Being Able To Walk and Chew Gum

 Has it always been this way? Fastening on one idea as a solution to exclusion of all others, as if holding onto a tenet of some religion, or as if to fetish?

The Democrats want to get at younger men who are mired in podcasts; podcasts that are pro-Trump, even openly fascistic. However, Democrat politicians will not approach real podcasters who support the party, but whose personas lack the sheen politicians want to wrap themselves into. See Will Somer's The Hip-Hop Loving, Adult-Filmmaking Podcaster Whom Dems Keep Spurning (The Bulwark)

I always thought competitiveness was the idea behind antimonopoly law. Having avoided the headlines criticizing Ezra Klein's Abundance, I was unprepared for Hannah Garden-Monheit's Abundance vs Antitrust: A False Choice for Progressives (POLITICO). It inspired the headline for this post.

In fact, pitting pro-growth supply-side economics and anti-monopolists against each other is a false choice. Pro-competition and pro-building policies should be complements, not jealous competitors. Effective progressive governance requires pursuing both in tandem — not treating them as alternatives or as separate, divorced lanes. As the Democratic Party searches for ways to win back the American people and craft an economic vision that can deliver for the public, they’d be smarter to team up than to face off.

Duh. Ms. Garden-Monheit provides several examples where emphasizing one or the other method neutralizes its effectiveness. This is one:

For example, there is growing evidence (and bipartisan concern) that “mega” corporate investors — institutional investors that own over 1,000 single-family homes — are becoming major players in local housing markets, and that this emerging consolidation problem has increased home prices and rents. Such institutional investors first emerged on the scene following the 2008 financial crisis, when the federal government encouraged the formation of investment vehicles to acquire distressed single-family properties. We should learn from that mistake. An abundance policy that turns a blind eye to the market structure of who owns the supply of housing in our country may produce a housing market dominated by distant and greedy corporate Wall Street landlords — an outcome unlikely to yield more affordable housing for the rest of us.

 Seriously, we cannot do both? Or is the controversy just born of the need for importance and ratchet up book sales?

Consider the essay's conclusion carefully, for there is history behind it; one we need to certainly avoid in these days of economic meltdown.

An abundance underpinned by healthy competition among firms will be more cost-efficient and innovative and will deliver real results. The alternative — a liberalism that builds, builds, builds without simultaneously tackling issues of corporate power and accountability — will fare no better than the failed political projects of the past.

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