This is not a year Democratic partisans will remember well. But looking back at my year in writing, you can see some of the contours of why things unfurled as they did, and where the way forward points. I wrote 170 stories for the Prospect this year; you can read every single one of them here, but here’s the CliffsNotes version:
“America Is Not a Democracy”
I had this inkling that a Democratic presidential campaign waged on the ground of saving democracy put too much faith in the idea that Americans think the democracy they experience every day is worth saving. This feature for our February 2024 issue goes back to the founding to find the brittle and deficient structures of American democracy, and how the agenda cannot end at what needs to be saved, but must extend to what needs to be fixed.
“Eurocrats on the Brink”
I got to travel to Brussels this year for the first time, to see European democracy up close. It didn’t exactly shine in comparison to ours. This story from our April issue is about the ossified, siloed, self-contained bureaucrats who dominate corporate economic policy in the EU, and why that approach has failed.
“Fintech Fight Leads to Hundreds of Thousands of Frozen Accounts”
“Treasury Foresaw the Synapse Collapse Two Years Ago”
One of the year’s most heartbreaking stories concerned Synapse, a middleman connecting online “fintech” companies to sponsor banks. When it collapsed in May, hundreds of thousands of account holders lost access to their money, a personal crisis that continues today. These are two of a handful of stories I did about the debacle. In the Trump years, we’re going to see a lot of calls for “disruption” in financial services in particular; this is what it looks like when that circumvention of regulatory safety measures goes awry.
“One Person One Price”
I loved doing this story for our June special issue on so-called “surveillance pricing,” the ways that companies are using personal data to personalize the amount you pay for goods and services, an emerging but exceedingly dangerous practice. I was proud that, a month after this story came out, the Federal Trade Commission launched an investigation into surveillance pricing, a term that really was invented out of this article.
“The Speech FDR Would Give”
It was clear months ago that a second Trump term would be a collection of billionaires seeking self-enrichment, as is now playing out. A successful counter to such an assembly of economic royalists was FDR’s 1936 Democratic National Convention acceptance speech, which explained in detail why a concentration of economic and political power was so dangerous. It’s a sentiment that would have been nice to see on the campaign trail this year, but it was absent.
“Escape From the Box”
Here I told the incredible story of Jase Patrick, a veteran of auto finance who told me the tricks of the trade, how auto dealers use deception and practiced tactics to milk customers for all they can. Jase was a great subject, and I learned a ton reporting this piece. If Trump gets his way and downgrades consumer protection, expect more schemes like this to proliferate.
“I Can’t Believe I’m Writing About IV Fluid Again”
After Hurricane Helene, the main factory that produces one prominent intravenous fluid bag, used in countless medical procedures, was knocked out of commission. I first wrote about unnecessary IV shortages several years ago, after Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico took out another factory. Then as now, the problem is really about the market structure that makes this supply chain so brittle.
“The Changing Spirit of Montana”
I got to visit Missoula, Montana, in October, for the ultimately unsuccessful campaign of Sen. Jon Tester. As recently as 2008, Democrats held every statewide office in Montana but one; today, they don’t hold any. How did this happen in a state with a long and enduring anti-corporate disposition? The short version: Politics got nationalized. The long version: Read the piece.
“When Pam Bondi Protected Foreclosure Fraudsters”
A rush of emotions came back to me when Donald Trump replaced Matt Gaetz as his attorney general choice with Bondi, Florida’s former AG. She was one of the chief villains in my 2016 book Chain of Title, after firing the most prominent investigators looking into the serial falsification of mortgage documents to erroneously take away people’s homes.
“What Is the Democratic Party?”
My reaction piece to the presidential election offers this historical fact: In the past 20 years, nine of the ten national elections have resulted in a change in Congress or the presidency. Neither party has a read on delivering what the American people want, and for Democrats, it’s hard to know what they’re even offering. It’s a tough piece, with the conclusion that looking to those who actually executed a political realignment would be the best strategy going forward.
“The End and Beginning of the Lina Khan Era”
Finally, I celebrated the main unalloyed success of the last four years: the newly aggressive antitrust movement. It’s not that Lina Khan and Jonathan Kanter brought cases; it’s that they convinced the judiciary that their theories and procedures were correct, as we saw in the recent blockage of the Kroger-Albertsons grocery merger. This revival of long-dormant laws restraining the power of corporations to dominate American life will not be easily suppressed.
