Democrats' War of the Five Kings

YIMBYs are coming...

Dec 14, 2024

The Democrats lost the election; the Republicans have birthed a new coalition. Times are changing. Tyler Cowen wrote that “The ‘Trumpian Right,’ whether you agree with it or not, has been more intellectually alive and vital than the Progressive Left… Being fully on the outs, [they] were more free to be creative.” But the Democratic party is far from a homogenous entity, and with the end of an era comes the beginning of a new one. In the intervening period, swords will be sharpened, and keyboards will be furiously typed. Major players and coalitions are vying for control, duking it out in the cultural, political, and philosophical spheres of American life. Who will sway voters, who will shake the right hands? What issues will matter, and who will have the answers? Above all, who has a plan to beat the Republican coalition?

This post was partly inspired by Ex Ante’s post, A Very Brief Introduction to the New Right, which explores the right wing in a similar manner. That post is highly recommended for looking down at the full landscape of ideas. But without further ado, here are the big five from the left wing.

THE YIMBYS

Policy wonks have never been cooler. The vanguard of this economic coalition is gallantly led by its leaders, the Prince of Pop Econ, Noah Smith, and the modern-day Zarathustra for urbanite YIMBYs, Matthew Yglesias. This movement has momentum, it has anthems, and it has enemies. Indeed, to know their enemies is more illuminating than their allies. First are of course the NIMBYs, who need no introduction. Adding to this are zealous regulators, the old guard of stagnation and inefficiency. Their main foil looms large in the discourse: elite human capital obsessed with zero-sum redistribution, discussed as the ‘Antis’ group below. These are the people focused on dividing the pie, not wanting to grow it. Collectively, these people have locked the flour and sugar behind red tape, and overregulated the oven to ruinous inefficiency. The abundance movement senses the urgency, and is intent on getting cooking.

This movement is soberly pragmatic, yet prone to excited bouts of optimism. We’re admittedly part of this movement ourselves. It’s hard not to be attracted by its seductive economic arguments, and awesome techno-optimism. Why wouldn’t we want to lower the price of housing for everybody? Go to the Moon and Mars? Deregulate the aviation and sausage-making industries? Many of them oppose identity politics and question the centrality of wokism, confused as to why so many obsess over grievance bean counting when they could embrace abundance for all. This sets them squarely against the Antis, and often brings them to blows with the Blob.

This is a movement for visionaries armed with Our World in Data graphs, pragmatists who see technology as the best means to human happiness, and idealists who refuse to let regulation strangle humanity’s potential.

The Choir:

Matthew Yglesias: The Politics of Abundance

Noah Smith: Degrowth: We can't let it happen here!

James Pethokoukis: Forget About Left Wing and Right Wing. How About an Up Wing America?

Outrageous Fortune: A Vitalist Vision for Democrats

Matthew Yglesias: The two kinds of progressives

Noah Smith: The Build-Nothing Country

Construction Physics: How California Turned Against Growth

THE STOCKING STUFFERS

For YIMBYs economic policy is about solving the growth maximization problem, with justice concerns as an important side constraint. For the Stuffers, economic policy is an injustice minimization problem, and growth is often viewed as a natural by-product of solving the problem, not a constraint on which policies to select.

You have a positive right to healthcare, to employment, to higher education, and to a certain level of material equality with your fellow man. This faction has strong egalitarian impulses and includes social-democrats and democratic-socialists more inclined towards electoralism and governance than with ‘the struggle’. Some of them believe that ditching those elements of their movement would even unlock a path to a populist urban-rural electoral juggernaut of a coalition.

Though the YIMBYs are ascending, the past eight years of Democratic economic policy has unquestionably been shaped in response to the forceful arguments of this faction, and many of the president’s staffers who helped to set the White House’s policy agenda would count themselves among its members.

Bernie’s Bag:

Joseph Heath: John Rawls and the Death of Western Marxism

Bernie Sanders: Campaign Issues

Freddie deBoer: Why Government Intervention in Healthcare is Necessary (and Inevitable)

Kyle Kulinski: Would Medicare for All Actually Save Us Money?

Simon Sarris: Why Basic Jobs Are Better Than Basic Incomes

THE BLOB

What is the Blob? This is the pragmatic machine most finely attuned to the idiosyncratic views of the left-leaning public. It includes both your power brokers—Nancy Pelosi, Schumer, Jeffries, etc.—and a class of cultural interpreters: the Maddows, Stewart-Colberts, Timothy Snyders, Legal Eagles, and NYT editorial board; all of whom have mastered the art of riding mainstream currents while appearing to help guide them.

If there is a touchstone that connects the growth-YIMBYs to the free-stuffers and occasionally to the Antis, it belongs to the Blob. Nobody in this group is outwardly driven by ideological concerns, but rather a fierce opposition to wrong-headedness coming out of the right. All Democratic factions embrace this.

However, the nature of the Blob means that it has also perpetuated ideas that are broadly popular but not articulated by any of the major factions. Safetyism enjoys no cachet with the YIMBYs, Antis, or free-stuffers; indeed it often annoys the more serious among them. However, it is subconsciously popular with the silent majority of Democrats that constitute the Blob, and has worked its way into policy over decades. Identitarianism, as embodied in job trainings and land acknowledgements, is also a perpetuation of the Blob, detached from (and disappointing to) the engaged Antis who helped to spark its adoption.

Because the Blob is always on the move, the links here focus on debates going on within it that don’t yet have consensus answers. Each of them are probably worth future blogs in their own right.

Battles of the Blob:

Can progressives be convinced that genetics matter?

Should we end heritable disabilities?

Richard Reeves on Klein discussing the men’s crisis

Why care the humanities are dying?

Do we have an echo-chamber problem?

THE ERAS ELECTORATE

These are the people who posted a black square on their Instagram in 2020, but took it down 6 months later when all their friends did too. This is the most interesting of all the blocs in the Democratic coalition. Their motives are mysterious. They aren’t inherently political. They might passively mention pop feminism and the patriarchy now and then, or even reflect on surface-level egalitarian philosophy, but they don’t desire to be politically active. They shouldn’t be. Our timeline is an anomaly, where the Republicans have simultaneously become uber-masculine, taken away their abortion rights, and ran a deeply abnormal and personally repugnant candidate 3 elections in a row, all within a few years. So now they take on the role of the old caped crusader in the 3rd Batman movie. Bruce Wayne doesn’t desire to be the Batman, but he feels he has to for the sake of Gotham. These voters feel they need to enter the limelight, lest The Handmaid’s Tale (which they didn’t read but they did watch the show!) becomes a reality.

What should we call them? They’re bigger than their shared love for Taylor Swift. You could call them Pumpkin Spice Progressives, but their Starbucks orders are notoriously heterogeneous. The Beige Cardigan Bloc? The #Cottagecore Caucus?

This bloc defies traditional political categorization. United more by Taylor Swift's discography than any philosophical tract, they're absent from Substack but dominate TikTok. While they present as conventional—comfortable with traditional gender roles and headed for stable families and careers—their politics stem from a different source. What drives them isn't systematic ideology but a cultural intuition: a vague, unargued-for drift toward empathy and underdog empowerment.

Their leftward tilt comes from gut feeling rather than theory - Democrats care about the little guy, Republicans don't, end of story. Trump supporters aren't wrong because of their arguments; they're wrong because they lack empathy. This translates into predictable policy positions: they back universal healthcare and affirmative action (unless it affects their kids), seeking to soften what they see as an overly aggressive, patriarchal society. It's not revolution they want - just a kinder, gentler status quo.

Hot Girl Sublinks:

Taylor Swift: The Man

Taylor Swift: Anti-Hero

Richard Hanania: Taylor Swift Democrats

TikTok: Men Aren’t More Logical, They Just Lack Empathy

L0m3z: What Is the Longhouse?

Care Ethics: Ethics of care

Leah Reich: The Value of Empathy

THE ANTIS

The world is getting worse! In fact, it has gotten so bad that the act of bringing new children into the world has become morally wrong. How could it be permissible when climate change is going to lead to our extinction in less than a century? How could it be just when racism and sexism and colonialism and capitalism are more powerful than they’ve ever been?

The Antis are characterized by being against most of western society’s structures and institutions. They are critical theorists, the lot of them, and grate on members of the other factions by priding themselves on the problematization of essentially everything. YIMBY’s optimism and positive view of what markets can achieve is anathema to this group; as is–to a lesser extent–the Stocking Stuffer’s willingness to strike deals and compromise on their vision. Marginal progress does not appeal to them. Perennially a thorn in the side of safe district Blob Dems, the Antis are the ‘both-sides’ faction that the party puts up with, constantly betting against their ability to win a primary. So far, this has succeeded…

What defines the Antis is their total opposition to how things are now. While members of this group might support very different alternatives - from complete government control to returning to life without technology - they share a deep belief that modern society is fundamentally broken. They see the protests of 2020 not as a moment that passed, but as part of an ongoing fight against injustice. Unlike the Eras voters who moved on when the protests faded from social media, or the Stocking Stuffers who channeled that energy into specific policy goals, the Antis keep showing up wherever they see systemic problems that need radical change. They're at climate protests, racial justice marches, and Gaza demonstrations–anywhere they can challenge what they see as deep problems in how society works. It’s good when a healthcare CEO gets shot, after all small changes won't fix our problems–the whole system needs a spark to burn it down.