Ezra Klein says Democrats 'need to take seriously how much scarcity harms them'

Ezra Klein, a columnist with The New York Times, said that Democrats “need to take seriously how much scarcity harms them” in a Monday post on the social platform X.

In his post, the left-leaning Klein shared some of his “thoughts from the conversations I’ve been having and hearing over the last week,” including a “hard question” about “how to build a Democratic Party that isn’t always 2 points away from losing to Donald Trump — or worse.”

Klein said in another part of his post-Trump election post that “Democrats need to take seriously how much scarcity harms them.”

“Housing scarcity became a core Trump-Vance argument against immigrants. Too little clean energy becomes the argument for rapidly building out more fossil fuels,” he continued. “A successful liberalism needs to believe in *and deliver* abundance of the things people need most.”

Klein also said, “The Democratic Party is supposed to represent the working class.”

“If it isn’t doing that, it is failing,” he continued.

Klein’s words somewhat mirror those of Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who said in a Sunday thread on X that a purer form of “economic populism should be” the American left’s “tentpole,” but also argued that “true economic populism is bad for our high-income base.”

Back in February 2024, Klein was an early advocate for President Biden's exit from the presidential race, saying Democrats “should help him find his way to that, to being the thing he said he would be in 2020, the bridge to the next generation of Democrats.”

“And then I think Democrats should meet in August at the convention to do what political parties have done at conventions so many times before, organize victory,” he said at the time.

The Hill has reached out to the Democratic National Committee for comment.