David Plouffe says Trump's wrecked the economy. Greg Ip says the economy ran pretty hot last year and will run hotter this year. Those conflicting takes must be squared, which isn't that hard.
This nails the paradox we keep tripping over. The plane is cruising at altitude, but most people are still pressed into their seats, counting pennies and bracing for the next jolt. Strong macro numbers don’t cancel lived scarcity; they expose it. That’s why the “wrecking ball” line doesn’t persuade—and why it isn’t needed. If Democrats can’t turn a hot economy that still leaves people anxious, uninsured, rent-burdened, and childcare-strapped into a governing argument, that’s not a messaging failure. That’s a failure of ambition. I automatically delete the daily emails from Democrat candidates. With perhaps the exception of AOC, they are 50% platitude and 50% "send me money." I would love to just hear some real proposals that would, in fact, Make America Great Again, like it was before Trump.
The Democrats need to abandon neoliberalism in favor of what they used to stand for: working people. Tax the rich, offer a public option for health insurance, subsidize building houses and apartments, simplify the tax process, remove the tariffs, etc. These are the ideas that will be hard to sell after years of selling out to the wealthiest people in the world. (Yes, Democrats kiss their rings too.) There are lots of other things they could do, but first take care of the American people.
I think this graph of fully employed white men's (Trump's favorite demographic) median real wages shows where the economy is for most people-- it is moving sideways. Not terrible, but it has no relation to Trump's bragging of the best economy ever. Asset prices and corporate profits are soaring, but I'm left behind. What is frightening is that this essence of mediocrity is achieved while running $15,000 fiscal deficits per family, per year. To which we should ask, WHERE'S MY $15,000 GOING? As an aside, it costs $17,121 to deport an illegal immigrant; Kash Patel is getting armored BMW's, Kristi Noem ordered Gulfstream private jets, and the White House is literally gilded in gold.
The combination of people leaving the workforce and almost no new job creation does not seem like a recipe for growth. There must be correlation and causation between job growth and economic growth. Job growth is like fuel in the plane metaphor, the potential energy needed to keep it in the air in the future.
I disagree that Dems need a new agenda. The public really wants what Dems support — affordable child care, better paying middle class jobs, good public schools, affordable college/job training and affordable, quality health care that everyone can access, affordable housing. Republicans oppose all of those things because they worship the “free” market and the wealthy and think the rest of us are losers.
Question: could it be that consumer spending is still "healthy" BECAUSE of all the uncertainty? In other words, could it be that people buy more than what they can actually afford just because they're too terrified by what's happening politically, and continuing to buy as usual gives them a sense of control over their lives... ?
Ip is probably correct on the economy in 2026. AI is much different than the dotcom and housing bubbles because it does improve productivity in the near term and the only real question is what is the right balance of real capital expenditure on production of AI to returns on that investment. The technology of data centers was initially developed by theoretical quantum physicists and chemists and will continue to be valuable for tasks from fusion reactor design to drug development even if the commercial AI use is less than investors hope for on their time frames. As much as I hate Trump he is mostly correct that the affordability meme is a hoax, as many competent economists have noted. The only thing in real terms that has gotten more expensive in my 66 years is healthcare which is because we have so much more healthcare available today. The reality is that healthcare is only going to get more expensive as we develop medical technology to treat previously untreated diseases. Housing is far cheaper, normalized for sq ft per person, or bathroom per person, or bedroom per child, than decades ago, as is food at home, clothing, furniture, house durable goods, and equivalent auto transportation. Needs, except medicine, are cheaper relative to median income. Far more of spending today is for Wants, not Needs. Almost by definition Wants will always be at the limit of affordability. I grew up in an affluent part of the San Francisco Peninsula (today houses in my neighborhood sell for $3-8million). Kids, and there were tons of them, had basic toys: a bicycle, a glove, a bat, a basketball, and played sports in the street and school yards. Many families had only 1 car. Moms stopped working and stayed home. My father was a doctor. We ate out as a family less than 6-8 times a year. We camped and backpacked for vacation. Wants have increased. Needs, except medicine, are more affordable. People just want more.
Democrats need a united front like Europe in defending Trump's takeover of Greenland. It is so out of the realm of sanity to think a US President is going to use tariffs ostensibly for national security interests to take over Greenland. But that's where we find ourselves. Trump looks crazy, but Democrats look helpless. Ironically a prolonged trade war may be the last life saver the D's, or rather the United States will get.
Now that we are fast approaching the end of Obamacare can Democrats even explainto prior beneficiaries that the MFN plan Trump is floationg to lower drug prices is full of empty promises? I for one do not believe affordability will get Dems over the finish line. And as Sen. Warren implored other D's to get it together because patches won't do the trick. I would not rely on commonsense that 22 million people who lose ACA coverage are going to believe the Democrats can do anything for them. I have no advice nor should I have to but D's need to get their act together. Face it a few outspoken D's is not enough to carry the midterms. A united front would help. By now D's should have learned the fringe dreams do not have enough in common with everyday life. You can't expect people as you wisely suggest need help with groceries to be concerned with a very small segment of society which by and large doesn't even align itself with D's.
Jarred, I want to focus on one idea you discuss here, which David Plouffe also writes about in the article you reference, namely that it will prove insufficient in the long run for Democrats to run against Trump and that they instead need to put in front of American voters a credible long term vision of a brighter economic future that is both conceptually simple and politically credible. But as Plouffe also says, "The list of ideas that would save voters real money is long. Make choices, make it short and make it sing." The big question is, who is going to do this work? I just don't see it happening inside the Democratic Party with a few notable exceptions like Mamdani and Graham Platner in my own state of Maine. Might it be possible to get the ball rolling if you, Plouffe and a few dozen other credentialed and respected strategists from around the country were to start a "committee of correspondence" on this theme with the goal of coming up with the "list of ideas" Plouffe imagines? Then use that, in turn, as a basis for recruiting young change agents to run for office on such a platform, or some version of it. The need for such a movement is pressing but I just don't see it getting off the ground without a concerted effort under inspired leadership.
Sticking with airplane metaphors, the real risk is that Trump and his minions are hacking away at the flight controls and smashing the instruments. The big risk I see going forward is that we won’t be able to know our status nor control our flight as the flight proceeds if the controls and instruments are compromised. In basic flight training, you are given a mask to put on your head that blocks out the view outside, forcing you to fly on instruments only. If you fly with your instruments and they’re functioning properly, flying on instruments is pretty straightforward. If you fly based on your senses rather than your instruments, even small deviations will grow and quickly spiral out of control, and put you into a spinning dive. This will happen even in smoothe air! But also, if you are forced to fly on instruments but they are not functioning properly, it’s the same result as flying on your senses…small deviations will spiral out of control with bad outcomes. To me, the real Trump danger is that he is compromising our systems, and that can’t end well unless we are perpetually lucky.
(I have it pointed to where the president starts talking about healthcare. To get to the really wild parts, you have to listen for a few minutes until about 48:50.
The wild parts are his ideas:
a) give a smallish amount money directly to the consumer so they can negotiate their own deals (apparently, for many people, without giving people a sufficient subsidy to afford even a catastrophic policy!)
b) The assertion that prescription drug prices are coming down 600% and more was repeated once again (it apparently having been a big success with the base). This time, chiding was added to the "fake news" for insufficient coverage of the big success of this policy.
2) Yesterday, the Trump plan talked up at the Detroit meeting, "The Great Healthcare Plan to Lower Costs and Deliver Money Directly to the People" was revealed:
It doesn't do anything new. Particularly, it does not solve the sometimes-humongo premium jumps that people are now facing on the ACA exchanges.
At least, it seems to do not too much harm, leaving Republicans in Congress open to undo some of the damage they have done with the non-extension of the expanded subsidies.
--
2b) However, I do note the "Great Healthcare Plan" includes a component that some, unfamiliar with the technical issue, may find amusing.
Starting at ACA outset, Republicans attempted to sabotage the ACA by stopping funding of direct to insurer payments by the federal government for cost-sharing-reductions (CSRs). CSRs are lower deductibles and out of pocket maximums that people on the exchange, with income below 250% FPL, get if they pick a silver plan.
They did this in a lawsuit, as the direct payments were not explicitly authorized in the law, though the Obama administration was making them.
The lawsuit eventually succeeded, in 2017, and the direct payments were stopped.
But, it backfired. States and insurers did an actuarial response called "silver loading" that left people getting the CSRs no worse off, and gave higher subsidies to everyone else getting a subsidy!
So, without mentioning that they screwed up, Republicans have been trying to undo their goof, and explicitly fund the cost-sharing-reductions. (Which would make those getting a subsidy, and not getting CSRs, worse off. However, they use deceptive language to make it sound like they are making people better off!)
Such component, funding cost-sharing-reductions, is in the POTUS plan, and was in OBBB, but failed, because of the Byrd amendment. It seems to be in everything the Republicans propose, for example, the Crapo-Cassidy bill.
If interested, further details on CSRs and silver loading are in my post:
3) Apparently the Republicans in the Senate (who are blocking the 3-year expanded subsidy extension that passed in the House a few days ago with about 15 or so Republican votes) are considering some relief to people hit by the currently returned 400% of Federal Poverty Level (FPL) "subsidy cliff".
Unfortunately, the Republicans and their advisors can't think well enough to see that what they have been proposing most recently, raising the subsidy cliff to 700% of FPL (from 400%), will still leave lots of people unable to afford insurance.
Charles Gaba, on that proposed 700% "subsidy cliff", recently went straight to the highest-cost state, West Virginia,
and has the example of a family of four having to pay 20% of income for premiums under that bill. (Second graph of his in that post.)
And, a worse case is a 64-year old couple in the same state. (In the 3rd graph, but the percent of income is over the top of the graph. Charles reports, in text, it is 43% of income!)
I also placed a comment there on how to easily avoid that kind of thing, showing perhaps a little quantitative arrogance. (Forgive me!)
"Frankly, I find the folks really quantitatively inept with the insistence on a fixed subsidy cliff.
An obvious better way to do this kind of thing is have no subsidy cliff, but maybe have a linear percent-of-income-for-SLCSP going from say 8.5% to say 12% from 700% to say 1200% of FPL, and fixed at say that 12% above 1200%. (Example percents and cutpoints--not a recommendation for them.)
This obvious better way is just the same basic structure as the expanded subsidies, but with higher percents of income and cutpoints. So, that should make it even more obvious."
--
Charles did respond to my comment, indicated that that way of doing things was in one of the numerous prior Senate bills.
"Yes, the HOPE Act bill which I wrote about a couple months ago would have done exactly that, and in a pretty logical way...it would add another couple of tiers from 600 - 935% FPL. Naturally it went nowhere."
--
4) Charles, who is really on top of a lot of things, in a subsequent post, reported that the new Republican bill in the Senate is now expected around the last week of January.
5) Senate Republican leader John Thune seems to be saying O.K. on some new Republican bill, that might include some relief for those with humongo premium jumps from the currently-returned 400% of FPL "subsidy cliff".
This, after making a speech the day the Senate voted against the extension, about why the Republicans couldn't possibly do any fix for the humongo premium jumps, citing a graph that looks wildly in error to me, labelled:
"Obamacare Plan Premiums Have Increased Nearly 2x Faster than Employer-Based Plan Premiums since 2014", and purports to show the ACA has s skyrocketing-cost issue."
(I have posted on this questionable graphic here and elsewhere before, with details on the problems with the graph, and the problems with separate assertions by Thune in the same speech, here:
The argument is not among economists, it’s getting our gals/guys to the polls, it’s always GetOutTheVote. Mamdani was masterful, one word drove his campaign: affordability.
Once the ball starts rolling down the hill get out of its way, clean away the obstacles, hit hard and hit often, all candidates with the same message … this is not a debate among economists… when voters are pissed, keep them 😡 pissed
Solid piece, but neglecting the K-shaped economy. People don't "feel" as you say left behind, they are being left behind at an increasing pace.
This nails the paradox we keep tripping over. The plane is cruising at altitude, but most people are still pressed into their seats, counting pennies and bracing for the next jolt. Strong macro numbers don’t cancel lived scarcity; they expose it. That’s why the “wrecking ball” line doesn’t persuade—and why it isn’t needed. If Democrats can’t turn a hot economy that still leaves people anxious, uninsured, rent-burdened, and childcare-strapped into a governing argument, that’s not a messaging failure. That’s a failure of ambition. I automatically delete the daily emails from Democrat candidates. With perhaps the exception of AOC, they are 50% platitude and 50% "send me money." I would love to just hear some real proposals that would, in fact, Make America Great Again, like it was before Trump.
The Democrats need to abandon neoliberalism in favor of what they used to stand for: working people. Tax the rich, offer a public option for health insurance, subsidize building houses and apartments, simplify the tax process, remove the tariffs, etc. These are the ideas that will be hard to sell after years of selling out to the wealthiest people in the world. (Yes, Democrats kiss their rings too.) There are lots of other things they could do, but first take care of the American people.
I think this graph of fully employed white men's (Trump's favorite demographic) median real wages shows where the economy is for most people-- it is moving sideways. Not terrible, but it has no relation to Trump's bragging of the best economy ever. Asset prices and corporate profits are soaring, but I'm left behind. What is frightening is that this essence of mediocrity is achieved while running $15,000 fiscal deficits per family, per year. To which we should ask, WHERE'S MY $15,000 GOING? As an aside, it costs $17,121 to deport an illegal immigrant; Kash Patel is getting armored BMW's, Kristi Noem ordered Gulfstream private jets, and the White House is literally gilded in gold.
<iframe src="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/graph-landing.php?g=1QtiM&width=670&height=475" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="overflow:hidden; width:670px; height:525px;" allowTransparency="true" loading="lazy"></iframe>
running $3 Trillion dollar annual deficits in a $30 trillioin dollar annual economy means anyone at the helm has a huge tailwind !
Good thing we aren't threatening foreign Treasury investors.
I see the classic macro econ conceit that strong aggregate performance is evenly spread across the population.
The combination of people leaving the workforce and almost no new job creation does not seem like a recipe for growth. There must be correlation and causation between job growth and economic growth. Job growth is like fuel in the plane metaphor, the potential energy needed to keep it in the air in the future.
I disagree that Dems need a new agenda. The public really wants what Dems support — affordable child care, better paying middle class jobs, good public schools, affordable college/job training and affordable, quality health care that everyone can access, affordable housing. Republicans oppose all of those things because they worship the “free” market and the wealthy and think the rest of us are losers.
Question: could it be that consumer spending is still "healthy" BECAUSE of all the uncertainty? In other words, could it be that people buy more than what they can actually afford just because they're too terrified by what's happening politically, and continuing to buy as usual gives them a sense of control over their lives... ?
Ip is probably correct on the economy in 2026. AI is much different than the dotcom and housing bubbles because it does improve productivity in the near term and the only real question is what is the right balance of real capital expenditure on production of AI to returns on that investment. The technology of data centers was initially developed by theoretical quantum physicists and chemists and will continue to be valuable for tasks from fusion reactor design to drug development even if the commercial AI use is less than investors hope for on their time frames. As much as I hate Trump he is mostly correct that the affordability meme is a hoax, as many competent economists have noted. The only thing in real terms that has gotten more expensive in my 66 years is healthcare which is because we have so much more healthcare available today. The reality is that healthcare is only going to get more expensive as we develop medical technology to treat previously untreated diseases. Housing is far cheaper, normalized for sq ft per person, or bathroom per person, or bedroom per child, than decades ago, as is food at home, clothing, furniture, house durable goods, and equivalent auto transportation. Needs, except medicine, are cheaper relative to median income. Far more of spending today is for Wants, not Needs. Almost by definition Wants will always be at the limit of affordability. I grew up in an affluent part of the San Francisco Peninsula (today houses in my neighborhood sell for $3-8million). Kids, and there were tons of them, had basic toys: a bicycle, a glove, a bat, a basketball, and played sports in the street and school yards. Many families had only 1 car. Moms stopped working and stayed home. My father was a doctor. We ate out as a family less than 6-8 times a year. We camped and backpacked for vacation. Wants have increased. Needs, except medicine, are more affordable. People just want more.
Democrats need a united front like Europe in defending Trump's takeover of Greenland. It is so out of the realm of sanity to think a US President is going to use tariffs ostensibly for national security interests to take over Greenland. But that's where we find ourselves. Trump looks crazy, but Democrats look helpless. Ironically a prolonged trade war may be the last life saver the D's, or rather the United States will get.
Now that we are fast approaching the end of Obamacare can Democrats even explainto prior beneficiaries that the MFN plan Trump is floationg to lower drug prices is full of empty promises? I for one do not believe affordability will get Dems over the finish line. And as Sen. Warren implored other D's to get it together because patches won't do the trick. I would not rely on commonsense that 22 million people who lose ACA coverage are going to believe the Democrats can do anything for them. I have no advice nor should I have to but D's need to get their act together. Face it a few outspoken D's is not enough to carry the midterms. A united front would help. By now D's should have learned the fringe dreams do not have enough in common with everyday life. You can't expect people as you wisely suggest need help with groceries to be concerned with a very small segment of society which by and large doesn't even align itself with D's.
IP seems to be making the argument Biden and the Harris made. I think would truly be Karma if they are done in by the vibes that put them in power.
Coach ?
- more like steerage
And when the ship hits the iceberg-
we know who drowns first.
Top 10 percent float off in a golden crusted life boat
Jarred, I want to focus on one idea you discuss here, which David Plouffe also writes about in the article you reference, namely that it will prove insufficient in the long run for Democrats to run against Trump and that they instead need to put in front of American voters a credible long term vision of a brighter economic future that is both conceptually simple and politically credible. But as Plouffe also says, "The list of ideas that would save voters real money is long. Make choices, make it short and make it sing." The big question is, who is going to do this work? I just don't see it happening inside the Democratic Party with a few notable exceptions like Mamdani and Graham Platner in my own state of Maine. Might it be possible to get the ball rolling if you, Plouffe and a few dozen other credentialed and respected strategists from around the country were to start a "committee of correspondence" on this theme with the goal of coming up with the "list of ideas" Plouffe imagines? Then use that, in turn, as a basis for recruiting young change agents to run for office on such a platform, or some version of it. The need for such a movement is pressing but I just don't see it getting off the ground without a concerted effort under inspired leadership.
Sticking with airplane metaphors, the real risk is that Trump and his minions are hacking away at the flight controls and smashing the instruments. The big risk I see going forward is that we won’t be able to know our status nor control our flight as the flight proceeds if the controls and instruments are compromised. In basic flight training, you are given a mask to put on your head that blocks out the view outside, forcing you to fly on instruments only. If you fly with your instruments and they’re functioning properly, flying on instruments is pretty straightforward. If you fly based on your senses rather than your instruments, even small deviations will grow and quickly spiral out of control, and put you into a spinning dive. This will happen even in smoothe air! But also, if you are forced to fly on instruments but they are not functioning properly, it’s the same result as flying on your senses…small deviations will spiral out of control with bad outcomes. To me, the real Trump danger is that he is compromising our systems, and that can’t end well unless we are perpetually lucky.
On healthcare affordability:
1) For fun, POTUS at the Detroit Economic Club the other day.
https://www.youtube.com/live/lxHFFOjBq2I?t=2728s
(I have it pointed to where the president starts talking about healthcare. To get to the really wild parts, you have to listen for a few minutes until about 48:50.
The wild parts are his ideas:
a) give a smallish amount money directly to the consumer so they can negotiate their own deals (apparently, for many people, without giving people a sufficient subsidy to afford even a catastrophic policy!)
b) The assertion that prescription drug prices are coming down 600% and more was repeated once again (it apparently having been a big success with the base). This time, chiding was added to the "fake news" for insufficient coverage of the big success of this policy.
2) Yesterday, the Trump plan talked up at the Detroit meeting, "The Great Healthcare Plan to Lower Costs and Deliver Money Directly to the People" was revealed:
( https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2026/01/president-trump-unveils-the-great-healthcare-plan-to-lower-costs-and-deliver-money-directly-to-the-people/
and here:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/greathealthcare/ )
It doesn't do anything new. Particularly, it does not solve the sometimes-humongo premium jumps that people are now facing on the ACA exchanges.
At least, it seems to do not too much harm, leaving Republicans in Congress open to undo some of the damage they have done with the non-extension of the expanded subsidies.
--
2b) However, I do note the "Great Healthcare Plan" includes a component that some, unfamiliar with the technical issue, may find amusing.
Starting at ACA outset, Republicans attempted to sabotage the ACA by stopping funding of direct to insurer payments by the federal government for cost-sharing-reductions (CSRs). CSRs are lower deductibles and out of pocket maximums that people on the exchange, with income below 250% FPL, get if they pick a silver plan.
They did this in a lawsuit, as the direct payments were not explicitly authorized in the law, though the Obama administration was making them.
The lawsuit eventually succeeded, in 2017, and the direct payments were stopped.
But, it backfired. States and insurers did an actuarial response called "silver loading" that left people getting the CSRs no worse off, and gave higher subsidies to everyone else getting a subsidy!
So, without mentioning that they screwed up, Republicans have been trying to undo their goof, and explicitly fund the cost-sharing-reductions. (Which would make those getting a subsidy, and not getting CSRs, worse off. However, they use deceptive language to make it sound like they are making people better off!)
Such component, funding cost-sharing-reductions, is in the POTUS plan, and was in OBBB, but failed, because of the Byrd amendment. It seems to be in everything the Republicans propose, for example, the Crapo-Cassidy bill.
If interested, further details on CSRs and silver loading are in my post:
https://normspier828307.substack.com/p/cost-sharing-reductions-silver-loading
--
3) Apparently the Republicans in the Senate (who are blocking the 3-year expanded subsidy extension that passed in the House a few days ago with about 15 or so Republican votes) are considering some relief to people hit by the currently returned 400% of Federal Poverty Level (FPL) "subsidy cliff".
Unfortunately, the Republicans and their advisors can't think well enough to see that what they have been proposing most recently, raising the subsidy cliff to 700% of FPL (from 400%), will still leave lots of people unable to afford insurance.
Charles Gaba, on that proposed 700% "subsidy cliff", recently went straight to the highest-cost state, West Virginia,
https://charlesgaba.substack.com/p/drama-house-to-vote-on-clean-subsidy
and has the example of a family of four having to pay 20% of income for premiums under that bill. (Second graph of his in that post.)
And, a worse case is a 64-year old couple in the same state. (In the 3rd graph, but the percent of income is over the top of the graph. Charles reports, in text, it is 43% of income!)
I also placed a comment there on how to easily avoid that kind of thing, showing perhaps a little quantitative arrogance. (Forgive me!)
"Frankly, I find the folks really quantitatively inept with the insistence on a fixed subsidy cliff.
An obvious better way to do this kind of thing is have no subsidy cliff, but maybe have a linear percent-of-income-for-SLCSP going from say 8.5% to say 12% from 700% to say 1200% of FPL, and fixed at say that 12% above 1200%. (Example percents and cutpoints--not a recommendation for them.)
This obvious better way is just the same basic structure as the expanded subsidies, but with higher percents of income and cutpoints. So, that should make it even more obvious."
--
Charles did respond to my comment, indicated that that way of doing things was in one of the numerous prior Senate bills.
"Yes, the HOPE Act bill which I wrote about a couple months ago would have done exactly that, and in a pretty logical way...it would add another couple of tiers from 600 - 935% FPL. Naturally it went nowhere."
--
4) Charles, who is really on top of a lot of things, in a subsequent post, reported that the new Republican bill in the Senate is now expected around the last week of January.
( Here: https://charlesgaba.substack.com/p/when-will-the-senate-aca-tax-credit )
--
5) Senate Republican leader John Thune seems to be saying O.K. on some new Republican bill, that might include some relief for those with humongo premium jumps from the currently-returned 400% of FPL "subsidy cliff".
This, after making a speech the day the Senate voted against the extension, about why the Republicans couldn't possibly do any fix for the humongo premium jumps, citing a graph that looks wildly in error to me, labelled:
"Obamacare Plan Premiums Have Increased Nearly 2x Faster than Employer-Based Plan Premiums since 2014", and purports to show the ACA has s skyrocketing-cost issue."
The graph is:
https://paragoninstitute.org/paragon-pic/obamacare-plan-premiums-have-increased-nearly-2x-faster-than-employer-based-premiums-since-2014/
which was used by Thune here (the day the Senate voted against extending the expanded subsidies):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWmkb_rdUrI&t=287s
and Mike Johnson here:
https://x.com/SpeakerJohnson/status/2000690200008139250?s=20
(I have posted on this questionable graphic here and elsewhere before, with details on the problems with the graph, and the problems with separate assertions by Thune in the same speech, here:
https://normspier828307.substack.com/p/senate-republican-leader-john-thune )
The argument is not among economists, it’s getting our gals/guys to the polls, it’s always GetOutTheVote. Mamdani was masterful, one word drove his campaign: affordability.
Once the ball starts rolling down the hill get out of its way, clean away the obstacles, hit hard and hit often, all candidates with the same message … this is not a debate among economists… when voters are pissed, keep them 😡 pissed