The Poverty of the "Abundance Agenda"

Reader S sent me this profile of Colorado Governor Jared Polis. Basically, he’s a self-funding rich libertarian gay guy who ran as a Democrat, and won an election in a state that would be really hard to fuck up. Colorado has experienced mega growth for the last couple of decades, though growth is slowing. It is first in the nation in educational attainment. It’s moved from a red state to a pretty solid blue state, and I fully expect that trend to continue.

So, what did Polis do with this slow pitch right down the middle? Well, what every other “New Democrat” or “Abundance Agenda Democrat” would do: cut taxes. And, here we are, with a billion dollar budget shortfall that has legislators wondering if they should raid the license plate fund, which is supposed to go to help the disabled, to shore up Medicaid and school funding.

Polis also hews to what I’ll call my “law of libertarianism” — if you believe one dumb thing, chances are you’re going to believe some others. His support of RFK was a disgrace to the state, but it’s of a piece with his early lifting of mask mandates (making it a “local decision” - meaning the small red counties can send all of their cases to crowd the ICUs in the big blue Front Range counties). He was anti-vaxx curious in 2019, but when reality slapped him in the face in the form of COVID, he had some tough words for the unvaccinated. And, of course, he doesn’t like unions.

Polis isn’t all bad: he’s a strong supporter of abortion rights, he’s all about the cannabis, he made last Saturday Canada Friendship Day (and Mexican Friendship Day is coming). In general, he’s good on the things you’d expect a libertarian to be good at, which are more-or-less things other than a reasonable tax policy and support for worker’s rights.

Colorado is a rich state. Our (I’m officially a resident now) budget shortfall is a self-inflicted wound. It is the opposite of “abundance” — it’s artificial scarcity. I’ll outsource the simple solution to Colorado’s problem to a recent Nebraska town hall for Rep Mike Flood:

I didn’t write this post just to shit on Jared Polis. My concern is the Democratic Party’s historic affinity for Jared Polis types instead of AOC or Tim Walz types. The right way to approach taxes is a combination of AOC and Walz. AOC: tax the rich. Walz: pass out the bennies to everyone. School lunch in Minnesota is free and, as Walz pointed out in a recent interview, suburban Republican moms like it, too. Cutting taxes in a state whose government should be a no-brainer political layup is disqualifying for the Presidential bid that Polis wants to make. So is his union hate. We have a huge issue with younger people working multiple gig jobs and still not being able to make ends meet. Good paying union jobs are part of the solution to people resorting to driving Door Dash to feed their kids.

In short, Democrats can’t afford to support rich guys who use “abundance” to mean “hand-to-mouth for anyone but the rich” — if we want to re-engage with the voters that have tuned out because they don’t see a difference between the two parties.