‘We Have Created the Scarcity on Purpose’

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Government, News

4.6 • 11K Ratings

🗓️ 6 August 2024

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The economy is one of the biggest vulnerabilities for Democrats this election and, in particular, the issue of affordability. Many Americans blame the Biden administration for the past few years of high inflation, and housing costs have become a crisis in cities across the country. These are top concerns for voters, and the Democratic Party hasn’t articulated the clearest answer. But there are some Democrats working hard on this and trying to push the party in a new direction. Brian Schatz is the senior senator from Hawaii and an influential policy voice in the Democratic Party. And over the past few years, he’s had a political evolution — about why things are so expensive and the role the government should play to fix it. In this conversation, I talk with Senator Schatz about the role the Democratic Party has played in making the affordability crisis worse, the policies he thinks could make a dent and why it’s so hard for the party to change course. This episode contains strong language. Mentioned: “Americans still waiting on Biden broadband plan; rural high-speed internet stuck in Dems’ red tape” by Susan Ferrechio Book Recommendations: Walk, Ride, Paddle by Tim Kaine The Amen Effect by Sharon Brous Wounded Knee by Heather Cox Richardson Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Elias Isquith. Fact-checking by Kelsey Kudak. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Isaac Jones. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Michelle Harris, Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin and Aman Sahota. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sophia Boyd, Efim Shapiro and Sonia Herrero.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	From New York Times opinion, this is the Ezra Klein Show. We've talked a lot on the show.
0:14.7	We've talked a lot on this show about the way Donald Trump has transformed
0:26.8	the Republican Party on all kinds of issues trade foreign policy immigration
0:31.6	he has challenged even upended the old consensus.
0:35.6	And he did that by giving people a very different story about what was wrong in America,
0:40.0	about why they were struggling. And to be clear, I think Moses of Trump's policies and many of his stories are quite bad and often false.
0:49.2	But to give some credit to the Republicans, they are having these big internal policy debates and
0:53.7	the people coming up behind Trump are having even more of them. The role has
0:58.0	changed, their party has changed, their voting base has changed, and so they need to change. On the Democratic side
1:05.5	you haven't seen as much change. That's normal for a party that is going to run an
1:10.4	incumbent president again. There wasn't a presidential primary this year where
1:14.4	different candidates hashed out their different visions in front of the voters.
1:17.9	Biden himself has not been a strong messenger. Comila Harris hasn't had much time to build out an agenda of
1:24.0	her own. The Democratic Party has been unified the last few years but they've
1:27.5	been unified against Trump against MAGA. It's not been in their communications in the way they've run elections primarily
1:35.5	about their policy vision. But there are people who have been trying to change
1:39.9	where the Democratic Party is. Brian Schatz is the senior senator from Hawaii.
1:44.5	He's one of the Democrats in the Senate doing the most work on these issues.
1:47.6	He's been a very influential policy voice.
1:49.8	But over the last few years, his focus has changed.
1:52.3	He's had a bit of a political evolution,
1:54.4	on the issues that matter most to voters, particularly affordability.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from New York Times Opinion, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of New York Times Opinion and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.