I was on Reed Galen’s show the other day talking about where the Democratic Party goes from here, and we got into something that I think cuts to the heart of why we keep losing.
Democrats - and progressives especially - have this belief that if you just put money in people’s pockets, supply will magically appear. That the market will somehow take care of it. Pass a subsidy, write a check, and the thing you need will materialize.
You cannot buy what does not exist.
Take healthcare. Right now, Democrats are screaming from the rooftops that we have to extend the enhanced ACA subsidies. If we don’t, healthcare costs will double for millions of Americans. And they’re right - it will be catastrophic.
But read the fine print. What they’re actually saying is that Obamacare - the thing they spent a decade defending, the thing Bernie warned them was inadequate - is the catastrophe. The enhanced subsidies were a COVID-era patch. Without them, you’re just looking at what Obama passed. The thing Democrats told us was the solution.
We’re on track to spend $9 trillion a year on healthcare. Nine trillion. For fuck’s sake. And for what? Reed told me his GP scheduled a procedure in July that he can’t get until February. My wait times aren’t any better. And that’s with 12-15% of Americans still uninsured and another 44% who’ve delayed or skipped treatment because they can’t afford it.
If you passed Medicare for All tomorrow - if everyone suddenly had a card and no copay and dental and vision - it would collapse the system. Not because the policy is wrong, but because we haven’t built a healthcare system capable of serving 330 million Americans. It doesn’t exist.
Look at the numbers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks what Americans actually spend their money on. The bottom 20% of households - people making around $16,000 a year after taxes - spend 181% of their income on food, housing, transportation, and healthcare alone. That’s not a typo. They’re going backwards just trying to survive. The next 20% up spends 99%. The middle class - the people politicians love to talk about - spends 78% of their income just on the basics before they buy a single Christmas present or take their kid to a movie.
And according to a new Echelon poll, 72% of Americans say their income hasn’t kept up with rising costs. Nearly half - 47% - don’t trust government economic statistics at all. Of those, 60% say the numbers just don’t reflect what real people are experiencing, and 35% think they’re being intentionally faked. When you ask what would convince people that inflation is no longer a problem, 74% say only actual price decreases. Not prices “stabilizing” at these levels. Prices going down.
83% say groceries are expensive. 76% say utilities. 72% say healthcare. 72% say housing.
This is what the Democratic Party is failing to address. They’re out there talking about extending subsidies and protecting programs while people are drowning. Cost of living is the number one issue - 44% of voters put it first or second. Not immigration. Not democracy. The ability to afford your life.
The same story is playing out everywhere.
Four years ago, we passed a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill. Highways, bridges, rail, internet - the works. And yet I-40, the interstate connecting East Tennessee to Western North Carolina, has been washed into the Pigeon River for over a year now. A 15-minute stretch now takes two and a half hours. After we allocated $1.2 trillion to fix exactly this kind of thing.
In 1997, Bill Clinton signed a cap on medical residency slots. We’ve been short tens of thousands of primary care physicians ever since. In 1998, the Faircloth Amendment made it nearly impossible to build new public housing. We’ve been in a housing crisis ever since.
Democrats will tell you in the abstract that the party was “part of the problem.” Kamala Harris said it at the DNC meeting. But nobody names the specific laws that need to be repealed. Nobody names the specific leaders who need to go. They’ll say “our institutions failed” without naming any institutions.
And then Barack Obama shows up at a DCCC fundraiser and tells everyone to put their “tactical differences aside” for 2026. Just focus on winning. The vision thing can wait.
This is the same advice he gave the freshmen class in 2019, right after AOC got elected. I was there - I was her communications director. He never said her name, but it was obvious. All these new faces with their big Twitter platforms and their newfangled ideas about exciting the electorate. Now is not the time, he said. We’ve got Trump to deal with.
Six years later, his analysis hasn’t changed. That’s the problem.
We’re in a political revolution right now. Bernie used to talk about that. Well, it’s happening. The only problem is there’s only one participant.
MAGA shows up and says: yes, we’re in a revolution, and we’re going to change everything. The Democratic Party shows up and says: nothing to see here, folks. We’ll get back to normal. Just get rid of this cancer and everything will be fine.
It won’t be fine. The conditions that led to Trump - that led enough Americans to elect him twice, including winning the popular vote the second time - those conditions aren’t going away because Democrats win the House in 2026.
People can’t afford their lives. And no amount of subsidies is going to fix that, because the supply doesn’t exist.
We knew this once. In World War II, we didn’t say “well, let’s write some contracts for planes and see what the market produces.” We told Ford to stop making cars and start making bombers. We decided what America needed and then we built it.
The New Deal. The arsenal of democracy. The space race. For 40 years, we understood that you have to actually build the things people need. That destiny doesn’t just happen - you have to work to make it happen.
Somewhere along the way, we forgot.
I read Nate Silver’s breakdown of the Democratic Party’s factions the other day. He’s got the progressive left - the AOCs and Bernies. He’s got the “resistance libs” - the Heather Cox Richardson crowd. And he’s got the “abundance libs” - which is really just neoliberalism with a George Jetson book cover.
You know what’s not on his list? FDRism. New Dealism. Public capacity. The idea that maybe the government should actually build things again.
That’s what I’m trying to do with A Fight Worth Having. I want to socialize these ideas - repealing the barriers to public housing, rebuilding a healthcare system that’s 40 or 50 percent publicly owned like it used to be, making NASA so good that SpaceX becomes worthless.
Not a wealth tax. Competition. Public equity instead of private equity.
I don’t want to tax Elon Musk. I want to destroy his company through competition.
The Democratic Party’s voting base is closer to this than the leadership wants to admit. Medicare for All polls at 65% overall, with Republican support hovering around 50%. People want more. They just need someone to actually fight for it.
That’s the fight worth having.
Corbin
Check out Reed Galen at The Home Front
