Article Summaries
5/18/26
The Signal and the Noise: Introducing The Ledger
For several years, many of us have struggled with how to think about what is happening to our democratic institutions - not whether it is happening, but how to process it without becoming numb, hysterical, or depressed.
In 1776, Thomas Paine warned: “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.”
My worry is that the relentless daily volume of events is producing the precise numbness Paine warned against.
We have been here before and survived
The founders themselves disagreed, often bitterly, about the nature of the government they had just created.
The Alien and Sedition Acts (1798) made it a federal crime to criticize the government; newspaper editors were jailed.
FDR issued over 3,000 executive orders, often overstepping his constitutional authority, and then proposed expanding the Supreme Court with loyalists; Congress stopped him, with members of his own party joining the opposition.
The internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans stands as one of the clearest failures of institutional resistance in our history.
President Johnson used a misrepresented naval incident to obtain congressional authorization for the Vietnam War; President Nixon then secretly bombed Cambodia, concealing it from Congress for over a year.
The Pentagon Papers revealed that the Johnson and Kennedy administrations had systematically lied to Congress and the public about Vietnam; the Supreme Court ruled against Nixon’s attempt to block publication.
Nixon ordered illegal surveillance of political enemies and authorized the break-in at Democratic Party headquarters; he was brought down by a bipartisan Senate investigation and a Supreme Court ruling requiring him to release the tapes.
In each of these cases, it was our institutions - Congress and the courts - that held the line.
A framework: what holds democracy together
Levitsky and Ziblatt argue in “How Democracies Die” that constitutions are not self-enforcing - what actually holds democracies together are unwritten norms.
The first is mutual toleration: the shared understanding that political opponents are legitimate rivals, not enemies.
The second is institutional forbearance: the idea that those in power should exercise restraint even when the law permits otherwise.
Levitsky and Ziblatt also identify four markers of authoritarian behavior: rejection of democratic rules, denial of opponents’ legitimacy, toleration of violence, and efforts to curtail civil liberties of opponents and the press.
Today is also different
In each earlier crisis, bipartisan resistance from within the institutions held the line; today, that bipartisan consensus is gone.
The Republican Party has largely acquiesced to behavior that previous generations of Republicans would have rejected: endorsing tariffs imposed without congressional authorization, tolerating the politicization of the Justice Department, confirming cabinet members unfit for their roles, and accepting the impoundment of congressionally authorized spending.
The Supreme Court’s reliability is also in question, from its ruling on presidential immunity to its cynical reversal of Roe v. Wade after representing to Congress that it was settled law.
Separating the Signal from Noise
The noise is the daily torrent of statements, provocations, and outrages that dominate the news cycle and consume our energy.
The signal is any action that erodes mutual toleration or institutional forbearance - or that matches one of the four markers of authoritarian behavior.
Knowing the difference is what allows us to stay focused rather than exhausted.
The Ledger
The Ledger is a documented record of each material challenge to our institutions, beginning with the first Trump administration.
The media cycle is short, hysteria fades, and collective memory is unreliable; the accumulation of events in one place is itself the argument.
Our greatest danger is not any single action - it is forgetting that it happened.
Why it also matters economically
Democracy is not just a method of governing - it is also the foundation of our economic system.
The arbitrary use of tariffs, the harassment of private enterprise, and the pressure on the Federal Reserve’s independence carry real economic costs.
The political and the economic are not separate conversations.
5/11/26
We’re Still Here
And we’re still being ignored. This is why I write.
A record 45% of Americans now identify as political independents — the highest level ever recorded.
Democrats and Republicans each account for just 27% of the electorate.
Furthermore, both parties’ favorability ratings are stuck at some of their lowest levels in three decades of Gallup tracking.
The independent plurality
A clear majority holds sensible, moderate, centrist views that neither party represents.
Given this, we should be able to reach agreement at least directionally on how to address our most pressing problems.
How to find the true majority
Where three-way polling exists, each group is weighted by actual population share: 27% Democrat, 45% independent, 27% Republican.
Where three-way polling does not exist, only clear overall majorities are used — no extrapolation, no guesswork.
What we actually agree on
Health Care: 86% of Americans are very or extremely concerned about the price of healthcare. A weighted average of 66% are very or somewhat concerned about medical debt.
Social Security and Medicare: 80% of Americans are worried or extremely worried about Social Security’s future — a 15-year high. A weighted average of 66% worry that Medicare will not be available when they become eligible.
Debt: 79% of Americans, weighted across party lines, want reducing the debt to be a top-three priority for Congress.
Gun Control: A weighted average of 56% favor stricter gun laws.
Climate change: 74% of Americans consider climate change a serious problem for the country if nothing is done.
Meanwhile, nothing gets done
Healthcare: The Big Beautiful Bill suspended the premium tax credit for millions of Americans, raising their cost of healthcare. In the meantime, nothing is done to address the structural problem with the cost of healthcare. For example, a bipartisan bill to add 14,000 residency positions over seven years sits in Congress with broad support and no action.
Social Security and Medicare: The One Big Beautiful Bill accelerated depletion of Social Security and Medicare trust funds rather than shoring them up. Both funds will need to reduce benefits by 2033 if no action is taken.
Debt: The Big Beautiful Bill will add an estimated $3 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade.
Gun Control: Any discussion of gun control died with the new administration. All we get now are the “hearts and prayers” of Republicans as each year records are set in the number of mass shootings.
Climate Change: The current administration has revoked offshore wind leases and halted permitting for new wind and solar projects on federal lands
The parties are losing people to the middle
The parties are not losing members to each other — they are losing them to independents.
In 2024, remaining Republicans and remaining Democrats both reached record highs in identifying as very conservative or very liberal respectively.
We need to speak up — and show up
If independents voted in primaries in sufficient numbers, candidates representing the 45% could replace those representing the 27%.
Massachusetts offers a working model: Romney, Baker, and Healey all governed from the center and across party lines.
We are the largest plurality and we are without representation. The first step toward changing that is acting like one. Get out and vote. Make your voice heard. Write something on Substack!
5/4/26
Affordability: Democrats’ Best Chance and Biggest Blindspot
More government spending on social programs won’t work. A pro-growth strategy for housing, healthcare, and food will.
Democrats will fail to deliver on affordability as long as they misunderstand its causes
For most households, housing, healthcare, and food account for the majority of spending
Affordability has two distinct components: inflation driven by poor Federal Reserve policy, and long-term supply failures in the things Americans spend the most on
Inflation
The Federal Reserve grew the money supply 40% between 2020 and 2022 — prices rose faster than wages, as they always do, and resultant gap is one component of the affordability crisis — blame the Fed, and no one else
Supply failures
Housing: decades of zoning restrictions, growing regulatory burdens, building codes, environmental requirements, and local mandates have systematically prevented new construction at the rate necessary
We can learn from states like Massachusetts, California, and Minnesota who have worked to limit zoning restrictions and/or reduce local regulatory restrictions on mult-unit housing.
Healthcare: the U.S. has too few doctors and too few hospital beds — physician supply has been artificially capped by Medicare residency limits set in 1997 and never meaningfully updated
A good start would be adopting national licensing for telehealth, addressing the “complexity tax” of our expensive multi-payer administrative system, and passing the bill languishing in congress that would lift the cap on residencies
Food: more nuanced — the 2020-2023 spike was primarily a monetary event, but long-term resilience requires closing labor gaps and reducing regulatory friction in production and distribution
Will Democrats get it?
More subsidies and redistribution do not fix any of this — they treat the symptom, not the cause
Democrats have the winning issue — but only if they are willing to embrace real reforms that accelerate growth