Since 2020, the activist left has fashioned various war scenarios to battle for dominance in the political square. Right and left have squared off over race, sex (specifically transgenderism), and class, gaining little or no traction with voters. The "racial reckoning" of 2020, following the death of George Floyd, barely moved the needle on any of the issues Americans care deeply about when it comes to race.
The right may not have won the argument over boys in girls' sports and gender transitions outright, but the crazies are definitely on the run. Worldwide, there is a definite sense that transgender medical intervention has gone too far, too soon, and this has led to a welcome rethinking of the treatment of children with gender dysphoria and other transgender youth issues.
In both scenarios, the left has failed to "transform" America into the image and likeness of Karl Marx or any other radical left-wing nut. The "normies" are marching forward while the left is retreating.
Realizing its predicament, the left has mostly abandoned using transgenderism as a political club. As for racial issues, there are cracks in the Democrats' racial wall as young black and Hispanic men are beginning to switch allegiance to the Republicans.
That leaves their all-time favorite fallback issue: class warfare. The right got caught flat-footed on this one. They shouldn't have been. The "affordability" issue was fairly easy to see coming after four years of Biden's ruinous inflation. The top issue in 2025 was affordability, and the Republicans decided to ignore it by claiming that things were great and we were living in an American "golden age."
The voters don't see it quite that way. They know that some things are better, but that their monthly income is being stretched to the breaking point.
Enter Zohran Mamdani and the Democrats' "affordability agenda." While many of us see smoke and mirrors when Mamdani and other leftists talk about affordability, many voters are convinced that getting free stuff from the government is just what they need to make their lives easier.
Christopher Rufo writes in City Journal:
Instead of continuing to lose the argument on culture, the Left wants to use frustration about inflation, housing prices, and the cost of education to “tax the rich.” Progressives in California have proposed seizing 5 percent of the total assets of every billionaire under the state’s jurisdiction. Democrats in my home state of Washington have introduced a 9.9 percent tax on income over $1 million, though the state constitution prohibits a graduated income tax. Price controls are even making a comeback.
This new offensive has found the Right unprepared. One reason is disuse: in the 1980s, conservatives such as George Gilder, Milton Friedman, and Thomas Sowell made decisive arguments about free-market economics that some on the Right have neglected. Another is that Trump has partially rejected supply-side orthodoxy. The president favors protectionist trade, rock-bottom interest rates, and, despite passing significant tax cuts in his One Big Beautiful Bill, shows little interest in reducing spending.
"America cannot tax its way to prosperity, and we cannot let resentment drive our fiscal policy," writes Rufo. Indeed, what makes the Democrats' siren song on taxes and soaking the rich so politically viable is that the Democrats are encouraging the voters to indulge their resentments and turn their anger on those advocating for a low tax, low regulation economy.
The Left senses an advantage. Democratic candidates across the country are framing their arguments along class lines—promising, falsely, that they will deliver “affordability” through taxation. Friedman could have demolished that claim in a few minutes. But modern conservatives, who have grown skeptical of Reaganism, seem to have forgotten those ideas.
Once in office, Democrats will tax everyone regardless of "affordability" and justify it by handing out more goodies to their favored constituencies. It's a familiar pattern that's been repeated several times since the 1980s.
How it will play out this time is unknown. Rufo says that if "conservatives don’t arm themselves again with strong economic arguments, the Mamdani faction will prevail, to the country’s detriment."
I fear he may be right.
Editor’s Note: With President Trump back in the White House, the state of our Union is strong once again.
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