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Hank Hoffman: Do the Democrats risk painting themselves into a corner by making “affordability” their signature issue? That seems awful hard to deliver on. Modern technological society is expensive to maintain, a fact most people don’t appreciate. Dems can avoid exacerbating things a la Trump’s tariffs, but managing notable improvements seems a challenge.

By contrast, it seems delivering on a democracy agenda could be more possible.

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I don’t think it has to be either/or, but you’re right to see a trap here in affordability literalism. Perry Bacon Jr, Will Stancil, and I discussed this at some length just before the holiday break, if you want to hear my longer thoughts.

But in short: If I were running for federal office, and blaming Republicans for high prices, I’d make forward-looking affordability appeals in one or both of two ways.

The main thing I’d do is not bullshit voters. I’d tell them the politicians promising to lower the price of everything, Republican and Democrat alike, were dishonest panderers. Then I’d try to reframe the sentiments that I think are driving the craze over “affordability.”

Nobody’s livelihood is made or broken by whether beef costs $5 per pound or $5.50 per pound. But the majority of people buying staple goods have been through a lot over the years. If you’re 35 or older, you’ve had to contend as an adult with a huge global recession, and a huge global pandemic, and now a world-order shattering American presidency. Many people reasonably fear that this, or the next big, unprecedented disruption, will be the one that upends their life. So when things become more expensive, it eats into our already threadbare insurance against catastrophe. The answer to that sense of precariousness—which stems from the chaos of modern life, rather than from actual deprivation—is safety nets.

To that end, I’d promise to do everything possible to make it easier for people to weather turbulent times. There’s no straightforward way to make groceries cheaper, but there are ways to make fluctuating grocery prices feel like less of a big deal.

Separately (or simultaneously) I’d observe that, though society has become richer, it’s materialized as a swap that most people would never have chosen if they understood the tradeoff at the outset. Our gadgets are cheaper, and we own many more of them. Cars work better—even entry level ones have nav systems. I can control my air conditioning from my phone, and buy sushi in strip malls hundreds of miles from the coast. But basically all big ticket expenses—the things we need that aren’t luxuries—have all gotten more expensive. Health care, housing, and child care in particular.

Democrats can promise to make those specific things cheaper. Bracketing Trump’s tariffs policy (which adds an extra increment of pain, but is reversible) policy can’t make everything cheaper unless the policy is to impose a severe recession on the economy. But policy can make housing more abundant, and health care and child care more affordable and available (see above about safety nets).

I’d be flattered if an ambitious Democrat or two took me up on this advice. But nobody should do it unless they’re serious. If they’re serious, they’ll know initiatives like these would cost trillions of dollars, and upset powerful incumbent stakeholders (home owners, doctors, hospitals, and the affluent). I’d love Democrats to be willing to take them on, but it is (as you say) painting yourself into a corner to win elections with big promises you can’t or don’t intend to keep.

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Liz: Bear with me; my question comes at the end but needs a tee up.

Okay, I’m reading Poetic Justice by Martha Nussbaum. She argues that moral imagination is not sentimentality or spin, but a democratic skill. It’s the capacity to perceive people as emotionally situated individuals with fears, desires, loyalties, and inner lives, rather than as abstract cases, statistics, or interest groups. Without that capacity, democratic judgment degrades.

Seen through that lens, Republicans today appear to possess a powerful, if profoundly dangerous, form of moral imagination. Their politics is driven by stories that vividly locate individuals inside emotional narratives of fear, loss, humiliation, and restoration, and the imagination at work is often cruel and authoritarian, BUT it does see people as psychologically real.

By contrast, Democrats often campaign as if voters were a spreadsheet. Their appeals treat the electorate as a set of demographic variables whose preferences can be aggregated and optimized, assuming that combining a popular issue for Black voters, a popular issue for Hispanic voters, and a popular issue for women should mechanically yield victory. When it doesn’t, the failure is treated as puzzling.

This contrast resembles the difference Nussbaum draws, and that Charles Dickens satirizes in Hard Times, between reasoning about people as facts to be managed and imagining them as full human beings whose inner lives actually move political behavior.

Does this diagnosis resonate with you, ie that Democrats’ central weakness is not policy or even messaging, but a failure of moral imagination in Nussbaum’s sense? And if so, do you see a way for a democratic movement to reclaim moral imagination without sliding into demagoguery? I thought Mamdani did this well and AOC does too. Our “best communicators” really just seem better able to talk not just to people, but about people, as though they’re in the room instead of at the zoo.

Holy shit. I feel a little dumb, because this is the beating heart of my political critique, and yet I don’t think I’ve ever put it this well.

So to answer your first question succinctly: Yes. It resonates. Strongly. For a more detailed answer, strap in. ...