A significant number of commentators have posited that the 2020 election will be won or lost in the suburbs. For some reason, these suburban voters seem to be signaling that they want Joe Biden to take their guns away, raise their taxes, and cause massive job losses in industries related to oil and gas. Or perhaps they are super excited about having a cognitively impaired leader of the free world. Hard to tell.
However, my bet is if they figured out Joe Biden was planning on destroying their communities, they might be a little more attuned to their self-interest. Joe Biden has signed on to a plan that will take local control away from community planning using federal funding as leverage.
Stanley Kurtz at National Review is ringing the alarm bell. An Obama-era regulation that has not been rolled back by the Trump administration is about to weaponized in a significant way if Democrats gain power. The regulation could lead to such considerable wealth redistribution, Kurtz wrote an entire book about it.
Recall, if Democrats take control of the Senate, they intend to end the filibuster. If they maintain control of the House and Biden wins the presidency, there will be no way for Republicans to stop this power grab. It will necessarily put all community planning in the hands of the federal government. They, not the local city councils and county officials, will determine the zoning laws that govern suburban communities to achieve their progressive vision of equity and environmental policies.
From Kurtz:
I’ve been studying Joe Biden’s housing plans, and what I’ve seen is both surprising and frightening. I expected that a President Biden would enforce the Obama administration’s radical AFFH (Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing) regulation to the hilt. That is exactly what Biden promises to do. By itself, that would be more than enough to end America’s suburbs as we’ve known them, as I’ve explained repeatedly here at NRO.
What surprises me is that Biden has actually promised to go much further than AFFH. Biden has embraced Cory Booker’s strategy for ending single-family zoning in the suburbs and creating what you might call “little downtowns” in the suburbs. Combine the Obama-Biden administration’s radical AFFH regulation with Booker’s new strategy, and I don’t see how the suburbs can retain their ability to govern themselves. It will mean the end of local control, the end of a style of living that many people prefer to the city, and therefore the end of meaningful choice in how Americans can live. Shouldn’t voters know that this is what’s at stake in the election?
