In a landmark political and ideological victory, California Governor Gavin Newsom has successfully pushed through changes to the state’s notoriously obstructionist environmental law, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), among other housing and building reforms. This was done over the objections of many within his own political coalition. The breakthrough represents more than a policy shift on an issue of fundamental importance. Rather, it reflects a generational and intellectual realignment within American liberalism, and one that teaches us something about the nature of how power is exercised.
The fight over housing reform exposed a deep divide between the elite discourse-shaping class — those aligned with YIMBYism and the new “abundance” movement — and the older, activist-driven wing of liberalism that is parochial and operating on autopilot, directed by the concerns of a previous era. This latter group primarily wants to preserve local control and community character, even if it comes at the cost of affordability and housing availability. Animated by habit and identity and disconnected from debates taking place in prestigious newspaper and magazines, it has long stood in the way of reform.
Newsom’s success, along with other recent YIMBY efforts across the country, suggests that in key policy areas, liberalism may be slowly shedding some of its self-imposed constraints. Understanding the conflict between an intellectually engaged elite and grassroots activists stuck in outdated paradigms is key to making sense of current battles within the American Left.
At the end of June, as part of the yearly budget process, Newsom signed two bills which mark the state’s most significant shift on housing in at least a generation. CEQA was enacted in 1970 to ensure that state and local agencies assess, disclose, and mitigate the environmental impacts of development projects. Over time, it came to be used to delay or block new housing, especially in urban areas. The new reforms limit the reach of the law by, among other changes, exempting the majority of multifamily infill housing projects, limiting the grounds for lawsuits, and streamlining review processes for qualifying developments.
Showing the importance of elite discourse, in his speech announcing the signing, Gavin Newsom thanked YIMBYs for their “abundant mindset,” adding that this was a “plug to Ezra.” For those unfamiliar with internal squabbling within the liberal coalition, this is a reference to the book Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, which was released this year and has caused a rift among left-leaning activists and intellectuals.
At the same time, a coalition of over 100 environmental groups sent a letter calling Newsom’s changes “the worst anti-environmental bill in California in recent memory.” Organized labor also put up a fight, demanding certain carve outs as part of the reforms, at one point “fill[ing] a hearing room at the state Capitol mocking, yelling, and storming out at points while lawmakers went over the details of Newsom’s plan.”
As someone who has tried to understand the Left from outside the coalition, I’ve been fascinated watching this debate unfold. Abundance is highly readable and convincing, especially to someone with a pro-market orientation. On the housing issue in particular, we have built too little for too long, and, as Klein and Thompson point out, there’s a reason that Republican states are more affordable places to live.
Yet little that they said on this topic was surprising. Before the book came out, these arguments had been circulating for years in liberal media. Freddie deBoer expresses frustration that NIMBYs appear to be completely shut out of the discourse, estimating that pro-YIMBY perspectives are heard in mainstream media outlets by a ratio of at least 10 to 1. So what took so long? And why did so much of the organized Left still unite in opposition to California housing reforms?
The Right-wing political theorist Curtis Yarvin famously uses the term “the Cathedral” to describe what he sees as the informal but powerful ideological and institutional complex that shapes public opinion and policy in Western democracies. Under this theory, the Cathedral had a position on housing, politicians in California realized what it was, and acted accordingly. But somehow the memo had not trickled down to organized groups within the liberal coalition. While the Cathedral just notched a major victory, it was difficult and long delayed. State Senator Scott Wiener has credited Governor Newsom for putting his political capital on the line in order to enact the recent reforms.
When I recently interviewed Derek Thompson, I asked him about this divide on the Left. He responded that the key variable is age. Older Leftists grew up in a world in which ideas about overpopulation were taken seriously and development was seen as infringing on unspoiled nature. This was the time when Paul Ehrlich’s dire warnings about overpopulation and coming famines were staples of TV and radio. Younger people, in contrast, realize that housing costs have gotten out of control, and that housing is a fundamental issue facing members of their generation as they seek to build a life.
“Housing is a fundamental issue facing members of their generation as they seek to build a life.”
What all of this reveals is that the concept of the Cathedral, or any framework that sees the establishment in monolithic terms, needs to be unbundled. Take a look at the environmental groups that opposed housing reform. Aside from a few exceptions, most of the rest are completely obscure, even to policy wonks.
Some have names like Green Latinos and Senior & Disability Action, organized around the logic of identity politics. Many, however, are hyper local, calling themselves Alianza Coachella Valley, Los Angeles Waterkeeper, or Sierra County Land Trust. They don’t necessarily have the support of The New York Times. But they represent the priorities of liberals with money and a desire to work in the field of activism.
These people are evergreen activists, not necessarily plugged into intellectual currents. We may call them practitioners of Curb Your Enthusiasm liberalism. One of the recurring themes in the early seasons of the show was Cheryl Hines, Larry David’s wife, dragging him to charity events and parties with do-gooder activists. The class her friends represented were mocked for their vapidity and virtue signalling. In “The Anonymous Donor,” for example, Larry is vilified for wanting public credit for his donation, while another donor who goes by “anonymous” is celebrated, even as it turns out that he made sure his identity was whispered throughout social gatherings.
Probably not accidentally, since art is often an exaggerated portrayal of real life, the actress who played Cheryl Hines is married to RFK Jr, who spent much of his life an anti-development environmental activist before becoming better known for his views on vaccines and public health. It’s tempting to speculate that such activists might begin to feel more at home among the GOP in the future, given that RFK is now part of the Trump administration, and some of the most strident resistance to YIMBYism in blue states comes from Republican politicians.
This demographic tends not to incorporate new information from the world, and intellectual trends go over their heads. They are enamored with a few narratives like the need to always be “doing more” to protect the environment, ready to also latch on to new causes like covid safety-ism and wokeness when they detect a cultural shift that is too large to ignore. And yes, they are often very old, with a lot of time on their hands.
While the NYT, Harvard, and other shapers of the discourse often get the blame for what has gone wrong with liberalism, the story of housing reform shows how problems are often caused from below. Both Curb your Enthusiasm-style Leftists and readers of Abundance can be considered liberal elites, yet while YIMBY journalists engage in high-level persuasion, those who provide money and support to most Left-wing activist groups are channeling the ideas of intellectuals and journalists of a previous generation.
In the long run, it is those who engage in the world of ideas who often triumph on the Left. But they face formidable foes among activists in the short term. The battle over Covid restrictions seems to have been another instance where these two classes were at odds. Schools remained closed to full-time, in-person learning for much longer than elite media messaging supported such an approach.
Yarvinism is right in the sense that a few prestigious media outlets and educational establishments have an outsized role in shaping discourse; but it’s too conspiratorial in its outlook. It implies internal cohesion, centrally planned messaging, and doors being closed to outsiders, when in reality, liberal institutions are often undermined by activist groups. A better model here would be Jürgen Habermas’ theory of communicative action, with democratic legitimacy coming from rational-critical deliberation among citizens.
California is finally waking up from its self-imposed crisis. The enemies of progress have often not been the liberals most prominent in public discourse who get the most attention from conservatives, but vain, superficial, and parochial interests that seek to extract rents and signal virtue to others in their social circle while imposing costs on the rest of society. Gavin Newsom took on this class and won. He’ll have a powerful story to tell in the likely event he runs for president in 2028.
