In the wake of devastating setbacks in the 2024 elections, Democrats are deemphasizing identity politics and are instead prioritizing economic issues. Democrats are now embracing an “abundance movement” and claiming they are the party to deliver abundance to working families. The latest iteration of this new strategy was expressed by Democratic activist and pundit Donna Brazile in her recent commentary published by The Hill, “Democrats’ path to victory in 2025 and beyond.”

In an attempt to project an even more explicit show of solidarity with working families, the concept of “abundance” has been augmented with its fraternal twin, “affordability.” As Brazile recounts, in two races for governor that will be decided this November, the Democrat candidates “seek to lower the costs of health care, housing, energy, and groceries.” Brazile writes:

“Former Rep. Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Virginia, is campaigning on her Affordable Virginia Plan. Similarly, Rep. Mikie Sherrill, the Democratic candidate for governor in New Jersey, is campaigning on her Affordability Agenda.”

This is a rational pivot for the Democrats, and it could work. As standard bearers for the left, Democrats have a natural rhetorical advantage. Leftist messaging relies on nurturing resentment and exploiting envy, while consistently promising to redistribute wealth from rich individuals and corporations to the less fortunate. That’s an easier message to sell to the average voter trying to afford rent than the right-wing answer, which is to create equal opportunity through meritocracy, private property incentives, and deregulated competition. Now that the Democrats are moving away from nurturing resentment between identity groups and instead trying to restore a pure economic basis for resentment, they can promise abundance and affordability to everyone. It’s a smart move.

What may be smart politically, however, in practice can never work. Democrats can promise affordability, throwing open the tent to welcome back all the white working-class voters they’ve turned their backs on ever since 2008, but they can never deliver on their promise. Affordability in the United States has been steadily eroding since the 1970s, thanks to policies almost exclusively promoted by Democrats. Across the decades in their pursuit of power, Democrats wielded rhetorical arguments that often deceived voters into viewing them as morally superior. And in every case where their arguments won, their policies lost.

Evidence of this failure is easily seen in the demographic shift from Democrat-controlled states to Republican-controlled states. A 2030 apportionment forecast shows, without exception, a dramatic shift in population from blue states to red states. In the wake of the 2030 census, California is projected to lose one seat in the U.S. Congress, New York will lose two seats, and Oregon, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Pennsylvania will lose one seat each. Meanwhile, both Texas and Florida are projected to gain four seats, with Arizona, Utah, and Idaho gaining one each.

With only four years left in this decade, and migration trends firmly established and unlikely to change, the conclusion one may draw from these projections is unequivocal. People increasingly prefer to live in states run by Republicans. We may even acknowledge that Pennsylvania and some of the other Midwestern states are no longer reliably Democratic, but their new status as battlegrounds only reinforces our case. The party that once claimed to fight for all working families and is trying to restore that brand after a nearly two-decade excursion into identity politics has utterly failed its constituents in every state where it’s been the dominant party.

It’s not complicated. Democrat-run governments in blue states have over-regulated and over-taxed all forms of business, including housing construction and small family enterprises. Governments in these states have also over-regulated energy markets in favor of renewables, which can only compete with conventional energy when renewables are subsidized and conventional energy is crushed by regulations. These states have also underinvested in maintaining their roads, water systems, and all critical infrastructure, instead overpaying their unionized public workforces and allocating government aid to citizens who can no longer afford the cost of living that these government policies created.

That’s why blue states are losing population. But they keep on electing the politicians who do this to them. And they do so because Democrat politicians possess not only a rhetorical advantage, but also an overwhelming advantage in donations that come from corporations and public sector unions that benefit from these policies. What great irony. Democratic policies empower large corporations because they can easily comply with regulatory requirements that small businesses can’t possibly afford to navigate. Blue state policies, in direct conflict with their leftist rhetoric, enable giant corporations to consolidate market power and charge higher prices.

It isn’t the rhetoric that attracts families to red states and induces them to vote for Republicans. Telling people they have to succeed through hard work and competence isn’t easy, nor is it easy to tell people that the right to private property also comes with some people owning much more property than others. It’s also not easy to explain that fewer regulations may result in less official protection for organized labor or endangered species, but only with deregulation can many companies survive and compete in a free market, lowering prices for everything. These are higher-level arguments. They require an intellectual leap. They rely on reason instead of emotion. Rhetoric favors the left.

But results matter more than rhetoric. People can afford to live and raise families in Texas and Florida. In California and New York, not so much. There’s a reason the median price for a home is $866,000 in California and only $339,000 in Texas, and it isn’t based on party promises. If it were, those ratios would flip, and California would be the destination state it once was.

Affordability, as implemented by Democrats, equates to rent control and other incentive-destroying regulations, paired with high taxes and redistribution of wealth, sold on the rhetoric of resentment. Their so-called abundance agenda equates to a selective and futile version of deregulation, one limited to streamlining approvals of high-density infill housing and renewable energy, while leaving in place restrictions on open land development and conventional energy investment. All of these policies lead to a higher cost of living.

Even if Democrats shed their obsession with identity politics and successfully rebrand themselves as once again the party committed to the economic interests of all Americans, they are inherently incapable of delivering abundance or affordability. Their policies, and the special interests that support them, are inherently oriented towards the opposite result.

Scarcity, high prices, and hyperregulation are all we can expect from Democrats, no matter what Donna Brazile might hope. The question for voters in every state is simple: will they choose rhetoric, or will they choose results?