Ryan Avent celebrates Obama's first mention of the word "transit" as "incredibly rare in national politics," which reminds me of something I've been thinking about a lot lately. In the beginning of Nixonland, Perlstein characterizes Reagan's political genius as recognizing early on that hippies and disorder were voting issues, not simply news stories. This ability to detect new voting issues is, I think, an under-appreciated one, and Democrats are particularly bad at it. The party has such a distinct agenda with so many unfulfilled priorities (universal health care, paid family leave, the Employee Free Choice Act, etc) that there's a tendency to fall back on the unfulfilled, rather than the heretofore unrecognized.This is all a bit of throat-clearing for this statement: How long till traffic becomes a voting issue? Americans spend more time in it every year. They get heart attacks from it. And now, with gas prices well above $100 -- and racing skyward still -- how long till road rage, till driving, till a life spent in the car and a paycheck spent at the pump, become voting issues? Arguably, gas prices are already there. But no politicians has figured out how to do anything with that save promise lower gas prices. But we're not going to lower gas prices. And discontent will only become more intense. Someday, some politician is going to figure out what to do with that, and my hunch in the word "transit" will be a big part of it. TRAFFIC AS A VOTING ISSUE.
Ryan Avent celebrates Obama's first mention of the word "transit" as "incredibly rare in national politics," which reminds me of something I've been thinking about a lot lately. In the beginning of Nixonland, Perlstein characterizes Reagan's political genius as recognizing early on that hippies and disorder were voting issues, not simply news stories. This ability to detect new voting issues is, I think, an under-appreciated one, and Democrats are particularly bad at it. The party has such a distinct agenda with so many unfulfilled priorities (universal health care, paid family leave, the Employee Free Choice Act, etc) that there's a tendency to fall back on the unfulfilled, rather than the heretofore unrecognized.This is all a bit of throat-clearing for this statement: How long till traffic becomes a voting issue? Americans spend more time in it every year. They get heart attacks from it. And now, with gas prices well above $100 -- and racing skyward still -- how long till road rage, till driving, till a life spent in the car and a paycheck spent at the pump, become voting issues? Arguably, gas prices are already there. But no politicians has figured out how to do anything with that save promise lower gas prices. But we're not going to lower gas prices. And discontent will only become more intense. Someday, some politician is going to figure out what to do with that, and my hunch in the word "transit" will be a big part of it. 
