Democrat policy wonk Ezra Klein has this to say about not just the exodus of the wealthy, but also the working poor.
You cannot be the party of working families when the places you govern are places working families cannot afford to live,” says columnist Ezra Klein about the Democratic Party. Right-wing populism thrives on scarcity. The answer for Democrats is abundance, he argues. But politics of abundance will work only if Democrats confront where their approach has failed in the past.
Democrats face a deeper problem than just the 2024 election—it’s about governance itself. In their strongholds like California, New York, and Illinois, people are leaving in droves. Since the pandemic, California saw a net loss of 268,000 residents in 2023, while New York lost 179,000. It’s not just cities like New York losing people; the entire state is seeing a population decline. Illinois has experienced population loss for ten consecutive years. Surveys consistently point to one dominant reason: the cost of living is too high. Childcare costs resemble a second mortgage, homeownership is unrealistic with multi-million dollar prices, and long commutes make work-life balance unbearable. Families are moving to places where life is simply more affordable, like Florida and Texas, where they can get much larger homes for the same price as a cramped apartment in a blue state.
This shift is not just about economics—it’s about political power. Losing residents means losing congressional seats and electoral votes. If current trends hold, the 2030 census will shift the Electoral College further to the right. A future Democrat could win every state Harris won in 2024, plus Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, and still lose the presidency. This signals a policy failure in blue states: the cost of living is simply unsustainable. Democrats have become a party that defends government even when it doesn’t work, while Republicans want to dismantle it even when it does. What’s missing is a party that makes government function effectively. Democrats should be that party, but that requires acknowledging and fixing their failures.
Take California’s high-speed rail as an example. The idea was ambitious—connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco in under three hours for an estimated $33.6 billion, with voters approving initial funding in 2008. The project was expected to be completed by 2020. However, by 2018, costs had skyrocketed to $76 billion, and by 2019, Governor Gavin Newsom admitted there was no viable plan to complete the full project. Instead, the only part moving forward is a much smaller link between Merced and Bakersfield, a segment no one would have approved if that had been the original proposal. The cost for just that stretch? $35 billion—more than the entire LA-SF route was originally supposed to cost. Even this small section won’t carry passengers until at least 2030, if all goes well.
The problem wasn’t engineering—it was politics. Environmental reviews dragged on for over a decade, lawsuits halted progress, and negotiations with landowners, businesses, and regulators created endless delays. The U.S. system prioritizes process over progress. In contrast, China has built over 23,000 miles of high-speed rail in the same period that California has failed to complete 500 miles. This isn't about wanting America to be like China, but rather about enabling government to actually build things efficiently, like Japan and Europe do.
This inefficiency isn’t just about rail—it extends to housing and infrastructure. Despite having 12% of the U.S. population, California holds 30% of the country’s homeless and 50% of its unsheltered homeless. Instead of fixing this crisis, California hasn’t significantly increased housing production over the past decade. The same failure is seen in transit projects like New York’s Second Avenue subway, which became the most expensive subway project per kilometer in the world, with no meaningful reforms to make future projects cheaper.
Democrats have veered off course by becoming the party that defends bad government rather than ensuring it works. Meanwhile, figures like Elon Musk gain popularity by attacking bad government. Republicans, rather than solving problems, thrive on this enforced scarcity, using the government created housing shortages to blame immigrants, slashing wasteful science funding instead of investing in meaningful research, and gutting unsustainable solar and wind energy instead of making America a green energy powerhouse.
The real answer isn’t tearing government down or blindly defending its failures—it’s a politics of abundance. The goal should be to ensure people have what they need by making government work efficiently where it’s needed and stepping aside where markets function better. The future of governance depends on breaking out of simplistic ideological divides and focusing on real solutions that deliver for working families instead of pushing them away with ever increasing income disparities.
