re: Abundance Dems, I do think you've drifted away from the lib-left sphere, and as such don't see its internal divisions as much. Solar farms split the US greens between "muh bird sanctuary, muh straw ban" and "stop/mitigate climate change", with people realizing that the former was often using the latter to rent-seek and borrow support for fringe issues. At the same time, MAGA has mostly eaten the libertarian faction of the republican party, so it's not like they're promising progress on deregulating housing. Crises create pressure to answer them. Before the recession, the idea of an anti-international trade faction having any legs in the republican party would have been a pipe dream, and it was dismissed for about a decade after. Unless that pressure finds an outlet on the right (and I don't think illegals living twelve-to-a-room or in some shack on a ranch is really driving the housing shortage), Abundance or something like it will become a real force in liberal politics.
Idk about illegals, but “cheap rentals” mean immigrants. “Less immigrants = less demand rentals = lower rent” at least sounds plausible. The people who want to build solar farms are left-libs? At this point I was starting to wonder if the solar people were centrists or even right of center.
I did drift away a bit socially from both sides tbh, settling down relationally and not being out at events in general got me away from irl stuff and my careful crafted equalized social media sphere of 2016 didn’t really survive the first Trump election, let alone the second two Trump elections, the pandemic and associated rioting, the Ukraine Invasion, and October 7th, as a lot of people’s politics shifted substantially over that period, and there was a lot of blocking, deleting, going nuts/psychosis, and even some dying (rip Kontex).
Like, I would love it if the dems decided to build housing, but “blue state” and “high cost of living area due to housing shortage” are basically synonymous.
I just don’t think that the Democrats are likely to actually run on deregulating building codes because 1. Alienate their base 2. Alienate donors 3. Why the heck would anyone intelligent enough to understand the plan believe a “we’re running on unfucking the problem we created” platform?
I seriously saw an affordable housing development held up over a deer trail a couple months ago. I don’t think the Democrats are going to change, as much as I hope they do.
