. These trends on social and economic views are separate from the slight long-term increase in Americans’ description of their political views, broadly, as liberal.”

The obvious problem here is that as wonderful as it is that people have loosened up about marijuana, abortion, LGBTQ equality and other social justice issues, economic issues are inexorably intertwined with social justice and economic inequality deepens social disparities, making it impossible to move towards true equity without addressing both realms. The focus on social liberalism, while essential, has to be complemented by a robust push for economic justice, including progressive taxation, universal healthcare, and stronger labor rights. And that’s where conservatives big in— not just the GOP, but conservative elites inside the Democratic Party. You know who I mean, non-racists who have no problem with gays marrying each other but oppose, for example, rent control (see Silicon Valley fake progressive Assemblyman and congressional candidate Evan Low) or progressive taxation, which means higher taxes on the very wealthy and fewer loopholes for them.

While the Democratic Party base is increasingly progressive, advocating for significant economic reforms, the party leadership— which is much wealthier and tends to not  come from the working class— lags way behind, adhering to centrist policies that fail to address systemic inequalities, while pursuing campaign contributions from corrupt special interests that further turn them away from the interests of working families.

This disparity causes disillusionment among progressive voters, weakening the Democratic Party’s ability to mobilize its base. States like Ohio and Florida, for example, now basically don’t even have functioning Democratic parties outside of a few blue ghettos. If they want to harness the growing liberal sentiment— and many would rather tamp it down than harness it— Democratic leaders need to embrace more progressive economic policies that resonate with their increasingly left-leaning constituents. And that’s not going to happen when congressional Democrats keep electing captives of corporate special interests as leaders.

It’s great that McCarthy can report that “Despite some fluctuation over time, liberal identification on social issues has gradually increased, while conservative and moderate identification has each gradually decreased slightly.” But he also reports that “Americans are currently most likely to describe their views on economic issues as conservative (39%) or moderate (35%), while about a quarter describe their economic views as liberal (23%).” Despite the Democratic Party leadership, for progressives, economic justice must be a central focus of the left-wing agenda—  advocating for policies that address income inequality, corporate power and workers' rights, alongside the ongoing struggle for social justice. And we need Democratic leaders who align more closely with the base.

McCarthy also noted that “Republicans have become more conservative on social and especially economic issues. They are somewhat less moderate than in the past on social issues and are half as likely now as in 2004 to express moderate views on the economy. As was the case in 2004, few Republicans identify as liberal on either kind of issue.” That will drive younger voters away from the GOP, a good thing, especially when the Democratic Party isn’t doing much that will proactively attract younger voters.

Let’s take housing, one of the worst problems we have as a society. Yesterday, Rogé Karma wrote that “If the United States’ economy were an athlete, right now it would be peak LeBron James. If it were a pop star, it would be peak Taylor Swift. Four years ago, the pandemic temporarily brought much of the world economy to a halt. Since then, America’s economic performance has left other countries in the dust and even broken some of its own records. The growth rate is high, the unemployment rate is at historic lows, household wealth is surging, and wages are rising faster than costs, especially for the working class. There are many ways to define a good economy. America is in tremendous shape according to just about any of them. The American public doesn’t feel that way— a dynamic that many people, including me, have recently tried to explain. But if, instead of asking how people feel about the economy, we ask how it’s objectively performing, we get a very different answer… Perhaps the right question to ask is: Are most Americans better off financially than they were before the pandemic?”

One school of thought maintains that the answer is no, because of the rising cost of living. Thanks to three years of higher-than-usual inflation, just about everything costs more than it did before the pandemic.

…[T]he out-of-control cost of housing is perhaps the biggest black mark on an otherwise excellent economy. This problem started decades ago— since the 1980s, the median U.S. home price has increased by more than 400 percent, twice as fast as incomes— and got even worse during the pandemic, as the rise of remote work prompted millions of people to seek more space. Those rising prices have collided with higher interest rates to produce the most punishing housing market in at least a generation. Would-be homeowners can’t afford to buy, and many existing homeowners feel stuck in place.

Housing is one of several crucial categories, along with childcare, health care, and higher education, that have ballooned in cost in recent decades, putting a middle-class lifestyle further and further out of reach— what my colleague Annie Lowrey has called the “Great Affordability Crisis.” The past few years of high interest rates, which make borrowing money more expensive, have jacked up costs even more. And despite the recent good news, the U.S. still has lower life expectancy and much higher levels of inequality, poverty, and homelessness than other wealthy nations. For millions of people, getting by in America was a struggle before the pandemic and continues to be a struggle today.

As Zach Carter noted on Monday housing is the real problem that’s holding Biden’s polling numbers down. “Housing,” he wrote, “has been unusually expensive since the pandemic due to two mass moving events— city people running to the country, then running back to the city— after a decade of underconstruction. Housing is not only the single largest expense for most families, it’s tied to other big-picture family concerns— commutes, school quality, parks, crime— which I suspect most people ultimately care more about than the price of groceries, even though nobody likes paying more for eggs. People don’t talk about it much anymore, but the pandemic was rough, and it was in full swing across Biden’s first year in office. One million Americans died in the first few waves, and a lot of things in the post-pandemic era still don’t really work. Millions of students still haven’t recovered from pandemic-era learning loss. It takes forever to see a doctor. Whole neighborhoods get drawn into oddball conflicts. The last two cold and flu seasons were so horrendous that there were national shortages of children’s Tylenol and children’s Motrin. One thing people like to do after a bad stretch is start over. And if you can’t afford to move, you can’t afford a fresh start, even if wage growth is steadily improving your purchasing power. Voters may be wrong about the economy, but it’s hard to blame them for wanting a new beginning.”

And that brings us to a story in Saturday’s NY Times by Francesca Mari, How An American Dream of Housing Became a Reality in Sweden. Modular construction— prefab housing was once seen as the answer, but as the U.S. abandoned the idea, Sweden picked up on it. Mari noted that “In 1969, when Operation Breakthrough was announced, HUD was less than four years old and affordable housing was still a bipartisan issue. The plan’s visionary, HUD Secretary George Romney, a former Republican governor and Nixon appointee (and, yes, Mitt’s father) pitched it as Economics 101: If you quickly increase the supply of housing, you drive down the price for all. Romney said the country needed to build 26 million houses in 10 years, almost three times as many as had been built in the previous 10. Industrializing construction, he argued, was the only way to do it.”

While nearly every other industry has become more productive since 1968, productivity in home-building— the amount of work done by one worker in one hour, essentially— has declined by half. The country is barely building enough to maintain the status quo, which is some four million units short of need, according to Freddie Mac. In the coming years, with population growth, climate change and the natural deterioration of housing stock, we’ll only need more.

Housing shortages were already a problem in 1969. Romney understood that companies wouldn’t invest in the machinery and overhead needed to industrialize because varied local building and zoning codes made it impossible to scale up. Operation Breakthrough proposed using the vast purchasing power of the federal government to guarantee a large market, and in the process, document and change the regulatory barriers to industrialization.

Operation Breakthrough selected nine sites around the country. Among its factory-built experiments was housing for the elderly in Kalamazoo, Mich., and owner-occupied co-ops on a lake in Macon, Ga. The program created public housing in Memphis and 58 townhouses in downtown Seattle for renters with housing vouchers. But in 1976, Congress decided that the program was too costly and that HUD shouldn’t be doing demonstration projects. Less than a decade after it was announced, Operation Breakthrough was dead.

…While Operation Breakthrough made little impact in the United States, it radically influenced other countries. Japan sent a delegation to tour the Operation Breakthrough construction sites and to study its reports: Nearly all construction in Japan now is industrialized and 15 percent of homes are prefabricated in steel. In Sweden, 45 percent of construction is industrialized. Builders there also erect tall structures with wood, the preferred housing material in the United States, and the one that’s most climate friendly.

…[T]he most remarkable difference between the United States and Sweden is regulatory. Building codes in the U.S. try to make buildings safe by prescribing exactly what materials must be used and how (a prescriptive code). In Sweden, the government does this by setting goals and letting builders come up with a way to achieve them (a performance code).

So, for instance, U.S. building codes dictate the thickness of drywall that must be used for fire resistance, how many layers are needed and how many nails are required to attach it. In Sweden, the code requires that a wall must resist burning for two hours, say, and lets engineers and manufacturers figure out how to accomplish that. The regulator’s job is to check the engineer’s work.

The result of both is fire resistance and structural safety, but in the United States, each residential building needs to be granted a permit. During construction, work often halts for inspectors to make periodic visual inspections. That contributes to a stop-and-go pace that frustrates pretty much everybody except lenders, who get interest on financing. Sweden’s codes require more work on the front end when builders have to demonstrate that their methods are up to snuff, but factory processes that comply with the performance code can be certified. This encourages innovative solutions and results in less waste.

Building quality homes, whether on-site or off-site, will never be cheap. You don’t want to scrimp on materials or labor, and the savings of factory-built homes might not be obvious at the start…

With factory-built houses, modifications are minimized because customers generally select from a standardized framework and changes are allowed only up to a certain point. The factory builder’s advantage is quality control and speed. Real profit, long-term profit, comes from streamlining the building system for predictable outcomes and fast delivery.

…Rupnik [an architect] was more interested in the productivity part of the industrialized housing equation than the affordability part. This had confused me. But after spending time in Sweden talking to modular manufacturers, architects, government officials and leaders in the timber industry, I started to see the connection. Productivity means more permanent homes for more people, faster. Speed secures perhaps the greatest long-term savings— preventing the trauma of homelessness and offering security, community, continuous enrollment at the same school. It had been lulling to see the beautiful Swedish modular housing, but America is where I saw the real potential of even imperfectly designed modular housing.

Speed is how industrialization achieves affordability. Even when the labor and material cost savings are modest, the introduction of many more units in a relatively short period of time has the effect of lowering the market price of all units. That was Operation Breakthrough’s objective and MOD X’s main takeaway.

Rupnik is finishing his report for the Department of Housing and Urban Development and preparing for the next phase of MOD X’s HUD research, which involves dissecting the regulatory barriers to off-site construction in six pilot regions. He has been struck by how well the theories underpinning Operation Breakthrough have held up. It also frustrates him. Had attention been paid 50 years ago, housing in the United States might look very different today. Maybe architects would be designing more beautiful factory-built housing. Maybe prescriptive codes that stifle innovation would have been ameliorated. Maybe, Rupnik says, affordable housing would not be so hard to come by. House-building as it’s done now limits the range of what builders are willing to produce: Lower-priced housing isn’t as profitable and so, lower-income people suffer.

The only way to move forward, Rupnik believes, is to return to the ambition of Operation Breakthrough and unleash the power of industrialization. As he told me: “We really have run out of alternatives.”