Economic (and Political) Dangers Looming Ahead

I’m starting to get a little worried.

About what, you ask? That’s a necessary question! There’s so much worth fretting about, including the 57-or-so reckless and unwise things the Trump administration and the president himself are doing at any given moment. But this latest bout of anxiety isn’t directly tied to what’s going on in the Trump White House, though that is making an important contribution to what has me so concerned.

What really has me worried is that Joe Biden’s presidency hit the rocks, making it very difficult for Kamala Harris to win in 2024, in large part because of the inflation (and interest rate) surge of 2022. Donald Trump followed his political instincts in putting concerns about the cost of living near the center of his pitch for another term as president, and it worked. But over the past year and a half, his administration has pursued policies (from massive and chaotically imposed tariffs, to the Iran War and a resulting spike in energy costs, to AI accelerationism, to runaway spending and tax cuts adding rapidly to the already enormous national debt) that have produced … elevated inflation and interest rates.

But not just elevated inflation and interest rates.

This isn’t really a post about economic policy. It’s a post about the sociopolitical consequences of economic trends. Those trends don’t look good right now. And I’m worried about what the near- and medium-term results could be.

A huge share of political analysis at the moment is focused on the leftward lurch of the Democratic Party, as candidates aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) win increasing numbers of primaries, thereby threatening to wrest control of the party away from its long-reigning center-left establishment. Much of this commentary emphasizes the strongly (and often angrily) anti-Zionist stance of these DSA-affiliated candidates, as well as the role that insurgent activists play in generating support for them on Election Day. But I wonder if these are more peripheral to what’s happening than we typically presume.

The main thing driving the rise of a harder left in American politics is, I believe, material. The cost of living is rising. Wages aren’t keeping up. Fewer people are working. And that means that quality of life is falling. Not for everyone, of course. But for enough that there is a growing reservoir of discontent out there that’s enhancing the electoral viability of DSA-aligned candidates for office. Unless and until these trends change, the appeal of their message of relatively radical economic reform is going to continue to grow. I have substantive concerns about pursuing such policies, but they pale in comparison to my worries about combining them with the right-wing opposition to anything that smacks of socialism. A lurch to the left on economic policy threatens to enhance the power of the right and therefore to intensify greatly the already strong centrifugal stresses currently testing the American political system.