The moderate left (I.e almost all of the left in positions of power) don’t have answers. But, the rest of the left does. The thing is they’re wildly unpopular.

For example, we all know, left and right, that the healthcare system in the US is broken. End of, no debate. It’s broken. But, even the slightest hint of a reasonable single payer system like the rest of the west is met with immediate and severe backlash.

We’re at a place where we’re not even willing to humor, let alone try, any solutions. The conservative approach is “we’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas”, but the left is really not far off from that either.

So many of the further-left’s answers follow the progression of the “step 3: ???” meme. I guess these days we might call it “concepts of a plan”. Even when the goals sound great, the paths to reach them are vague or non-existent (or even worse IMO, depend on questionable or simply outright illegal means).

You mention healthcare…I lived in Colorado in 2016 and we had a ballot measure for a constitutional amendment to establish universal healthcare. Great!

However, in the months leading up to that vote there were so many questions about details that the organizers of the ballot measure just met with some form of, “We’ll let you know after the amendment passes.”

I was a federal employee at the time, with an FEHB plan, and I was concerned that I would wind up paying for both the FEHB plan and the state tax that would come with the state plan. I sent multiple emails and asked at an information session but no one involved in organizing the ballot measure would even entertain the question.

Is it any wonder the measure failed 80-20?

I mean, I simply disagree. The progressive and socialist left's solutions to 'the housing theory of everything' narrative have pretty much failed wherever they have been implemented, especially in the United States.

That doesn't mean I don't think they have any good policies, they certainly do, the issue is that the structure of their policies typically does not have feedback loops that incentivize change when change is needed. There is a reason Stockholm has a 20 year wait list for getting an apartment. With the exception of the Vienna model, which I wholeheartedly support, but that American progressives have all rejected in practice (even if they pretend they don't), every single far-left housing policy system seems to be captured by incumbent electorates, based on seniority, without any willingness to make sacrifices for the next generations.

I hope I made clear from my post that I think these policies come from problems that do not align neatly with political parties, and one of the main reason I see the American political system failing is that incumbent electorates are unwilling to make any sacrifices to help each other.

Couldn’t agree more. Not a peep about land use reform or even any real action on income inequality. DNC offers nothing and is somehow surprised people rejected inaction.

I mean, I think it's worse than that. I grew up in Austin, and still have family there. The fact that a lefty like me is regularly siding with state Republicans against local Democrats on housing policy is legitimately insane.

Austin is basically the only city with dropping housing prices right now and that's happening in large part in spite of city policy, not because of it. Yes, the Republicans are creating tons of new sprawl there, and that's bad, but it's a crisis, not some long term concern we can fiddle with the knobs over. Obviously, the sustainability parts of me don't like sprawl (especially from a Strong Towns perspective), but it's not like the Dems there are upzoning anything more than a token number of corridors.

I've had a perpetual criticism of my fellow Dems since my days of naive urban-enviornmentalism: as long as "the bus is for other people" we won't have good public transit. The same goes for housing. As long as lefties don't actually want to live in a multi-unit European-style townhouses in walkable neighborhoods, we're not going to actually do anything substantial about housing or climate change, but with token projects we can pretend we will... and proceed to keep failing working people.

That’s because the Dems aren’t so different than the GOP when it comes to a lot of that stuff. They’re still the party of the rich, just a different set of rich. The DMC made it clear in 2016 that it rejected the liberal economic policies when it shut down Bernie (who I think could have beat Trump). And radicals like AOC have been a thorn in the side of Pelosi and her ilk. The Dems try to play it safe, but I think if they embraced the radical side they’d find a base to match the MAGA energy and win. That’s what it’s gonna take.

> when it shut down Bernie

Bernie lost the popular vote in both the 2016 and 2020 primaries.

He did. But the DNC made sure that even had we won it, he wouldn't have won the primaries.

I also believe that the two biggest domestic problems in the US are housing and transportation. I’m not sure if it’s a recoverable situation

Education sits upstream of nearly everything, imo

> the left still has no serious intention of addressing any of the legitimate grievances that working class has

Cliché at this point, but worth remembering the Democrats are not a leftist party by any means.

Until America sheds the anti-communist gene and produces an actual, bold left-wing movement rooted in Socialist thought, all you'll have is chauvinism wrapped in politeness optics.