Noah Smith On The Vibe Shift

My values haven’t become more conservative — my desire for a more economically egalitarian and socially tolerant society has not diminished an iota. You won’t see me bellowing “I didn’t leave my party, my party left ME!!” and storming over to the GOP in a huff. But I have to say that I now doubt the practical effectiveness of some of the policies I embraced in previous years. Others still seem like good ideas, but I’ve been dismayed at their botched implementation where they were tried. And many progressive ideas simply don’t seem like they’ll be able to win majority political support in the near future. It’s looking more and more likely that America is headed for a more conservative decade.

I’m not the only person to have noticed the shift. Dave Weigel recently wrote a post detailing all the ways that Kamala Harris’ campaign is to the right of Biden’s 2020 run, both in terms of tone and rhetoric and in terms of actual policy. Harris and other Dems have touted their tough stances on the border, abandoned big new spending programs, stopped talking about a public option for health insurance, trumpeted their support for Israel, embraced oil drilling, and gone tough on crime. Harris’ policy agenda includes plenty of pro-business and deregulatory ideas. She even brags about owning a gun and being willing to shoot intruders.

Here is the full post.  And this,  from later on, past the gate:

The sheer range of issues where progressivism seems adrift and directionless leaves me pensive and morose. I believe in the power of wonky technocrats to implement incremental policy tweaks to accelerate the energy transition, fix the immigration system, and make police more effective and less violent. But what’s left to fight for? Other than defending America against the depredations of Trump and the right, what big political goal can mobilize the masses to get out there and vote for left-of-center politicians?

I do see two big bright spots here. The first is industrial policy, which promises not just to restore American manufacturing, but to revitalize whole areas of the country. The second is the abundance agenda and YIMBYism, which promises to provide cheap housing, energy, and transportation for all.

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