He’s making it too complicated. It’s not catchy enough. But U.S. Rep. Jake Auchincloss is nevertheless on to something when he says Dems need to address what he calls ‘cost disease’ (i.e. the high cost of housing, health care, utilities etc.) and ‘social order’ issues (crime and other daily concerns and annoyances that people have to put up with). They’re not exactly populist rallying cries. But at least they’re not century-old political ideas being peddled as something fresh and new by certain young ones who don’t know any better. … And Auchincloss and his wonky ideas are attracting a moderate amount of attention of late, most recently from Greg Ip at the WSJ. … Considered a potential candidate for the U.S. Senate (or whatever), Auchincloss has also attracted the recent attention of the NYT’s Ezra ‘Abundance’ Klein, the Herald’s Joe Battenfeld, and the Globe’s Joan Vennochi and Carine Hajjar. 

Btw: I didn’t know Auchincloss was a fan of Jonathan Haidt, author of one of my all-time favorite political books “The Righteous Mind.” 

Update — From a HB reader, re J.A.: “It is unfortunate that a person with evident common sense has to cloak it in phrases like ‘cost disease’ which obscure rather than illuminate what needs to be done.    I felt the same way about Ezra Klein describing ‘Abundance’ – he evidently could only get people to perk up by describing how the Democratic NIMBY attitude impedes ‘sustainable’ green energy projects (which are unlikely to lead to abundance).    Ezra was devastatingly effective on a Jon Stewart podcast (see below – conversation starts at 5:40) demonstrating how the Dem/Liberal Process prevents anything from getting done – a major cause of ‘Cost Disease’ and why young people can’t buy homes and form families in Massachusetts.”