Politics
Opinion: Is Biden a YIMBY? He certainly has good reason to embrace a pro-housing agenda
President Biden’s recent pro-housing pivot didn’t come a moment too soon. Even though the housing shortage is long-standing, well-known and worse in blue cities, high housing costs somehow sneaked up on Democrats.
By facing the crisis head on, Biden and his fellow Democrats can show voters they’re committed to expanding and strengthening the middle class and dealing with its most serious concerns. Let’s hope it’s not too late.
The housing shortage has generated deep economic resentment. Meanwhile, wealthy communities from Cupertino, Calif., to Milburn, N.J., have done everything they can to stifle construction, driving up the cost of renting or owning a home. These high prices chip away at paychecks and morale, pushing people into ever longer commutes as well as crowded and substandard housing.
The housing shortage is a dark cloud over America’s otherwise sunny economic forecast, generating dissatisfaction and endangering Democrats in the coming election.
By all the usual measures, the economy is rebounding. Inflation has fallen from the highs of the past few years to near 3%. Wages are growing, and unemployment is low. The pandemic’s worst economic consequences are over.
And yet anyone trying to afford a home is stuck in the mud of high costs. Experts think inflated housing prices are part of the reason 8 in 10 Americans in key swing states see the economy as just “fair” or “poor.” The restricted housing supply keeps workers from feeling the benefits of higher wages and moving to places where incomes are even higher.
When people are struggling, they blame those they perceive to be in charge. That helps explain the discrepancy between economic indicators and Biden’s polling.
Instead of trying to convince people that the way they’re feeling about the economy is wrong, Democrats must address the pain that working- and middle-class people are feeling. Injecting positivity into the online conversation — as Biden’s team has tried to do by countering economic doomsayers on TikTok and other platforms — will only go so far.
To his credit, the president has been quietly working on housing affordability throughout his term. The administration’s Housing Supply Action Plan, released in July, provided funding to municipalities that have made it easier to build housing, among other pro-growth measures. The administration has also promoted commercial-to-residential conversion and financed affordable housing designed to be resilient to climate change. All of this will help bring housing costs down.
But in the last few months, Biden has finally grown louder about making housing affordable by increasing supply. As Neera Tanden, the director of his Domestic Policy Council, put it: “We know we need to increase housing supply to ensure that we can bring down rents and the cost of homeownership.”
Democrats are beginning to understand the need for a rallying cry that speaks to economic anxieties and signals that the administration is focused on bringing housing costs down. It’s a message that resonates with members of an eroding middle class, many of whom believe the Democratic Party isn’t fighting for them. It’s a message that appeals to young people, minorities and every other demographic being locked out of prosperity in America. It’s a message that puts Democrats back in the conversation about the economy, an area where voters still trust Republicans more.
Is Biden a YIMBY, a “Yes in My Backyard” advocate for increasing housing supply? Whether or not he calls himself one, his work and rhetoric on the issue suggest he is.
By publicly embracing YIMBYism as an ideology and an agenda, Biden can align himself with a bipartisan majority of Americans who believe in easing zoning restrictions to allow more housing to be built. And he can signal to those struggling with housing costs that he has their backs.
Housing offers Democrats a chance to talk about rebuilding an America that works for everyone, one with a thriving, growing, expanding middle class. The administration has to show voters it understands that current housing prices are unacceptable and that it will do what it takes to bring them down. Until more people believe they will one day be able to buy a home, pessimism about access to opportunity will persist, and so will the risk to Biden’s reelection effort.
Laura Foote is the executive director of YIMBY Action and a member of the board of Up for Growth.
Ever since Kamala Harris’s defeat in 2024, Democratic politicians, activists and policy wonks have argued about whether the party should move toward the left or the center.
But in this week’s New York Times/Siena poll, there’s a lot more common ground than one might expect within the Democratic coalition — a group defined here as Democrats, Democratic-leaning independents and independents who voted for Ms. Harris.
A surprisingly clear majority of the Democratic coalition is mostly fine with where the party stands on the issues overall. Only 20 percent say it’s “too far” to the left; only 17 percent say it’s “too far” to the right. The dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party seems less about its ideology and more about its failures to stop President Trump — whether in the last election or once in government.
With Democrats generally satisfied with the party’s ideological position, the poll arguably contains the outlines of a potential path forward for the party. Respondents offered relatively clear answers on three basic questions that have divided the party since the last election: They say Democrats should embrace economic populism, oppose aid to Israel and find modest ways to shift toward the center on the cultural issues thought to have contributed to President Trump’s victory in 2024.
This path happens to have a lot in common with the Democratic politicians who have seemed to resonate across the party’s ideological spectrum this cycle, like Graham Platner in Maine or Senator Jon Ossoff in Georgia. While Mr. Platner is more progressive and Mr. Ossoff more moderate, they’ve both earned a reputation for attacking corruption and corporate power, they’ve supported restrictions on offensive military aid to Israel, and they’ve de-emphasized the culture wars.
But the debate within the party hasn’t been about whether to embrace this specific mix of populist economics, moderation in the culture wars and the progressive view on Israel. Instead, the biggest argument is whether the party as a whole should move toward its left or center flanks. On that question, voters in our poll appear more divided.
Overall, 47 percent of the Democratic coalition said they would like to see the party move toward the center, while 28 percent said the party should move to the left, and 19 percent said the party shouldn’t move at all.
A slightly higher proportion — 52 percent — said the party needs to move to the center to win the next presidential election, compared with 25 percent who say it needs to move left and 18 percent who say it doesn’t need to move in either direction to win.
In each case, the centrist position may not be quite as far in the lead as it looks. If “move to the left” and “do nothing” are combined, the party is split 47-47 on whether to move to the center. When the question shifts to “in order to win” the 2028 election, moving to the center is ahead by a modest margin of 52 percent to 43 percent.
The appetite for a shift to the center also looks weaker when voters are asked about specific issues, including those often blamed for Ms. Harris’s defeat, like immigration or transgender rights. On immigration, just 46 percent said the party needed to move to the center to win, while only 38 percent said the same about transgender issues (though in each case, voters may feel that Democrats have already made some movement toward the center).
Perhaps even more important, the preference for shifting toward the center vanishes altogether when voters are asked about bread-and-butter issues, like the economy and health care. Most strikingly, half of the Democratic coalition wanted to see the party move toward the left on health care, compared with only 25 percent who wanted to see it move toward the center. Democratic supporters split roughly evenly on whether the party should move to the center or the left on economics, with 38 percent saying the party should move to the center and 37 percent calling for a move toward the left.
The poll found very little awareness of the so-called “abundance” movement, which calls for making it easier for the government and the private sector to build more housing and energy. More than 90 percent of the Democratic coalition said they had never heard of it. When asked whether they preferred a candidate who would pursue those goals or one who would try to lower prices by going after corporate monopolies, Democratic supporters preferred the populist by a two-to-one margin.
The party’s preference for a candidate who goes after the nation’s largest corporations — and presumably issues like wealth inequality and corruption — is underpinned by broad and deep dissatisfaction with the nation’s economic system. Overall, 88 percent of the Democratic coalition said the economic system was generally unfair to most Americans. A similarly large 83 percent said the political and economic system in America needs at least “major changes.”
And while the war in Gaza divided progressives from the party’s establishment during the Biden years, the progressive view on Israel is more like a point of consensus today. Only 15 percent of the Democratic coalition says it sympathizes with Israel more than with Palestinians, while 74 percent opposes additional military and economic support for Israel.
These examples of relatively populist and progressive policy preferences don’t necessarily mean that Democrats are always opposed to moving to the center. Two-thirds of the Democratic coalition does want to move to the center on at least one of immigration, transgender issues or crime, and nearly 70 percent say doing so is necessary to win in 2028, even if there is not a consensus on exactly which issue it should be. Of all the issues tested, “crime” is the one where Democrats are the likeliest to say the party should move to the center.
It’s also worth noting that respondents may want the party to move to the center in ways that do not necessitate shifting on policy. Although this was not asked in the poll, the backlash against “woke” was often less about the Democratic Party’s policy platform and more about a kind of righteous and identity-centric politics that had spread into everyday life.
Deliberately or not, the Democratic Party’s politicians have been inching toward the consensus positions found in the poll. In their own ways, many of this cycle’s most successful Democrats, like Mr. Ossoff, Mr. Platner and even Zohran Mamdani, could be said to fit the description across all three areas of consensus, even though they hail from very different parts of the ideological spectrum.
Whether this emerging solution to the party’s internal divisions would address the party’s other problems is another matter. The poll doesn’t offer insight into whether this kind of candidate would stand a much better chance of winning the general election in 2028, let alone winning by the decisive margin that Mr. Trump’s growing unpopularity could potentially allow. It also can’t foretell whether the party would succeed once in government if it enacted such an agenda. And of course, it was the party’s perceived failures in elections and governance that left Democratic voters dissatisfied and its elites searching for a new direction in the first place.
There’s no reason to assume that the preferences of the Democratic coalition offer a solution to those bigger challenges.
The detailed polling cross-tabs are available here.
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A top Senate Republican is publicly pressuring President Donald Trump against pursuing what he described as a weak Iran deal as administration officials signal negotiations with Tehran are making progress.
Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, issued a sharply worded warning Thursday urging Trump not to abandon military pressure on the Iranian regime in favor of diplomacy.
“We are at a moment that will define President Trump’s legacy,” Wicker said in a statement. “His instincts have been to finish the job he started in Iran, but he is being ill advised to pursue a deal that would not be worth the paper it is written on.”
REPUBLICANS URGE TRUMP TO FOLLOW THROUGH ON HIS PLAN TO DISMANTLE IRAN’S NUCLEAR CAPABILITIES
“Our commander-in-chief needs to allow America’s skilled armed forces to finish the destruction of Iran’s conventional military capabilities and reopen the strait,” Wicker went on. “Further pursuit of an agreement with Iran’s Islamist regime risks a perception of weakness. We must finish what we started. It is past time for action.”
The remarks expose growing tension inside Republican national security circles as the Trump administration weighs whether to pursue a negotiated agreement with Iran or continue its military campaign against the Iranian regime and its nuclear capabilities.
Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, issued a sharply worded warning Thursday urging Trump not to abandon military pressure on the Iranian regime in favor of diplomacy. (Anna Rose Layden/Getty Images)
The White House could not immediately be reached for comment.
Wicker’s comments came just hours after Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged there had been “some progress” in ongoing negotiations with Iran, while cautioning that no agreement had been reached.
“There’s been some progress,” Rubio said Thursday. “I wouldn’t exaggerate it. I wouldn’t diminish it.”
Wicker’s comments came just hours after Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged there had been “some progress” in ongoing negotiations with Iran. (Aaron Schwartz/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“We’re not there yet,” Rubio added. “I hope we get there.”
Rubio said key issues remain unresolved, including Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium and whether Tehran would be permitted any future uranium enrichment capability under a potential agreement.
“The issue of highly enriched uranium has to be discussed. Its disposition has to be dealt with. And of course, the issue of future enrichment has to be dealt with as well,” Rubio said.
He also indicated discussions involving the Strait of Hormuz remain part of broader negotiations.
The comments marked one of the clearest public signs yet that active diplomacy between Washington and Iran remains underway despite recent military escalation and fears of a wider regional conflict.
Trump himself recently signaled he remains open to giving diplomacy additional time before considering further military action.
Ships are anchored in the Strait of Hormuz off Bandar Abbas in southern Iran on May 4. A report on May 15 said a ship was seized off the coast of the United Arab Emirates and is being brought toward Iranian waters. (Amirhossein Khorgooei/ISNA/AFP via Getty Images)
“If I can save war by waiting a couple of days, if I can save people being killed by waiting a couple of days, I think it’s a great thing to do,” Trump said in recent days.
PAKISTAN’S AMBASSADOR WARNS IRAN TOO ‘WAR-TORN’ TO RESPOND QUICKLY AS TRUMP EXTENDS STRIKE DEADLINE
The administration’s diplomatic push has coincided with intensified regional mediation efforts, including a high-profile visit by Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, to Iran — a trip widely viewed as part of broader backchannel efforts aimed at reducing tensions between Washington and Iran.
The visit fueled further speculation that Pakistan is playing a quiet intermediary role as negotiators explore possible frameworks to avoid additional military escalation.
Still, Rubio repeatedly emphasized Thursday that negotiations remain fragile and could ultimately collapse.
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“We’re dealing with a very difficult group of people,” Rubio said. “It may not” happen
He added that Trump “has other options” if diplomacy fails, while stressing the president still prefers “the negotiated option and having a good deal.”
Americans always say they want politicians with backbone — men and women of principle who will stand up for what they believe in, even when it’s unpopular.
And every so often, the American people prove their commitment to this noble aspiration by firing anybody who actually tries it.
Take Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, who just lost a reelection bid by double digits after President Trump’s affiliated committees dumped enough money into Kentucky to purchase, well, Kentucky.
Massie committed the cardinal sin of modern Republican politics: He behaved as though Congress were a coequal branch of government instead of the warm-up act before a Trump rally.
He bucked Trump on spending, Iran and — in what apparently qualified as political suicide — whether or not to release the Epstein files. For this display of independent thought, Massie was summarily retired by what can only be described as the Trump cult (formerly known as the Republican primary electorate).
Before anybody accuses me of hyperbole, consider the remarkably revealing example presented recently on the New York Times podcast, “The Daily.”
At a town hall in Burlington, Ky., one voter explained to Massie that Trump is basically omniscient.
“As I see it,” the voter said, “the one person in the whole United States, maybe the world, that understands everything and has input to everything is Donald Trump.”
Not content with mere earthly wisdom, Trump also possesses universal awareness, superior intelligence and perhaps even low-level clairvoyance. The voter continued that Trump “gets more information, more meetings, more everything” than anybody else in government.
When Massie noted that Trump opposed releasing the Epstein files, the man calmly explained that if Trump changed positions, “there was a reason” — one too profound for ordinary mortals to comprehend.
Massie’s reply deserves to be bronzed and mounted over the entrance to the U.S. Capitol: “I don’t give anybody but God that kind of trust.”
Unfortunately, for a large portion of the Republican electorate (about 55%, based on the Kentucky primary results), those words constitute sacrilege against their earthly savior.
As South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham cheerfully boasted on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, “This is the party of Donald Trump.” Which is true in much the same way North Korea is the party of Kim Jong Un.
The one ironic twist in all of this is that Americans finally managed to punish somebody over the Epstein files — only it turned out to be the guy who wanted them released.
There’s American justice for you.
Massie isn’t the only Republican currently being fitted for concrete shoes. Trump also helped finish off Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, whose unforgivable crime was voting to convict Trump during the impeachment trial following Jan. 6. And Trump has endorsed controversial Texas Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton over incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, which in today’s GOP primary environment is roughly the equivalent of finding a horse head in your bed.
Now, to be fair, Cassidy and Cornyn are no Massie, who openly opposed Trump and paid the price standing upright. Cassidy and Cornyn demonstrated brief moments of independence, only to spend years vainly performing political interpretive dance routines in hopes of regaining Trump’s favor.
Still, there may be a silver lining here for students of political irony.
Trump’s endorsement of Paxton will force Republicans to spend enormous sums defending a deep red state that would ordinarily require little more than a campaign sign and a pickup truck.
Meanwhile, Trump is creating resentful lame-duck Republicans in Congress who now possess the most dangerous attribute in politics: nothing left to lose.
But the broader message is unmistakable. Trump wants Republicans to understand that disagreement will not be tolerated. No criticism. No distancing. No independent branding.
The party line is whatever Trump said five minutes ago, amended by whatever he says five minutes from now. By now, everyone knows this to be true.
Which would be excellent news for Trump, if not for one small complication: The rest of the country appears to be tiring of his act. Recent polling shows Trump’s approval slipping to 37%, while Democrats gain major ground, surging to a +11 on the generic congressional ballot.
Trump, it seems, has created a situation in which Republicans can either oppose him and be destroyed in a primary, or they can embrace him and risk losing the House and the Senate in November’s general election. It’s the old “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” conundrum.
The point is this: With the midterms approaching, Trump is making sure Republicans are ensnared in the gravitational pull of his unpopularity.
That may satisfy the president’s desire for complete loyalty. It may also hand Democrats control of both chambers of Congress.
Trump is settling all family business this week, by purging those pesky disloyal Republicans. Only time will tell whether he’s also purging America’s non-Republican “swing” voters, as well.
Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”
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