I think pretty clearly what we're seeing in the precinct data is that inflation hit lower income communities much harder. Voters are a lot of infuriating things, but they aren't stupid. Most get that local politicians have more responsibility over crime in their neighborhoods and national politicians have more to do with the price of eggs. It's pretty hard to deconvolve the multifactorial nature of all of this. Like, there's the "Kamala is a cop" wrinkle.
My own take based solely on vibes synthesis is that inflation is the top line story, concerns about crime* are a distant second and culture war stuff is an extremely distant third. And the culture war problem seems to be less about "I don't want trans people to have rights" and more about "The impenetrable/preachy language of sociology departments makes me think Democrats don't like people who talk like me"
* I lump immigration into the crime category, because that's been pretty well fear mongered into being one and the same.
But tied in with inflation is Ezra's main concern. I think this is being overly simplified as "Democrats have failed to govern cities well". The culpability is much broader but the problem is more specific: All political leadership in successful urban areas going back to the 1960s has failed to plan for and accommodate a growing population on already built out geographies. This has meant that economic gains in these areas have redounded disproportionately to the landed gentry. It's gotten bad enough in recent years that many people are running the cost benefit of living in these areas and deciding to leave. What Ezra is absolutely right about is that if you're a resistance liberal in one of these high cost urban areas and you aren't focused on solving the affordability crisis, you have been helping Donald Trump.
I think this is mostly right and obviously I'm not going to argue about lack of housing production being a huge problem, but I think there's a little wishcasting going on when people like me who hold this as a priority issue assume that it had a profound influence on how people voted for president, even subconsciously. Racial and income groups voted similarly across urban/suburban/rural areas -- the shifts were a bit bigger in the urban cores, but not much. The price of groceries could be an explanatory factor everywhere, but the price of housing is harder to universalize as an issue.
I also agree immigration played a huge role everywhere but I'm less sure whether it falls into the economic, crime, or culture war concern categories. That maybe depends on who you are or where you live.
Yeah. Its very hard because its all of the things! Made even harder by the fact that to get a message into anyone's earholes you have to do a triple bank shot through a billion different media bubbles shaped by algos controlled by Z-Pain and the CCP and hope that some random dude bro with 300k followers doesn't think you're full of shit.
I don't really know what to do other than to double down on civil society and keep pushing CA politicians to back policy that helps bring our economy into a healthier balance.
Everyone else has said nice things about the more "substantive" parts of this NL but I want to thank you for writing about the smog. I woke up that day and saw how hazy it was outside and the alerts on my phone and was weirded out that the LATimes didn't have even a short blurb about it -- "oh, local medial really is cooked, huh" was my initial thought.
Good headline. You got me!
I think pretty clearly what we're seeing in the precinct data is that inflation hit lower income communities much harder. Voters are a lot of infuriating things, but they aren't stupid. Most get that local politicians have more responsibility over crime in their neighborhoods and national politicians have more to do with the price of eggs. It's pretty hard to deconvolve the multifactorial nature of all of this. Like, there's the "Kamala is a cop" wrinkle.
My own take based solely on vibes synthesis is that inflation is the top line story, concerns about crime* are a distant second and culture war stuff is an extremely distant third. And the culture war problem seems to be less about "I don't want trans people to have rights" and more about "The impenetrable/preachy language of sociology departments makes me think Democrats don't like people who talk like me"
* I lump immigration into the crime category, because that's been pretty well fear mongered into being one and the same.
But tied in with inflation is Ezra's main concern. I think this is being overly simplified as "Democrats have failed to govern cities well". The culpability is much broader but the problem is more specific: All political leadership in successful urban areas going back to the 1960s has failed to plan for and accommodate a growing population on already built out geographies. This has meant that economic gains in these areas have redounded disproportionately to the landed gentry. It's gotten bad enough in recent years that many people are running the cost benefit of living in these areas and deciding to leave. What Ezra is absolutely right about is that if you're a resistance liberal in one of these high cost urban areas and you aren't focused on solving the affordability crisis, you have been helping Donald Trump.
I think this is mostly right and obviously I'm not going to argue about lack of housing production being a huge problem, but I think there's a little wishcasting going on when people like me who hold this as a priority issue assume that it had a profound influence on how people voted for president, even subconsciously. Racial and income groups voted similarly across urban/suburban/rural areas -- the shifts were a bit bigger in the urban cores, but not much. The price of groceries could be an explanatory factor everywhere, but the price of housing is harder to universalize as an issue.
I also agree immigration played a huge role everywhere but I'm less sure whether it falls into the economic, crime, or culture war concern categories. That maybe depends on who you are or where you live.
Yeah. Its very hard because its all of the things! Made even harder by the fact that to get a message into anyone's earholes you have to do a triple bank shot through a billion different media bubbles shaped by algos controlled by Z-Pain and the CCP and hope that some random dude bro with 300k followers doesn't think you're full of shit.
I don't really know what to do other than to double down on civil society and keep pushing CA politicians to back policy that helps bring our economy into a healthier balance.
Thanks for writing about LA!
"you risk delivering your insightful commentary to an empty convention center" is such a blight on our political discourse.
This is all also validated by broader political science analyses: https://goodauthority.org/news/local-politics-2024-presidential-election-cities-urban-voters/
all bangers no skips newsletter, Hayes!
Everyone else has said nice things about the more "substantive" parts of this NL but I want to thank you for writing about the smog. I woke up that day and saw how hazy it was outside and the alerts on my phone and was weirded out that the LATimes didn't have even a short blurb about it -- "oh, local medial really is cooked, huh" was my initial thought.