Ep52 -- The Extreme Center

 During presidential campaigns, you'll often hear disaffected Democrats from the progressive wing of the party lamenting that both parties are the same. So why would voting for a Democrat I'm not crazy about make any difference?  Now, in one sense, that statement is completely untrue. 

Clearly, had Vice President Harris won the election, we would be living in a very different reality.  But in another, and what I would argue more consequential sense, they are effectively the same, at least when looking at the economic policies promoted by the establishment Democrats who have held power over the party since Bill Clinton was president. 

And that is, when it comes to allowing massive concentrations of wealth, one party has enthusiastically embraced that trend, while the other has, for decades, utterly failed to prevent it, and in some cases, also enthusiastically supported it. So both parties bear responsibility for where we are today.

And that's why I think it's incorrect to talk about centrist Democrats solely as the moderate adults in the room who just want some nice compromises and an inoffensive centrist government.  Just as eating fat doesn't necessarily make you fat, voting centrist doesn't necessarily create a centrist government.  In fact, as we've seen with our own eyes, it can lead to concentrations of wealth and power, which can very well present any of the strongly held liberal social ideals that many centrists espouse, from ever being realized.  

And for that reason, I think it's reasonable to refer to the Democratic establishment as the Extreme Center,  and I think I can actually back it up to find out how. 

Stay tuned. 

I'm Craig Boreth, and this is The Great Ungaslighting. A podcast about how we so often get conned into accepting a manmade culture that's out of sync with our human nature and how we can finally fight back.  

But first, I'm proud to tell you that this episode of the Great Ungaslighting is not brought to you by Lennar, the nation's second-largest home builder, a Fortune 500 public company with a market cap of about $32 million. 

Lennar has been in the news for a few reasons lately, and their behavior actually ties into this week's theme of extreme centrism.  First of all, Lennar is pushing for a new Florida law to allow developers of large masterplan communities to retain control over amenities like pools or clubhouses or golf courses. 

Normally, the homeowners' association would control such amenities. And charge homeowners a monthly fee to cover the cost of operations and maintenance. If you were to fail to pay the HOA, it could place a lien on your property in which could ultimately lead to foreclosure.  Lennar and other big home builders want to maintain control of those amenities and charge extra to make a profit on the deal. 

The only problem is that it's illegal.  A Florida Appeals court found that these higher fees are still considered homeowners' fees, which by law cannot include a profit markup. So what does any massive corporation do after it's caught a whiff of guaranteed perpetual profit? That's currently against the law. 

It changes the law, and that's what House Bill 597. Currently under consideration, the Florida legislature would do,  by the way. Fun fact, earlier this year, Lennar was hit with a potential class action lawsuit accusing it of overcharging homeowners in one of its developments near Disney World. Totally a coincidence, I'm sure  

This follows on the heels of the revelation last year that Lennar essentially wrote Florida legislation, making it faster and cheaper to build subdivisions, which passed after lobbyists contributed $170,000 to Florida politicians again, just a coincidence.  

And this is where the story intersects with centrist Democrats, particularly those who are enthusiastic supporters of the abundance movement, named after the bestseller Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, which is currently required reading for all establishment Democrats. 

Klein and Thompson are basically advocating a liberalism that builds, unencumbered by oftentimes well-meaning but nevertheless cumbersome regulations that get in the way of meeting the need for new housing infrastructure and technology construction. And they have a good point. It would be great if the high-speed train between LA and San Francisco could get built much cheaper and faster.

And basic supply and demand economics would suggest that more housing supply should make housing more affordable .  That sounds great. It gives establishment Democrats a fresh new framework through which to offer a brighter version of the future to voters. 

The problem is,  because Klein and Thompson and every other abundance advocate are extreme centrist, they will never challenge the economic power structure within which all of this abundance will emerge and which will dictate exactly who will and who will not benefit from this new abundance.  And here is a perfect example of this, hot off the presses this week, and it brings us right back to Lennar. 

It turns out in the past three years or so, we've seen a natural experiment in abundance. In 2022, the number of unsold homes was at its lowest point in this century. But since then, that number has climbed dramatically to where we now find ourselves with the highest number of unsold homes since 2009.  Now, that same supply and demand law that the abundance folks, so love would suggest that massive home builders like Lennar should be lowering their prices to attract more buyers, and they are a bit. But Lennar's big move is to open Lennar marketplace.

A one-stop shop for real estate investors to buy up properties that Lennar promises are  optimized for return on investment.  It's notable that Lennar Marketplace offers investors below market interest rates from their in-house mortgage lender.  Other real estate giants like Zillow and Rocket Mortgage had offered similar vertical integrations of the home buying process in the past.

Unfortunately, for them. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sued, alleging that such kickback schemes hurt consumers.  Fortunately for Lennar,  the CFPB is no more, so they can kick back to their heart's content.  So that's the problem with the Extreme Center in general and abundance in particular.

It is not that their ideas are particularly bad, it's that until you're willing to address the corrupting power of money in the system, any abundance your ideas may produce will only serve to entrench that power and that corruption even further.  

And we're back.  

I wanna preface this episode by saying I firmly believe that the seminal event that really pushed us down the path to where we are today as a country was the 1978 publication of The Antitrust Paradox by Robert Bork.  In it,  Bork created from whole cloth a radical reinterpretation of America's anti-monopoly laws, which is interesting coming from a proudly proclaimed Textualist committed to following the original intent of laws.  The most well-known and wide-reaching antitrust law is the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act, when arguing for his namesake law.

Senator John Sherman warned, "if we will not endure a king as a political power, we should not endure a king over the production, transportation and sale of the necessities of life. If we would not submit to an emperor, if should not submit to an autocrat of trade with power to prevent competition and to fix the price of any commodity." 

There's a lot in there, but it seems pretty clear that he believed monopolies were dangerous because they gave their owners too much power and to prevent them from becoming kings controlling the necessities of life or emperors of trade.  Bork looked at that law 90 years afterward and thought, nah, it's not about any of that stuff.

It's only about consumer welfare, primarily in the form of prices.  If monopolies don't end up charging too much, then they're good to keep doing what they're doing.  Forget about competition, suppressing wages, killing unions, limiting consumer choice or concentrating massive amounts of wealth and power in very few individuals. 

And an interesting side effect: If consumers end up having very few, if any, options, then it's kind of impossible to conclude that the monopoly is charging too much since you've got nothing to compare it to.  So problem solved.  And thus was born the consumer welfare standard of antitrust, which has reigned Supreme to this day.  

All one has to do is look at photos from the most recent inauguration with those emperors of trade, standing there behind the president, to realize just how much we have strayed from the original intent of antitrust law and what it has cost all of us as a society.  It's no coincidence that Google, Facebook, and Amazon are the ones who have grown so massive under the consumer welfare standard. The first two don't charge for their primary products, so it's very difficult to determine just how they might be harming consumers and Amazon.

By creating a techno-feudal state where Jeff Bezos controls every aspect of the marketplace. They can lure in customers with low prices, but harm virtually every other aspect of society without any accountability.  

Okay, let me now go back to that original claim I made that I can back up my belief that the Democratic Center is actually extreme in that its decisions lead to extreme economic and political outcomes.  The most common argument you'll hear during presidential elections for why a progressive candidate shouldn't get a nomination, why they will lose, is that they can't win centrist battleground states, and that may be true. 

Although I have to say, I'm not sure exactly how a candidate Bernie Sanders, even if he also lost, could possibly have led us to a worse situation than the one we're in right now.  But that's not my point. My point is the centrists appear very rational, very much intent on implementing a strategy that they claim is required by our peculiar electoral system.

Now, once again, the adults in the room, promoting the politics of the possible, not some pie-in-the-sky idealism. There's no reason to even entertain progressive ideas 'cause they simply can't win on a national stage.  Okay. That all sounds very tactical and reasonable,  but let's look at the current race for mayor of New York. 

New York City is the liberal stronghold of America. And social Democrat Zohran Mamdani is currently polling way ahead of his rivals. He can win.  And yet most establishment democrats still will not endorse him.  Now you can say, well, he's really running against de facto centrist Dems like Cuomo and Adams, who happen to, in this case, be running as independents. 

But maybe, just maybe, it wasn't all about their chances of winning, and maybe it was at least a little bit about the likelihood of their challenging the economic orthodoxy of the establishment.  Chuck Schumer has pretty much said he's not endorsing Mamdani because it will upset his big money donors. And fine, if that's what's most important to you, so be it. You, do you, Chuck. But accept that there are consequences to those decisions.  And don't turn around and blame progressives for not supporting you enthusiastically enough when you actually need them.  Of course, it may also be the case of the Iron Law of Institutions, which says that establishment Democrats would rather suffer democratic party defeat after defeat, after defeat, rather than give up their positions of power within the Democratic Party,  no matter how anemic it may be. 

But in the end, the results are the same.  

With the state of our politics right now, you've got a young Democrat who has energized voters in the biggest city in the country, and you won't endorse him because you're either concerned about how your big money donors might react, or because you actually prefer a billionaire-coddling economic agenda to something more populist.

Either way, you are fighting for the economic status quo. The current feudalism or oligarchy that we're all dealing with. And I'm sorry, but when you look at the results of your strategy, it is an extreme position.  

There was this wonderful little Italian movie that kind of perfectly captures what I'm getting at here. It's called Katarina in the Big City, about a 13-year-old girl who moves from the Italian boonies to Rome. In school there she finds herself in the middle of two very well-defined cliques of students. One is.  Far leftist and bohemian. The other is hard, right bordering on fascist.  The leaders of each clique come from prominent, wealthy families, one left-wing and one right-wing. 

And there's a scene where the two fathers are called to school over an incident between their children.  And as you see them all chummy, commiserating about their shared social circles, you realize that their commensurate economic status. Bonds them together more powerfully than their political differences could ever drive them apart. 

And that's kind of what it feels like when you look at the two major parties today. 

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Okay, here's another example of what I would call the Extreme Center.  Say what you will about Joe Biden, his presidency marked the biggest shift in anti-monopoly activity. Since Borg's radical reinterpretation of the law began poisoning our economy in the late seventies,  Biden's Head of the Federal Trade Commission, Lina Khan led the charge blocking illegal mergers, reestablishing consumer protections, and creating the impetus for the Department of Justice's determination that Google was an illegal search monopoly. 

Of course, just recently we discovered that the judge who found Google guilty of monopoly activity wasn't really planning on doing anything about it.  But if you wanna get to the core of why America is as broken as it is, you have to start with looking at the monopolies that concentrate wealth. That can then influence all government decision-making, stifle competition, suppress wages, and ultimately, yes, hurt consumers  

By the way,  just as a funny aside, when you think of monopolies and consumers, I imagine you see them as two separate groups. The business owners and their investors and those who buy or use their products. And you probably think that what's good for monopolies is likely bad for consumers and vice versa.  Well, guess who didn't see it that way?  That's right. Robert Bork.  

There's a line in THE ANTITRUST PARADOX that gives it all away. That shows just how disingenuous his argument actually is and reveals that it's just another example of conservatives, as John Kenneth Galbraith put it, "searching for a superior moral justification for selfishness." 

Remember, his whole point is that the only time monopolies are bad  is when they're bad for consumers. And in the section on income distribution, he writes, quote,  "those who continue to buy after a monopoly is formed pay more for the same output..."  Okay, that sounds bad.  "And that shifts income from them to the monopoly and its owner..." 

Okay, that sounds also bad. But then he says the monopolies' owners "are also consumers."  I guess since they have to buy things out in the world,  he then concludes, "this is not a dead weight loss due to restriction of output, but merely a shift in income between two classes of consumers."  Okay, so as I read that, according to the sacrosanct consumer welfare standard of antitrust,  monopolies are only bad when they're bad for consumers, but being bad for consumers may mean being good for owners, who are also consumers. Therefore, being bad for consumers can be good for consumers. 

So there's nothing to worry about.  Got it?  

So back to Lina Khan and the 2024 presidential election.  During the campaign, lots of big money lined up against Khan and her antitrust success. 

Including probably the most powerful, big money democratic donor, Reed Hoffman, who publicly said that he thought Vice President Harris should fire Khan if she were to win the presidency.  And how did Harris respond with deafening silence? The whole country was pissed off at billionaires and Lena Khan was leading the fight against them, and the Democratic candidate for president refused to stand up for her. 

That is an extreme centrist decision.  I mean, the likes of JD Vance and Josh Hawley were singing Lena Khan's praises,  probably out of some faux populism, but still,  Kamala Harris would not.  This was, in my opinion, a huge mistake.  

And of course, in her campaign, sexism was an obstacle. Racism was an obstacle.
Foreign interference too. But my point for the purposes of this episode is that we have to acknowledge that the candidate for president for one of our two major parties, the ostensibly liberal one, took a position on something as consequential as antitrust that was at least completely indistinguishable from, and arguably slightly to the right of the position espoused by the other side.

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I recently re-watched the movie No Country For Old Men.  It's one of those movies, and it's the same for like great books or plays or songs or whatever that grabs you immediately and hauls you into its world and doesn't let go until it's over.  I mean, once you watch that opening scene in the Sheriff's office, it's hard to look away.

Until the closing credits roll.  The character of Anton Chigurh as portrayed by the bizarrely coiffed, Javier Bardem  is among the most terrifying movie monsters ever.  And yet he maintains a strict internal integrity and is weirdly philosophical.  He has this line late in the movie that got me thinking about where we are right now as a country and the responsibility borne by extreme centrist Democrats. 

Woody Harrelson's character, Carson Wells is facing certain death staring down the barrel of a gun and Chigurh asks him. In all seriousness: 

"If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?"

I kind of feel like the Democratic establishment really needs to ask itself this question. In my adult lifetime. You may claim that Democrats have moved to the left on many social issues, but it's undeniable that the Democrats who hold real power within the party and who get nominated for president follow one rule above all others.

Salvation lies in the center.  I mean, Chuck Schumer summed it up perfectly when he said of the Dems' 2016 strategy: "For every blue collar Democrat we lose in Western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs of Philadelphia."  Theoretically, this kind of economic centrism has been a core tenet of establishment democratic orthodoxy since Bill Clinton. 

And I would argue that the effect of following this rule of making no attempt to counter the hard right economic shift of the other side has led to the concentrations of wealth and power that are essential for something like Trumpism to take hold.  And once that happens, as we are seeing,  all attempts at social and environmental progress become impossible. 

So you may believe in compromise and the comforting lukewarm water of the center, as Derek Smalls might put it. But remember, voting centrist doesn't necessarily lead to a centrist reality.  What it can and has led to is whatever you wanna call what we've got going on right now.  Are centrist Democrats totally to blame for that and progressives totally innocent.  Of course not, but that's not my point. My point is nobody really even ever holds the center culpable at all for causing our current extremism.  But I would suggest that they are way more responsible for it than folks like Schumer and Harris and Carville would like to admit, and I believe that they need to do much more soul searching than they think necessary to produce different results in the future. 

Well, that's it for this episode of the Great Ungaslighting. Until next time, be kind to yourself.  Cut each other some slack, especially people who you think don't really deserve it.  And as always, use your damn turn signal.