Inflation is driving Democrats to adopt Bernie Sanders’ rhetoric

Few professions capture the technocratic spirit of the Obama-era Democratic Party better than urban planning.

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So it was hardly surprising that Brad Lander — who has a master’s degree in the subject and worked in nonprofit housing before entering politics — ran for New York City Council during the Obama presidency in the careful, measured language of policy wonks.

At the time, Lander’s “Issues” page described affordable housing as “the greatest challenge confronting our city” and proposed preserving affordable units, strengthening rent laws and improving mass transit. The problem was a policy challenge; the solutions were better planning and thoughtful governance.

That was then.

The Brad Lander challenging a Democratic incumbent for a U.S. House seat on Tuesday sounds like a very different politician. His current campaign’s “Issues” page starts with the header “Fight, Don’t Fold” and goes on to use the word “fight” almost three dozen times as it rails against the “MAGA Supreme Court,” “lawless Trump officials,” “Wall Street, crypto, and AIPAC,” “AI oligarchs” and billionaires, among other targets.

Lander isn’t an outlier, either. A growing number of Democrats have moved away from the Obama-era language of pragmatic problem-solving toward a more combative style that echoes independent Vermont senator Bernie Sanders’ attacks on the “billionaire class.”

But Sanders is only part of the story. Democrats are also responding to the political realities of the Trump era: an increasingly confrontational Republican Party, an aggressively conservative Supreme Court, the failed presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris and years of stubborn inflation. Voters are frustrated, skeptical and angry.

Inflation may be the biggest factor changing the political landscape. For years, Democrats could talk about growing the economy through innovation. But voters facing higher rents, grocery bills and insurance premiums just want to know why everything is so expensive. With few easy answers on inflation, Democrats have been forced to find other ways to talk about rising costs.