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Comment by PaulHoule | Hacker News Reader

What I haven't seen mentioned is the political context at exactly this point in time.

People are freaked out about inflation and the prices of everything rising and I think they're very sensitive to anything that is going to add more expenses. Even in Ithaca, NY apartment dwellers have developed a consciousness that rising property taxes are going to get tacked on to their rent.

In terms of national politics, Democrats feel vulnerable, and I think Democrats everywhere feel pressure to drop unpopular policies that could affect them nationally. For that matter the rest of New York is rich in competitive House seats that could go either way.

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The problem is that congestion pricing has always gotten _much_ more popular after implementation. Riding the wave of decisions made in the past would let current politicians decide whether they wanted to blame others or take credit closer to the election.

Now we just see a probably illegal power grab by an executive which kills a bunch of popular and needed projects while very publicly demonstrating that Democrats can’t fucking deliver.

In 2019 it split down the middle in NY state voters:

https://scri.siena.edu/2019/03/18/2-3-of-voters-say-amazon-c...

More recently

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/poll-congestion-pric...

they found 23% of people opposed the decision to suspend, and about 45% of voters supported it and that support was not very different for D's, R's and I's.

Notably all of those polls are before it's implemented (by definition, since has not and likely will not be implemented).

But it's not a new concept, and it turns out that people like being able to drive easily, having quieter streets, and tax money for other services. Once you go from fear of the unknown to seeing the results a lot of policies get more popular and in every other example we have that absolutely applies to congestion pricing.

My RSS reader just showed me this: https://phys.org/news/2024-06-unpopular-political-affect-ele...

Which seems to indicate that Democrats will face the heat for congestion pricing as long as it remains unpopular, right?

And again, my point is that it will remain unpopular until it’s implemented, but it will almost certainly become popular once it’s put in place.

All you’re saying is that they turned what would probably be a non-issue by the election into something that people will remember and be upset about. That seems like a horrible political strategy.

I know I for one am much more likely to vote for a democracy supporting Republican (if they exist at this point) because of shit like this, and you’re articles says they won’t even get benefit from cancelling it

This is what frustrates me so much about American politics. Fear is the primary driver and prevents so much from happening. If it causes problems we can, gasp, undo the changes. If the tolls actually cause more harm there is a dead simple solution of: stop charging them. Instead NYC wasted hundreds of millions of dollars for literally nothing because of fear.

Not just the US. Look at how Germany took a generation to fulfill its promise to end nuclear power, waffled so many times, and came across as not taking its climate change and security commitments seriously in the end.

It is not so much that I think they should have banned or not banned nuclear energy but that the process they went through to do it was damaging to legitimacy.

I don’t put much value in polling claims that don’t disclose how their question was phrased. The difference between slight differences in wording can be transformational. What this also doesn’t capture is how strongly people feel about these policies. It’s very easy for people to casually support the status quo.

The Governor is pretty clearly doing this with the intent of saving vulnerable House seats. HOWEVER, it is misguided IMO because the political capital to get congestion pricing to the finish line has ~already~ been expended. The Governor, most local Democratic politicians, have already come out in favor of the project and advanced it against heavy opposition. The common refrain, that is a very reasonable interpretation, is that this will be re-implemented after the next election. But if all the voters know that, if we elect the Democratic candidate, this possibly unpopular plan will be passed, delaying it until after the election doesn't help; in fact, it makes it less likely for Democrats to get elected, or for the plan to pass.

In summary, Governor Hochul has now pissed off both opponents to congestion pricing, and also supporters of it. It was a terrible move, politically.

I think the big screw up was not means testing it. If the sell was, middle class people don't get congestion priced, and the rich folk in their black car limos get charged out the nose for that convenience, it would have been a very popular bill among the electorate. Maybe not the donor class but the electorate at least. Of course maybe the donor class is seen as more important to maintain favor with than the electorate in the eyes of the policy wanks.

NY Dems are the epitome of the "We hate life and ourselves" simpsons gag

So the Republicans are already winning (influencing politics in their direction) although they haven't actually won yet, great...

It's what happens when you have an election. It's why Biden did https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/04/biden-border-close-...

If you steal enough of the other guy's issues you win.

Actually Democrats have a long history of doing things like that and then losing.

Look how they abandoned single payer and a public option during the Obamacare period. Then they lost the Congress immediately after.

Democrats do centrist or rightward pivots seemingly blind to the fact that Republicans will not vote for them anyway and that these actions will alienate the base. If they drew stronger contrasts and gave people a reason to vote for them, I think they would do better electorally. Sometimes it feels like they live in a fantasy world where it's still the pre Gingrich era and bipartisanship is much more of a thing.

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