Dem
47
GOP
53
Ezra Klein had an interesting (and, for some people, scary) column in The New York Times yesterday. It is worth reading if you have a Times subscription. If you don't, in this video, Klein basically reads it out loud:
Here's the problem. People are fleeing blue states like New York, Illinois, and California. In 2023, they had a net loss of 179,000, 93,000, and 268,000 people, respectively. Many of the migrants went to red(dish) states like Texas, Florida, and Arizona. When states lose population, they also lose House seats and electoral votes. If current trends hold until 2030, reapportionment will cost the states Kamala Harris won about 12 House seats and electoral votes. Put it this way: If the Democratic presidential candidate in 2032 wins all the states Harris won and Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, he or she will still lose the Electoral College and the presidency.
Will those transplants turn Texas, Florida, and Arizona blue? There is no evidence at all for Texas, and Florida is becoming redder by the year. If enough Californians move to Arizona, it could become a blue state, but that won't be enough. In 2032, the Harris states and the three blue wall states will probably have 252 electoral votes combined. Even if Arizona gets, say, 14 electoral votes and goes blue, that will still be only 264, six short of a majority. This is just demographics. The Democrats have a Texas-size problem.
At a fundamental level, Republicans are the party of scarcity. They don't believe there is enough stuff to go around, so they pit "Real Americans" against immigrants, white people against people of color, and men against women to get the lion's share of the pie (at least, for pie-eating lions).
Klein has a solution, though: the politics of abundance. He says Democrats have to make their states work so not only will people not leave, their prosperity will attract people from other states and give them more population and more electoral votes.
In surveys, the #1 reason people are fleeing the blue states is the cost of living, especially housing. And the reason is the Democrats' own fault. They have focused on a vast number of things, but cost of living for working-class people is not one of them. They need to change a lot of laws to make housing more affordable and redesign their cities so you don't need a car—and its huge expense. The average new car costs $48,000, not even counting operating costs. This transformation will not be easy because it will mean Democrats fighting other Democrats with different priorities. More houses probably won't work out so well for the spotted owl.
Klein makes an aside about public transportation, which could reduce the need for, and expense of, having a car, and thus make living in blue states more affordable. In 1982, then-governor of California Jerry Brown signed a bill to study what it would take to build high-speed rail from San Francisco to San Diego and elsewhere in the state. This was not science fiction. Japan actually broke ground for its first bullet train 23 years earlier and had many of them running in 1982. And Japan also has earthquakes, so that's not a dealbreaker. In 2008, California voters approved Prop. 1A that appropriated $10 billion to start construction of the infrastructure. The plan was SF to LA in 2 hours 40 minutes in 2020.
There is still no train or infrastructure and almost no track. What happened? Klein went to a place where once stood a run-down self-storage facility. It was blocking the tracks. It took four eminent domain requests and 2½ years of legal wrangling for the state to take that tiny bit of land. In the time since California started trying to build 500 miles of high-speed rail, China has built 23,000 miles of it. It works differently there. An appraiser appraises what your land is worth, the government gives you that amount of money and then takes the land by force—the next day. Maybe you can argue for more money in court later, but you lose the land immediately. Even if there is a spotted owl living there.
Houston has no zoning, so anyone can build anything anywhere. The median home price is just over $300,000. Los Angeles has very extensive zoning that protects all manner of things but the median house price there is $1 million. Many parts of the city are de facto off limits to working-class people. This means they have to live far from where they work—and spend hours commuting in (gas-guzzling) cars because public transit is so scarce.
Consider one concrete example. (V) lives in a newish apartment building with 21 apartments spread over 6 floors. It has two elevators. Does the traffic warrant two elevators? Of course not, not by a mile (or 1.6 km). So why two elevators? The building code requires that number in new buildings because if there were only one elevator and it was down for repairs for a couple of days, someone in a wheelchair on the 6th floor would be stuck there—literally. But elevators (and their maintenance) are very expensive, which is reflected in apartment prices and rents. Disability advocates will say having two elevators is crucial for people with disabilities, but the consequence is that they can't afford to live there in the first place. Democrats may need to start rethinking a lot of laws and rules that have some value for some group but collectively result in working-class people being unable to afford blue states so they move to Florida or Texas and take their electoral votes with them. Doing nothing is easy, but may result in a Republican takeover in 2032 and beyond just due to many people being priced out and moving south.
The problem for the Democrats is that they are a loose coalition of people with different priorities. The people who are passionate about the lovely spotted owl don't care about housing prices. The people who care about disabilities or gay rights or abortion or a dozen other things don't see the big picture that people are leaving blue states due to costs and in the long run, the South will rise again until the North (and California) make an all-hands-on-deck effort to stem the cost of living. But that will require abandoning some of the priorities that some Democrats see as their top priority. It won't be easy since it will require very unpleasant compromises.
As a final note, there is one hopeful thing for the blue team that Klein didn't mention. While the odds of turning Texas or Florida blue are poor, there is more hope of turning North Carolina, Georgia, and Arizona blue. Democrats have won statewide offices there in the recent past. Two of the three governors and four of the six senators are Democrats, for example. Capturing these states should be a priority, along with taming the cost of living in the blue states. (V)