As I sat in my usual coffee shop Saturday I could help but feel a little left out. I kept hearing, “On my way to the caucus!” and “Yep, heading for the caucus!” Well, I wasn’t. And it wasn’t because I don’t care about presidential politics. Of course I’m interested. But for me to show up to a Democratic meeting of any kind in Seattle these days would be kind of like Banquo showing up to Macbeth’s dinner party — an unwelcoming haunting by someone thought long gone. You see, my views on housing economics have made me an Un-Democrat. Here’s why.

People often don’t get that I was a die hard Democrat. In fact, I was a delegate for Jerry Brown to the 1992 Democratic Convention at Madison Square Garden in New York City. We were, essentially, the same tie-dyed, socialist leaning, anti-establishment crowd now rallying around Bernie Sanders. We stood on chairs on the convention floor yelling, “Let Jerry speak!” until we were hoarse. I remember going to cool parties sponsored by The Nation and rubbing shoulders with Tom Hayden. Yes. Tom Hayden! I even sat next to Oliver Stone on the convention floor for awhile.

Later, when I moved back to Washington after graduate school in California I worked, like all Democrats, to stop anti-gay initiatives, opposed efforts to repeal affirmative action, and for expanded health care and housing for Farmworkers. When I ran for the State Legislature I campaigned FOR a statewide income tax, the first Democrat to actually run for office on that idea (now I wonder, “Why do we tax work?”) No one would touch it, including my opponent who was opposed to an income tax even though it was part of the party platform. Here’s what the Seattle Times said when they endorsed me:

Valdez is too bullish on an income tax as a solution to the state’s economic woes. He needs to focus on what’s do-able rather than academic or theoretical. Still, he is the best of five seeking an open seat created by redistricting.

Too bullish! There he goes again. I was a lefty on tax policy when being a lefty wasn’t cool. So what changed?

It’s all right there in the cafe. I get to my spot when the place opens, and I watch as the lines for coffee and crepes get longer, and longer. Soon the line is out the door of the small cafe. I watch the despair and let down of individuals and families hoping for coffee and breakfast who say, “The line’s too long!” Then they start thinking of alternatives and walk away. There’s a margin at the end of a long line for anything that falls away, gives up. Either they don’t get anything or they walk up the street to Starbucks. The supply of labor and space in the shop simply can’t meet the demand, so the price in waiting time “skyrockets,” and people on a schedule simply have to move on or go without.

Hardly a tragedy. But this is the story of housing in our city. Not enough supply.  I have heard the stories of people who are at the end of that line. Instead of coffee options, they have to decide whether to pay more for less housing in Seattle where they want to live or give up and move somewhere else, like a Starbucks suburb. Like the people waiting in line, their wait isn’t because of a greedy business owner but by the constraints of space and what’s available. If you want less lines for coffee, then build more coffee shops; if you want lower housing prices, then build more housing.

But Democrats in Seattle don’t see it that way. They rail against the cafe owner. Somehow he should make the wait shorter. They’d impose a mandate to expand into the neighboring space, hire more staff, and reduce the wait time of people who qualify for faster service. This Mandatory Inclusionary Coffee scheme would be managed and operated by the city and, of course, paid for by all the profits the coffee shop owner would get from all the extra coffee he’d sell. And forget about the fact that the expansion wouldn’t get financing because even with marginally more coffee sales, the revenue wouldn’t cover the loan payments for the remodel or the expense of the lengthy permitting process.

Silly isn’t it. If it wasn’t so serious it would be funny, but this is exactly how local left leaning progressives think: it’s always the private sector’s fault and gouging when prices go up, never a function of regulatory and other limits on production. Never mind that even if housing was a right, as many on the left claim that it is, rather than a commodity, we’d still need MORE housing to accommodate growth. Nothing would change about the nature of the demand for something that isn’t available. Scarcity is scarcity whether you’re a socialist or a capitalist, and the solution is the same too: make more! 

But all this is lost on the local lefty hegemony. On the contrary, they argue, allowing more housing would actually make it more expensive and line the pockets of the evil corporations and the one percenters. Of course not every Democrat in Seattle sees it that way, but enough to make it the dominant view. And that view becomes policy and makes things worse for people at the end of the line, fueling more unhappiness, poverty, and then more bad policy.

I can’t look at the disappointment on the faces of people at the end of the line and blame the private sector. I blame the frustration of under housed and over spent people on a ideological view that can’t hold two ideas together at the same time: the need for compassion for people with less on the one hand, and the reality of supply and demand on the other. Of course we need subsidies. But penalizing builders of housing doesn’t help people with less. It doesn’t and never will. So I’m no longer a Democrat I guess. But, as Georg Lukacs wrote of Lenin’s prescient view of political party discipline,

If the party is not capable of immediately adjusting its interpretation to the ever-changing situation, it lags behind, follows instead of leads, loses contact with the masses and disintegrates.

No party or policy with compassion as its core principle ought to let ideology interfere with what actually works to make life better for real people, or if risks irrelevance and oblivion. Real leadership in the party would find the nexus of how compassion and the market can work together.