The video explores the role and actions of the Democratic Party in the 18 U.S. states where they hold significant power, either by controlling both the legislative and executive branches or having a veto-proof majority. By teaming up with Binya Applebaum from the Times editorial board, the presenter investigates whether Democrats effectively implement their policies when there are no Republican obstructions. Focusing on California, Washington State, and Illinois, the examination reveals discrepancies between Democratic ideals and practical outcomes, particularly in housing, taxation, and education policies.

In states like California, where Democrats govern, the housing policies aiming at affordability and accessibility face challenges. Despite intentions proclaimed in the Democratic Party platform, California experiences high housing costs due to restrictive zoning laws leading to insufficient housing supply. Similarly, Washington's tax system is unexpectedly regressive, with wealthier residents paying a lower tax percentage than poorer inhabitants, contrary to Democratic progressive taxation principles. Education equality is another area scrutinized; Cook County, Illinois, exhibits significant disparities as wealthy areas hoard educational resources while poorer districts struggle.

Main takeaways from the video:

Please remember to turn on the CC button to view the subtitles.

Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. veto-proof [ˈviːtoʊ pruːf] - (adjective) - Referring to a majority that is large enough to override a veto by a president or a governor. - Synonyms: (override-able, supermajority, dominant)

This is a map of the 18 states in the US where Democrats control the legislative and executive branches or else have some veto proof majority in the legislature.

2. foiling [ˈfɔɪlɪŋ] - (verb) - Prevent from succeeding, thwarting. - Synonyms: (thwarting, hindering, obstructing)

Democrats in DC often blame the GOP for foiling their progressive vision.

3. gerrymandered [ˈdʒɛrimændərd] - (adjective) - Manipulated boundaries to favor a particular party or class. - Synonyms: (manipulated, distorted, skewed)

So now you have all these tiny school districts like this one, which are like gerrymandered around the richest part of town.

4. segregation [ˌsɛɡrɪˈɡeɪʃən] - (noun) - The action or state of setting someone or something apart from others. - Synonyms: (separation, division, isolation)

There's still very intense segregation happening in all kinds of forums all over this country.

5. quintessential [ˌkwɪntəˈsɛnʃl] - (adjective) - Representing the most perfect or typical example of a quality or class. - Synonyms: (typical, ultimate, ideal)

To me, California is like the quintessential liberal state.

6. inequality [ˌɪniˈkwɒlɪti] - (noun) - Difference in size, degree, circumstances, lack of equality. - Synonyms: (disparity, imbalance, discrepancy)

You cannot say that you are against inequality in America unless you are willing to have affordable housing built in your neighborhood.

7. revert [rɪˈvɜrt] - (verb) - Return to a previous state, condition, or practice. - Synonyms: (return, regress, backtrack)

The overwhelmingly liberal residents of Palo Alto decided to hold a vote to overturn the decision to revert it back to low density, single family housing, back to yellow.

8. exacerbate [ɪɡˈzæsərˌbeɪt] - (verb) - Make a problem, bad situation, or negative feeling worse. - Synonyms: (aggravate, intensify, worsen)

And so the effect of that is basically to exacerbate inequality.

9. profess [prəˈfɛs] - (verb) - Claim openly but often falsely that one has (a quality or feeling). - Synonyms: (declare, pretend, purport)

And this is a fundamental inversion of the values that the democratic party professes

10. affluent [ˈæfluənt] - (adjective) - Having a great deal of money; wealthy. - Synonyms: (wealthy, prosperous, rich)

If you look at Washington state, what you find is that in Washington state, if you look at the state and local taxes that people pay there, less affluent families pay a much larger share of their income in taxes than the wealthiest residents of Washington state.

Liberal Hypocrisy is Fueling American Inequality. Here’s How. - NYT Opinion

There is a question I've had for a very long time, and it has to do with this map. This is a map of the 18 states in the US where Democrats control the legislative and executive branches or else have some veto proof majority in the legislature. Democrats in DC often blame the GOP for foiling their progressive vision. When middle class families see their taxes go up, they'll know Republicans are to blame. But if you zoom into these 18 states, there's effectively no Republicans standing in the way. So my question is, what do Democrats actually do when they have all the power?

To answer this question, I teamed up with the Times editorial board writer Binya Applebaum. Okay, you got my attention. He's been thinking about and writing books about and reporting on this topic for decades. I think, you know, Americans tend to view politics as a competition of us versus them. And they tend to think that if they would just get out of the way, then we can do the things that we want to do. There is no them standing in the way. There's just the we of Democrats and their supporters, and they get to decide what policy should look like in those states. And that is an opportunity for them to implement their vision.

For this story, I also delved into this giant document. It is the 2020 Democratic Party platform. If you want to really understand what Democrats say they want, what their vision is for America, it's found inside of this document. This document serves as a guide as we zoom into these states. To answer this question, what do democrats really do when they have all the power? Nearly 554,000 homeless people from the 25 wealthiest Americans shows they're paying little in income taxes compared to their fortunes. Sometimes nothing at all. We cannot in good faith, blame the Republican Party when House Democrats have a majority. There's still very intense segregation happening in all kinds of forums all over this country.

Okay, so let's start with California. To me, California is like the quintessential liberal state. From the state legislature to the whole executive branch to most of the big cities, dems hold majority control. So what do they do with all this power? Looking at California, you have to look at housing. Okay, now, wait, listen. When I hear the words housing policy, I tend to sort of doze off. But Binya insists that that housing policy and what is happening in California is definitely worth looking at.

You cannot say that you are against inequality in America unless you are willing to have affordable housing built in your neighborhood. And Democrats completely agree here in this document, the word housing is mentioned over 100 times. The neighborhood where you're born has a huge influence on the rest of your life. Children who are born in neighborhoods with degraded environmental conditions, with a lack of access to high quality public services, poor schools, poor public transit, are at a permanent disadvantage. And they even say verbatim, housing in America should be stable, accessible, safe, healthy, energy efficient, and above all, affordable. Housing is a human right. Housing is a human right. The rent is going through the roof. Housing is a human right.

How does California do when it comes to housing? You know where those signs are when you drive into a state, it says, welcome to California. They might as well replace them with signs that say keep out. Because in California, the cost of housing is so high that for many people, it's simply unaffordable. The state has simply, for the most part, stopped building housing. I mean, there are cranes, there's housing going up, but it has slowed down over time, really, really sharply. And it is nowhere near sufficient to keep pace with California's population. So what you have is not enough housing, and I too many people trying to get it. And the inevitable result is that prices have gone up, up and away. The median price of a home in San Diego county is now a staggering $830,000.

All around California, there are cities full of people who say that they are progressive. They are liberals. They believe in a more equal America, a more diverse America. They show up to the marches, they put in the lawn, signs about everyone being equal, but at the same time, they are actively fighting to keep their neighborhoods looking like this. Okay, wait, but that doesn't look so bad. It's just a bunch of houses in a neighborhood, right? No, it turns out that this is actually the result of specific policies, intentional policies, that keeps these neighborhoods spread out and full of single family homes, as opposed to higher density buildings like duplexes or apartment complexes.

This is a real serious fight. And you can get a glimpse into it by looking at a zoning map. Yes, we're looking at a municipal zoning map of Palo Alto, California. Don't leave yet. This is really where it sinks in. So just stick around. So everything on this map that is yellow is zoned for single family homes like this. And this one family can live here. But here in Palo Alto, there are a lot of new jobs. This is a desirable place to live for new opportunities. Over the past eight years, the San Francisco area has added 676,000 jobs, but only 176,000 housing units.

So a few years ago, the city council voted to change the zoning of one section of the city right here, specifically this two acre plot of land. They wanted to change it from low density housing to higher density housing so that they could build a 60 unit affordable housing complex for elderly members of the community. Okay. So they changed the zoning. Start building the 60 unit complex. No. The overwhelmingly liberal residents of Palo Alto decided to hold a vote to overturn the decision to revert it back to low density, single family housing, back to yellow, and it passed and the zoning was overturned. So now when you go to this plot of land instead of an affordable housing complex for the elderly, what you're gonna see is this. A row of just a few houses, all of them massive and worth around $5 million each.

I think people aren't living their values. You go to these meetings in these neighborhoods where they're talking about a new housing project, and it's always the same song, and it goes like this. I am very in favor of affordable housing. We need more of it in this community. However, I have some concerns about this project. We have the hearts to do this, but we're doing it wrong and we're dictating and harm onto the neighborhoods, and then off we go with the concerns. And then nothing ever gets built. This is happening all over California. And the result is that these neighborhoods are so expensive that they keep anyone out who isn't a part of this small group of super rich residents, many of whom bought their properties decades ago and who spend their time fighting vigorously to keep the value of their real estate assets super high. If you want to keep Palo Alto the kind of neighborhood and community that we all treasure, low intensity, low density, safer kids to walk to school, you've got to vote against measure D. There's an aspect of sort of greed here and of nervousness about actually sharing those opportunities.

Let's go to another liberal bastion up here in Washington state. The Democratic Party talks about taxation, saying that our tax code has been, quote, rigged against the american people. Democrats all the time are decrying the fact that tax cuts are going to the wealthiest Americans. It is time for a wealth tax in America. Democrats believe in a progressive tax system where the rich pay a larger share of their income than the poor. This is like the most basic policy vision of like a progressive movement. It's front and center in Democrats policy platform.

But if you go and look at Washington state, what you find is that in Washington state, if you look at the state and local taxes that people pay there, less affluent families pay a much larger share of their income in taxes than the wealthiest residents of Washington state. So people like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, two of the state's most famous and wealthy residents are in this lovely situation of paying less in taxes as a share of their income than the poor people who live in that same state. And this is a fundamental inversion of the values that the democratic party professes.

There is no state with a more regressive system of taxation than Washington state. And I'm talking, like, the most regressive meaning. Texas, which is like, the conservative bastion of, like, anti taxes, is more progressive than Washington state. Liberal Washington state. How is that real? Oh, and guess what? Other states on our map also are in the top ten of most regressive tax regimes, like Nevada and Illinois. There have been some changes, particularly in recent years, but the overall situation remains resistant to change.

So I am very concerned that at this time, which is a very poor time, to disincent people from creating jobs in Washington state that were even considering it from that paycheck that you earn, more of that money is going to state government. And so the effect of that is basically to exacerbate inequality. Okay, so rich liberals don't show up when it comes to housing or taxes.

Another major theme in this policy document is education. And the wording in here I find quite interesting. The Democrats say, quote, we must provide world class education in every zip code to every child because education is a critical public good. They use this word zip code to represent the fact that in America, schools get their funding based on the real estate taxes of the houses within that school district. The more expensive the neighborhood, the more funding goes to the school. So over here in Illinois, which is like the quintessential liberal state, there's this one county that contains the city of Chicago. It's called Cook county. The residents here voted overwhelmingly for democratic candidate in the presidential and senatorial elections last year. Often what would happen is that this would just be one big school district and that all the taxes from all the towns in this county would be put into one bucket and distributed equally throughout the county.

But the residents of this very blue democratic county have actually decided to divide themselves into more than 140 school districts. So now you have all these tiny school districts like this one, which are like gerrymandered around the richest part of town. And so all of the taxes from these rich homeowners go into one little bucket and then only get distributed to the schools within this rich region of the county. It can be on the same block that the town line runs through the middle of it. And if you live on one side of that line, you're consigned to an inferior education by virtue of the fact that you and your neighbors don't have as much money. And if you live on the other side, you're basically a member of a club that is sponsoring a private school, essentially for the benefit of that small group of kids who are lucky enough to live in that affluent community.

And the result is that poor communities have less money to educate their children and rich communities have more money to educate their children. This is crazy. It means, basically that the kids who have the greatest needs have the fewest resources. The same thing is happening in wealthy, liberal Connecticut, where the inequality in education opportunities is shameful, with some schools having huge budgets for their libraries and facilities and others in the same state having to use duct tape to keep wind and snow out of their windows. Like this is a real thing. We need your help in establishing guidelines, procedures, and funding to address issues negatively impacting our students, like extreme temperatures, mold, lead exposure, and poor water and air quality.

So, yeah, Binya tells me that the states could change this. They could actually just collect all the real estate taxes and then equally distribute them. But if you look at some of our liberal strongholds, that is exactly what they are not doing. Let me be clear about something. In blue states, progress is being made, albeit slowly. For instance, a few weeks ago, California finally passed a law that gets rid of single family zoning. It's a small step in the right direction, and in many cases, blue states provide more and better public services and historically have given better chances to low income families to climb the economic ladder. But for some of these foundational democratic values of housing equality, progressive taxation, and education equality, Democrats don't actually embody their values very well.

We're talking once again about a system that's been rigged. Republicans today are to blame. What we're talking about here is that blue states are the problem. Blue states are where the housing crisis is located. Blue states are where the disparities in education funding are the most dramatic. Blue states are the places where tens of thousands of homeless people are living on the streets. Blue states are the places where economic inequality is increasing most quickly in this country. This is not a problem of not doing well enough. It is a situation where the blue states are the problem.

affluent liberals tend to be really good at showing up to the marches and talking about how they love equality. They're really good at putting signs in their lawn saying that all are welcome here, but by their actions. What they're actually saying is, yes, we believe in these ideals, just not in my backyard. We are not living our values. People who live in blue states, people who profess liberal values. You need to look in the mirror and need to understand that they are not taking the actions that are consistent with those values, not just incidentally, not just in small areas, but that some of the most important, important policy choices we are denying people the opportunity to prosper and to thrive and to build better lives. And it is happening in places where Democrats control the levers of policy.

Politics, Democrats, Housing, Taxation, Education, Economics, The New York Times