New York Times columnist Ezra Klein’s Sunday piece “There is a Liberal Answer to the Trump-Musk Wrecking Ball” provides analysis on why the Democratic Party is losing working-class voters. He frames his argument primarily around the Democrats’ failure to solve the housing crisis or complete California’s high-speed rail project. “If liberals do not want Americans to turn to the false promise of strongmen, they need to offer the fruits of effective government. They need to offer Americans a liberalism that builds,” he argues.
While it’s spot-on about the larger political issues, the column is off the mark on a few points about the bullet train project.
For example, he complains about California’s excessive environmental reviews and how eminent domain allows too many legal challenges. He frames these issues as if they are unaddressed by the Democratic Party. In reality, there’s a fierce effort underway to fix these problems, lead by San Francisco State Senator Scott Wiener. Obviously, that’s not happening fast enough, but it’s happening.
Klein also spends three paragraphs blaming the delays to the HSR project on the decision to build first in the Central Valley. First of all, not all funds for high-speed rail were spent in the Central Valley. The most obvious example is the wildly successful Caltrain electrification project from San Francisco to San Jose, which is part of the alignment and was partially funded by California HSR.
Moreover, with over 100 miles of infrastructure now built between Bakersfield and Madera, what’s the point in re-legislating this? Starting in the middle is the standard way to build high-speed rail projects around the world. Construction of the first segment of France’s enormously successful TGV, for example, was built in farmland between Paris and Lyon.
Besides, if they had started from the “book ends” of the big cities, the same oil-funded think tanks, the Republicans, and the anti-rail Democrats in the pockets of oil companies, would be holding up funds, taking potshots, and starting investigations anyway. There’s an ongoing effort by oil and car interests from the Koch brothers to Elon Musk to tar the project. Let’s not be naive: they’d shamelessly complain that the project can never be finished because they didn’t follow standard HSR construction practices by starting in the middle.
This think-tank funded nonsense is amplified by unscrupulous members of the press. I’ve written more articles than I can remember about the shameful work of wreck-it-Ralph Vartabedian, formerly of the Los Angeles Times. It’s long been obvious that he’s compromised and just bashing HSR for its own sake.
For years, the now-hollowed-out Los Angeles Times was the paper of record in California. As a result, his biased and sometimes just false stories were echoed by lazy TV and radio journalists. Perhaps Klein doesn’t get into that aspect of the HSR story because his own employer, the New York Times, now hires Vartabedian to freelance HSR articles for them (I guess the lessons of Judith Miller and Jayson Blair and the importance of editorial oversight didn’t sink in). Meanwhile, Tim Sheehan of the Fresno Bee, a hard-working reporter who covers the project objectively, gets more-or-less ignored outside of the Central Valley.
I could nitpick more. Klein uses the old $33 billion construction estimate, which comes from an old HSR business plan. Using that figure makes it seem as if cost increases are even more than they actually are (the official guide from which voters made their decision in 2008 had $45 billion for the total price tag of the project). He also leaves an impression that California can no longer afford to finish building it. The state budget is over $200 billion, with over $16 billion allotted for car infrastructure. The HSR project would have been done a long time ago if the state spent that kind of money on rail.
The good news is the hardest parts of the HSR project—getting through the lawsuits, acquiring the land, and doing the planning—is now all but finished. The construction, while certainly challenging, was never really the hard part, as Klein rightly points out. Now it’s all about securing a sufficient funding stream from the state budget to just get the damn thing built and trains running as quickly as possible.
As Klein notes, and indeed as I underscored last month, Democrats need such projects if they want to win over voters. To fight Trump’s nihilism, they have to be able to point to things and say: “Yes, it’s messy, but government can work. And we’re the party that, one way or another, overcomes challenges, gets things done, and makes your day-to-day life better.” One day, despite everything, California High-Speed Rail can become a symbol of perseverance and success.
