Mayor Daniel Lurie now says that it is necessary to foundationally change the character of many San Francisco neighborhoods – like the Sunset, Richmond, Cow Hollow, Noe Valley and others – in order to make the city more affordable. The Mayor’s cleverly branded “Family Zoning” plan would allow market-rate housing towers in many traditionally low-rise, single-family neighborhoods, particularly along neighborhood shopping streets.

But many residents are asking a foundational question: How do new market-rate housing towers, with rents and costs far above the budgets of most residents, make the city more affordable?

Mayor Lurie, and his active coalition of Yes In My Backyard (YIMBY) supporters, say that broad upzoning will bring greater affordability through the simple dynamics of supply and demand. But a growing body of economic research shows that housing markets are not so easily simplified and that in a city like San Francisco, more luxury housing will not lower costs for most, and in fact, could actually increase housing costs for many.

How could this be, many ask? Isn’t this just Economics 101? Doesn’t more supply mean lower costs, by definition?

It turns out housing markets are not so easily explained by freshman textbooks.

The most definitive recent study, just released by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, took a hard look at how regulations like zoning affected housing prices. Their conclusion, counterintuitive to many, was not at all.

The Fed’s comprehensive study concluded: “Differences in housing supply elasticities (regulations) across U.S. cities are small and quantitatively not important for explaining differences in house price and quantity growth.”

The authors find: “Contrary to prevailing beliefs and influential policy narratives, our empirical results consistently demonstrate that higher income growth predicts similar growth in house prices, housing quantities, population, and living space per person across more and less housing constrained cities.”

In short, housing costs so much in places like San Francisco largely because people make so much in San Francisco – and property owners charge what the market will bear.

The work of Professors Andres Rodriguez-Pose and Michael Storper of the London School of Economics, also found that high housing costs are driven by the cost of land, labor, competition from overseas buyers, and other issues separate from zoning. And the authors warned that just focusing on deregulation to make housing more affordable is problematic because it can actually backfire by increasing the cost of housing for working families by driving displacement and gentrification, in part by driving up land costs.

Likewise, in his oft-cited research, Professor Yonah Freemark found that in Chicago “upzoning increased prices of existing housing units” because of immediate increases in land values and that in the mid-term, at least, “no impacts of the (upzoning) reforms, however, on the number of newly permitted dwellings over five years.”

One of the foundational arguments of the YIMBY forces is that if we just “free” for-profit developers, now frequently private equity-backed, they will make housing less expensive. Please pause on that thought for a moment. Ask yourself, when was the last time Wall Street and private equity worked to make something less expensive? The idea that these developers will flood San Francisco with so much housing that they will “crash” the housing market is not supported by facts. The reality is they will pace construction to keep prices high. That’s exactly what Australian economist Cameron Murray has studied. Did he find savvy developers flooded markets with housing to lower prices? You know the answer. They did not, and will not. They ”throttle” construction to maximize profits.

And closer to home, Professor Patrick Condon in Vancouver, BC, argues persuasively that the massive upzoning being driven by the deregulation advocates is, in fact, the key driver of housing inflation. Vancouver has already done what California developers seek – allowed massive upzoning and pursued broad deregulation. The result? The highest housing costs in North America.

Why? Condon’s research shows the immediate effect of upzoning is to drive up land costs making both existing housing and any new housing ultimately built that much more expensive. And so what does the data indicate will happen if Lurie and his YIMBY supporters get their way? An immediate spike in land prices – which means a spike in both commercial and housing rents and an increase in the price of existing housing. (This is great for you, if you are a commercial landlord, or own a home that is now more valuable because the land under it is more valuable. But this upzoning is damaging if you are a small business, a customer of a small business, which now must raise prices to pay for higher rents or close, or in the market for a home or apartment.)

One of the data sets the YIMBYs often cite is the comprehensive study of over 1,000 US cities by the Urban Land Institute. They should read it with greater attention to detail. The study found that 3 to 9 years after loosening zoning restrictions rents did not decrease at all. Housing inventory did increase by slightly less than one percent. But the authors found key benefits went largely to high-income people and that without interventions, like supporting affordable housing, upzoning can backfire because of gentrification and displacement of lower-cost existing housing with the new upper income units.

And one hard reality Lurie doesn’t acknowledge is the findings of his own Planning Department, which predicts his plan will not make housing for working families more affordable, but the opposite.

The Nexus Study prepared by the Planning Department found that increasing the number of market rate units drove demand for affordable units. In short the increased supply of high-income people who can afford the high costs of these new units drove a demand for teachers, childcare workers, and other service workers and unless enough of homes were affordable it made housing more expensive for working families. (The study found that over 30 percent on-site affordable was required to provide adequate supply for the new demand for service workers and others. Lurie’s upzoning plan requires just one-third that need).

And while Lurie and his developer allies claim blanket upzoning is the answer to meeting the State of California’s Housing Mandates, they don’t acknowledge that San Francisco has already approved nearly 70,000 new homes and apartments in places like South of Market, Treasure Island, Pier 70, and the Hunters Point Shipyard. These neighborhoods, generally well-served by transit and close to jobs, are already zoned for dense housing and that housing is not getting built. Why? Because the impediment to new housing is not zoning – it is, as so many studies have found – the cost of construction, land, and capital. The Lurie upzoning plan does nothing to address any of these barriers – and in fact makes one of the barriers higher by raising the cost of land.

While potentially making the housing affordability crisis worse by increasing the cost of land, the Lurie plan takes away one powerful tool we once used to create more affordable housing. Upzoning is in every respect a transfer of value from the city to the property owners. The city “owns” the zoning and in the past, when we transferred value to property owners through upzoning, we asked for, and received, something in return – usually an investment in affordable units that could be up to 40 percent of the total built on a given site. Lurie asks for nothing new in return for his upzoning – it is an outright gift of land value to private property owners with no new value captured for the city’s taxpayers in return.

Perversely Lurie’s plan is also essentially “anti-planning.” He is giving a blank check to developers while basically saying – “you figure it out and let’s see if your luxury housing trickles down.” That is the opposite of what visionary mayors do. Visionaries plan how their cities grow. Look at Mission Bay and South of Market, where new housing and jobs have grown up next to new and improved transit. That wasn’t an accident – that was planned by mayors like Willie Brown.

In Lurie’s case, he says revitalizing downtown will be one of the key goals of his administration. Smartly, he says new housing there is a priority. But then instead of guiding new housing into downtown, he allows developers to put it on Taraval Street, Judah Street, or 24^th Street based on a discredited economic theory and the even less credible promises of developers.

Again, the developers and their SPUR and YIMBY supporters cry – “It is Economics 101!” Well great, run the numbers. If a new unit costs $1 million to build in San Francisco in the years ahead (which is a number I am rounding down) then a basic pro-forma shows the rent on that unit is going to be $7,000 per month or higher. In what world do people call that affordable? Of course the trickle-down theory is that in the future these units will ultimately become more affordable through depreciation – but housing in San Francisco is an appreciating asset, not a depreciating one.

And beyond all these studies we can simply ground truth. San Francisco just unwittingly conducted a real-world experiment that tested Lurie’s theory of housing supply and demand. In the past five years the city lost 31,000 residents while building nearly 20,000 new homes and apartments. Considering the average occupancy of a San Francisco residence is 2 people, that is the functional equivalent of creating 35,000 new housing units – or slightly more than what Lurie promises the neighborhood unzoning plan will create.

What happened? San Franciscans know the answer. Housing prices went up, not down.

So if blanket upzoning doesn’t work, why do it?

There could be lots of answers – but there is one obvious one. Building affordable housing costs money. And San Francisco faces crushing budget deficits.

Promising magic solutions? Well that’s free, at least for the politicians.

Others have already noted that Jake Tapper is either one of America’s worst reporters or greatest liars.

The evidence for such harsh conclusions? As a journalist, Tapper somehow failed to notice that Joe Biden could no longer shuffle and talk at the same time. Then in his new book, Original Sin, Tapper presents Biden’s failing capacity as hidden by some kind of grand cover-up.

How can you cover up something everyone outside of the CNN studios already knew?

Tapper’s agenda with his new book might be making amends for his failure as a journalist, even if his thesis is grounded in a transparent lie. But that is clearly not the agenda of the scores of Democratic operatives he relies on to carry his story.

These operatives, almost always speaking off the record, clearly have their own motivation – find anyone else to blame. Anyone but the people who actually ran the presidential campaign that started ahead in the polls, spent nearly $2 billion running against a convicted felon, and lost.

This failure to acknowledge such spectacular failure is typical – and continuing. Just this week, the Democratic Party said their “Postmortem” on the campaign would look at just about everything but the campaign itself. That’s what you call a cover-up if you are using plain language.

But the Democratic Consultocracy has been covering up failure for years, if not decades, usually by finding a scapegoat.

This year, as defined by Tapper’s off-the-record sources, the scapegoats are the small cadre of long-time advisors around Biden (dubbed the “Politburo” by Tapper). Tapper blames these aides for failing to keep Biden from seeking reelection and for assuring people like Tapper that Biden was healthy enough to be president (“Believe us Jake – not your own eyes”).

It is just too convenient – and frankly, wrong.

Harris, who I got to know reasonably well when she was San Francisco’s District Attorney and we travelled in the same political circles, was objectively highly, highly qualified. She was a District Attorney, an Attorney General, a US Senator, and then Vice President. And while she doesn’t have the world-class political skills of a Barack Obama or Bill Clinton – she is highly skilled.

And she had nearly every advantage. The press coverage of her campaign was overwhelmingly favorable. As noted, her campaign and outside groups combined raised and spent nearly $2 billion. She left her convention with a 4 point lead. She put herself in the hands of former President Barack Obama’s key operatives, and lost.

She didn’t lose because of Joe Biden. She didn’t lose because she was a bad candidate. She lost because she ran a bad campaign. And the people who ran that campaign are looking for someone else to blame, and they’re getting away with it.

Many of these operatives were part of the group that ran Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016, and lost, and responded the same way. Find a scapegoat.

The “Original Sin” of that era was a shockingly one-sided book called “Shattered” which allowed scores of consultants and operatives to blame, with off the record quotes, Clinton’s campaign manager and his reliance on data science to drive the campaign. Seriously, they blamed the loss on using data science rather than their gut instincts – and they got away with it.

This scapegoating succeeds, in part, because of the incestuous relationship between the Democratic consultants and the national political press. There has historically been a bias among journalists for the senior campaign consultants who can help make a story with a quote, or drop a timely exclusive. Now the operatives can market their services by filling the chairs in the non-stop cable news pundit blasts. The two sides feed, and need, each other more than ever.

You would think other Democratic consultants, even for self-interested reasons, might point out when the Democratic Consultocracy loses (again). But the consultants need and feed each other too. National Democratic political consulting is more like a cartel than a competitive business, with consultants relying on referrals for business and fearing being ostracized from the DC club.

So the narrative is driven – we didn’t lose because the Democrats ran a terrible campaign, failed to provide a compelling message, or understand the anger and resentment festering in the electorate.

No, they shift blame to the “Politburo” when the true responsibility rests with a failing campaign and failed Democratic messaging.

But telling that truth requires stepping on toes, not just scratching backs.

Echoing the language used by California’s giddy politicians, headline writers called the recent passage of CEQA reform in California “historic,” “transformative,” and even the normally sober CalMatters called it “the holy grail.”

After reading the breathless headlines, readers could logically reach the conclusion that a major barrier to California’s brutally high housing costs had been struck down and more affordable housing was finally on the horizon.

But almost all recent data show that this simplistic conclusion is not correct; that CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) compliance is a relatively minor part of housing costs in California, and pales in comparison to other issues such as construction costs, borrowing costs, building codes, the size and type of homes being built, the demands for higher rates of return by Private Equity investors, government disinvestment in housing, and importantly – land costs.

The elevation of such a minor reform as an “historic” housing solution is deeply consequential if you understand the behavior of politicians and their frequently misaligned incentives. Because giving our political leaders such a major “win” on such a minor issue gives them a pass to take a victory lap instead of taking a data-driven look at how to actually solve the state’s crushing affordable housing crisis.

It is important (as always when considering Sacramento laws) to look beyond the spin to see the data because the same Wall-Street backed developers who championed CEQA reform are not stopping there. They seek near complete deregulation of housing markets. They promise that a revival of Reagan-era economic policies that gives them a blank check to build what they want, wherever they want, without pesky impediments like reasonable affordable housing requirements, could magically solve our housing crisis. And their power grab rests on the provably false premise that housing in California costs so much because of state regulations like CEQA, and local regulations like zoning. [See Endnote on “trickle down” housing.]

Considering that CEQA reform will do so little to make housing more affordable – it is fair to ask: why are the politicians so giddy about it? The answer might be what else is in the bill – which includes sweeping exemptions for industrial uses like data centers and, of great consequence to San Franciscans, a near blanket CEQA exemption to up-zoning. State Senator Scott Wiener even now is carrying a bill that would essentially take away nearly all the tools San Francisco, and other dense cities, use to guide growth to where it makes sense and to negotiate with developers to create more affordable housing. This massive upzoning is now exempt from environmental review – allowing luxury housing developments on nearly every block of every neighborhood with zero plans to address traffic, congestion, costs, and environmental consequences.

Certainly, there is nothing wrong with removing certain CEQA barriers to affordable housing in urban areas with the proper guardrails.

But just weeks before the passage of California’s CEQA reform the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco released a comprehensive study of housing markets, and how regulatory requirements like CEQA shape housing prices. Their conclusions? Regulations like CEQA had almost no impact at all on housing costs.

The Fed summed it up: “differences in housing supply elasticities (regulations) across U.S. cities are small and quantitatively not important for explaining differences in house price and quantity growth.”

And the authors provided a sharp rebuttal to the conventional wisdom, finding that it was growth in income, not regulations, that drove increases in housing supply. The authors conclude: “Contrary to prevailing beliefs and influential policy narratives, our empirical results consistently demonstrate that higher income growth predicts similar growth in house prices, housing quantities, population, and living space per person across more and less housing constrained cities.” In other words, housing costs so much in California largely because people make so much in California – and private developers charge what the market will bear.

The Fed’s study is not alone in reaching the conclusion that the regulatory requirements that are the focus of nearly all of California’s housing debate play just a small part in California’s high housing costs.

The RAND Institute earlier in the year released the first comprehensive study of its kind studying the factors driving housing costs across numerous areas, including Texas, Colorado, and Northern and Southern California.

RAND found that the cost of multi-family construction in Northern California was up to three times the cost of construction in Texas for private developments. After hearing such shocking facts, average voters, encouraged by the massive marketing campaigns funded by private developers, might conclude the difference could be explained by California’s regulatory state.

That’s not what the RAND Report found.

The RAND scholars found that the super majority of the cost differential in housing construction costs were driven NOT by “soft” costs (that include issues such as CEQA delay) but instead by “hard” costs – such as the cost of land, labor and materials.

Drilling down, RAND found just 25 percent of the cost differential between California and Texas in private construction was the result of “soft” costs. And much of those “soft” costs were the local impact fees California municipalities charge for the services new residents require. The balance included the costs of long delays for city permit approvals and city inspections. CEQA was a rounding error in part because CEQA actions are rare. The one definitive review on the prevalence of CEQA use found that just 6% of new housing underwent full Environmental Impact Reports.

Why does this matter so much? Why not just “take the win” on CEQA and move on?

For two very important reasons.

One, the CEQA reform is part of a broader agenda driven by private developers and their allies like State Senator Scott Wiener to explain California’s high housing costs as a result of regulations – and to fuel their efforts to essentially de-regulate housing decisions and hand a blank check to private developers. They are not stopping at CEQA – they want massive up zoning without requiring mitigations like appropriate levels of affordable housing in return (which is essentially a gift of a public resource to landowners that might rival the transfer of wealth we saw with Proposition 13).

And two, we need to understand the psychology of politicians. They want “a win” and the easier the better.

Actually solving the problem of creating affordable housing is truly challenging. You have to lower construction costs, which means sitting down with unions and educators to train new workers and accept new technologies, like modular construction. You have to lower capital (borrowing) costs – which might mean using state borrowing authority, which carries risk. You have to lower “impact” fees – which are the costs cities now have virtually no choice but to charge because of Proposition 13, the so-called “third rail” of California politics few politicians dare to touch. You have to stand up to the most egregious demands of developers, now frequently backed by Private Equity, who give so many millions to political campaigns and demand increasingly high rates of return for investing in new housing. You should take a look at the size and type of housing being built and ask why in fact we have nearly twice the square feet of housing available per person than 50 years ago but still have an affordability crisis (the answer is we are all taking up more space than before for numerous reasons, including financial disincentives to older Californians to leave their existing homes). You have to have funds to pay for the new roads, water, energy, transit, schools, police, firefighters that new residents require (a giant bill the for-profit developers are effectively transferring back to the public). And you have to remember, California once invested over $1 billion per year in affordable housing, funds taken away more than a decade ago and never restored.

These are hard, hard issues. And politicians would rather declare that they have solved the problem, when nothing could be further from the truth.

Doing hard things is hard. Taking a victory lap is easy, particularly with so many well-heeled developer donors and their acolytes sitting in the stands cheering you on.

END NOTE

The developer-backed groups claim simply building more luxury housing makes all housing more affordable in the end because it increases supply. That is false, particularly in the context of global cities like San Francisco, where so much of the new housing simply is purchased by overseas investors. San Francisco will never be able to build enough luxury condos to satisfy the global demand of the wealthy seeking to offshore their assets. The developers call the benefits of building new luxury housing the “filtering effect,” and base their argument on the notion that building housing for the wealthy will help make housing more affordable. This is the exact same argument former President Ronald Reagan made in the 1980s, that cutting taxes for the rich would “trickle down” to the middle and working classes. The acolytes of “Reagonmics” forgot to predict that proceeds from this wealth transfer would not be invested, but frequently hoarded – which is what happened. The developers build luxury housing – and sell it or rent it at luxury rates to meet the luxury market – which is separate from the affordable market. They act like real estate is a depreciating asset – but it is not, it appreciates, and the “old” units don’t get more affordable over time, they get less affordable. The developers talk about the law of supply and demand only when it supports their argument. In San Francisco, for example, a comprehensive nexus study conducted by the Planning Department found that market rate developments needed approximately 30 percent affordable on site to meet affordable demands. Why? Because when you bring in a new supply of high-income residents, they drive demand for service workers. If you don’t create new housing for those service workers, you actually drive up the costs of their housing by building luxury – which is what is happening in San Francisco

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San Francisco Supervisor Joel Engardio now faces a recall election, initially sparked by his support for removing cars from a once well-used traffic arterial and replacing it with, as of yet, a little-used park.

But this recall is about more than a road – this is about social class and how the voters in San Francisco’s “outer boroughs” feel about “downtown’s” plans for the future of our city. This is about the “regulars” versus the “swells.” What the old-timers used to describe in the lovely lost vernacular of San Francisco as the fight between the “Irish” and the “English” (with Irish meaning working class of all ethnicities and the English as the posh residents of Pacific Heights). This is also very much about long-time residents versus new arrivals. And most of all, this is about what San Francisco should be or stay – and who it is for.

For Engardio, the immediate electoral reality is that his vote to reject a compromise that would have seen the “Great Highway” stay open during weekdays and be closed to vehicles on weekends, as angry as it made his district, is just one of the issues that puts him in conflict with so many of his constituents.

It is fair to say Joel Engardio now has an “abundance” of problems – starting with the long-simmering resentment that many working-class voters of his district feel towards the “experts,” “urbanists,” and “YIMBYs” who have big plans for their neighborhood – including a plan for new luxury housing towers.

For those not familiar with the issue of up-zoning, San Francisco is hotly debating a plan to allow market rate (also known as luxury) 24-story high-rise towers on the sleepy, but much loved, neighborhood shopping streets like Taraval, Irving, and Judah in the Sunset (and on most other neighborhood shopping streets, like Clement in the Richmond and 24^th Street in Noe Valley). In some limited places the new neighborhood towers will be 50 stories or more.

Voters overwhelmingly want, and need, new housing in San Francisco’s brutally expensive housing market, but neither the mayor (who has now embraced the up-zoning plan after equivocating during his election campaign) nor the developer-backed groups like SPUR that champion it, have explained why forever changing the character of San Francisco’s neighborhoods, and flooding them with new traffic, is necessary when the city already has over 70,000 units permitted but not constructed because of other issues like high capital costs and construction costs. But instead of working to unlock these new units in “new” neighborhoods like Treasure Island, Pier 70, Mission Bay and the closed Hunters Point Shipyard – they support a plan to build towers in neighborhoods like the Sunset and the Richmond that will mostly see rents far in excess of what most San Franciscans can afford.

And Sunset District residents certainly have every reason to suspect that the 24-story proposal is more of a floor than a ceiling. When a developer proposed a 50-story luxury high-rise adjacent to the Great Highway – many of Engardio’s supporters took to social media to cheer the plan and demand even more such high-rise buildings all through the Sunset.

Engardio has said he supports the up-zoning plan (with the normal noise about ‘mitigating’ its impacts). And that means Engardio faces not just his past vote to close the Great Highway, but his upcoming vote to allow massive new towers in his district without any meaningful plans to address increased parking and traffic congestion or to set aside a meaningful number of housing units affordable for working and middle-class San Franciscans.

If you think traffic is bad in the Sunset now, just wait until developers erect scores of massive new towers with little parking and no new funds to deal with congestion. And if you think affordability is tough for working families, wait until massive up-zoning immediately drives up costs and further gentrifies once working-class neighborhoods. (Of course, that is not to mention the city’s ongoing effort to remove over 14,000 parking spots city-wide.)

The highway closure plan was on the ballot this past November and while it was overwhelmingly rejected in Engardio’s district, it won with an interesting coalition of votes from wealthy neighborhoods like Pacific Heights and progressive voters from the Mission. The Greens and the Greenbacks agreed that closing a highway in someone else’s neighborhood was a good idea.

But strong opposition to the closure spread far beyond the Sunset and Richmond neighborhoods most impacted. Voters in the traditionally working-class neighborhoods like the Excelsior, Visitacion Valley, and the Crocker Amazon also strongly opposed it. Voters in these neighborhoods are unlikely to have used the Great Highway with any frequency. But they are very likely to work for a living at jobs that require them to get in cars to make it to their shifts on time, not jobs that allow them to bike to a local coffee shop to work from their MacBooks.

The electoral map of the measure (Proposition K) is a near perfect map of class in San Francisco – with the one exception being the vestigial working-class voters of the Mission being outvoted by their new, and wealthier, neighbors.

As others have smartly noted, the political noise caused by Prop. K likely contributed to the victory of several more liberal members of the Board of Supervisors like Connie Chan in the Richmond and Chayanne Chen, who now represents many of the working-class southern neighborhoods that also overwhelmingly rejected Prop. K.

The “moderates” in San Francisco had been gaining momentum, organizing a coalition of working-class and wealthier voters fed up with crime, homelessness, and street dysfunction.

But they didn’t stop there. Now they are advancing a plan for a San Francisco that could grow their electoral base (the high rents in these towers are generally affordable only to tech workers, professionals, and other more traditionally “moderate” voters). But longtime residents see the neighborhoods they love disappear and more people and traffic arrive – and so far it is only the “progressives” fighting for them.

Engardio (who is in almost every other respect the paragon of outstanding district supervisor) might look back and regret his overreach on The Great Highway. A fair compromise was in place and instead he backed the folks essentially saying “Our Way and No Highway.” The same arrogance is in play in the housing debate. Those who dare to say they like their neighborhoods and would prefer gentle, not dramatic, changes are called “NIMBYs” and mocked. Those who ask where the funds for new transit will come from are ignored. Those who ask how creating new luxury housing, while lowering set asides for affordable housing, will help address affordability, are lectured with what is essentially discredited trickle-down economics.

But there is a remarkable thing about elections. The “English” can mock the working-class voters and long-time San Franciscans who asked these questions. But the “Irish” get a vote – and are likely to vote Engardio out of office – not just because he ignored the will of his constituents once, but because now he is doing it twice.

American politics right now feels more than just dysfunctional— it often takes on the air of truly deranged. If you feel like something deeper than polarization is happening, you’re not wrong. The unsettling possibility? We’re not just watching bad behavior. We’re watching brain damage.

Literally.

Emerging neuroscience suggests that sustained exposure to power and praise—especially on the dopamine-fueled social media landscape modern politicians must now navigate —alters the brain, robbing politicians of empathy, accurate risk assessment, and self-control. So if politics seems like it's getting crazier, it may be because the politicians, on a neurological level, are becoming less capable of rational behavior.

For decades now as a political consultant I have had a front-row seat to the bad behavior and antics of many, many politicians. I’ve asked myself again and again; “what were they thinking when”…they slept with the intern, acted bizarrely to attract objectively unflattering attention, or acted like the only thing that mattered was getting the next job, not doing the job they were elected to do.

I often surmised that there was something about the people who were attracted to politics that predisposed them for bad behavior. But while I still suspect this self-selection bias is present, a revealing article published a few years ago in The Atlantic offered another explanation. The report detailed how power and praise were literally causing brain damage, and the kind of damage that leads to the classic types of bad behavior we see in politics.

Why were they sleeping with the intern? Because their brain chemistry had been altered in such a way to make them think they would never get caught. Why did they debase themselves with performative antics? Because they were addicted to attention. And why were they so unwilling to do the hard work of making the world better now rather than constantly positioning for the next office? Because they had become praise junkies and were already paranoid about finding the next “fix”.

Like many reports that could disrupt the status quo, this article did not get the attention it deserved – and I encourage you to read and share it. It explains so much.

But going deeper into the damaged brains of politicians, sadly you find more.

Praise: The Addictive Neurotoxin

Dacher Keltner at UC Berkeley spent decades studying how power changes human behavior. His conclusion? Power creates the “same effects on the brain as a traumatic brain injury.” Subjects in his studies became more impulsive, less empathetic, and increasingly disconnected from social cues.

Sound familiar?

We used to talk about politicians “losing touch.” Now we can actually measure it. Sukhvinder Obhi’s neuroscience lab found that when people feel powerful—even temporarily—their brains stop simulating the experiences of others. They’re neurologically less capable of empathy.

Hubris Syndrome: When Praise Changes Behavior

British neurologist and former Foreign Secretary David Owen calls this “hubris syndrome”—a condition acquired after prolonged exposure to power. He found that political leaders with long-term exposure to power develop an inflated sense of importance, grow contemptuous of criticism, and take reckless actions.

More disturbing? These effects fade when leaders leave office (at least in the UK). Which tells us they’re not necessarily born this way. Power rewires them.

Dopamine: The Drug of Choice for Politicians

Add to this a political landscape full of dopamine landmines. For politicians, every retweet, rally cheer, or poll bump delivers a hit of neurochemical stimulation. We’ve built a system where power and praise deliver the same neurological rewards as narcotics.

This creates a vicious loop. Politicians begin chasing more praise, not better policy. If they start to sound more like YouTube influencers than thoughtful leaders, it’s because their brains are being trained that way.

Campaigns as Neurochemical War Zones

During campaigns, it gets worse. Cortisol—the stress hormone—spikes. As weeks drag on, brain scans show actual changes to the prefrontal cortex—the region responsible for impulse control, complex decision-making, and ethical judgment.

So we put our leaders through neurologically punishing contests, feed them dopamine when they act out, and are shocked when they emerge impulsive, and emotionally brittle. It’s not dysfunction—it’s predictable neurological decline.

The Social Media Accelerator

Now layer in Twitter (X) and Facebook much less Instagram and TikTok. These platforms are dopamine factories—engineered to exploit our reward pathways. For politicians, they’re especially treacherous: every viral tweet, every like or share, reinforces the loudest, most emotionally charged behavior. The algorithms rewarding outrage literally warp the brains of the people using these dangerous social media tools.

From Political Strategist to Psychologist

As political consultants, we need to think about message discipline, swing voters, persuasion. Increasingly, we’re being confronted with the need to discuss the consequences of damaged brains. Now if you’re running a high-profile race you’re not just managing a candidate you should be thinking about how to manage a fragile neurochemical ecosystem.

Sadly, in my experience, political consultants are a very large part of the problem – and in some respects the “pushers” in this equation while the politicians are the “users.”

I’ve seen again and again consultants manipulate their own clients by offering a “hit” of praise – when the exact opposite was what their clients really needed. But this serves the interest of consultants – after all most consultants have a self-interest in a client focusing on the next (bigger) race. And frankly a politician strung out on praise is easier to manage than a fully functioning “sober” leader. And for the politicians, doing the harder, and neurologically safer, work of filling the potholes or dealing with other real-world problems is less rewarding than praise seeking behaviors.

So What Do We Do?

I have seen a small handful of politicians survive politics and come out whole on the other side. But I have never seen a single person improved by politics. The dangerous neurochemical consequences of adultered praise seems to be the root of the problem.

What do we do?

First, recognize this is not new. The Ancient Greeks, the originators of democracy, studied how power corrupts. They were observing neurochemical changes in the brains of ancient politicians high on the feedback from the Agora.

Second, recognize that the shouts of the ancient crowds are a pale comparison to the addictive and warping power of first modern media like television, then the 24-hour news cycle, then first generation social media, and now the “digital crack” of TikTok. If you can, keep your clients off these channels – hire someone else to do that. Seriously, give your clients flip phones. You will be doing them, and the world, a favor.

Third, actually help them practice mindfulness. Schedule time for them to go for a walk. Go to the gym. Go to church, synagogue or mosque every week. Get a dog. Help them get grounded. I know, it sounds squishy. But unless you want to help create monsters, help create space for the candidates to detox.

Fourth, give them time off with their families and have them spend time with “real people.” One of the most “real” politicians I ever met was Leo T. McCarthy of San Francisco, who had been the Speaker of California’s very powerful (and dangerously warping) state Assembly. The Speaker’s secret? He drove home every night to his family back in San Francisco. He didn’t hit the receptions and bars. He hit the road and came home. And I can always tell when a client has been out walking a precinct as opposed to spending time with insiders at fundraisers or in city halls or state capitols. They sound real because they have been talking to real people, not rooms full of praise pushers.

And finally, don’t be a part of the problem yourself. Don’t treat public servants like rock stars. Treat them like the public employees that they actually are at the end of the day

Decades ago I was working a governor’s race in Alaska, and I remember that at the end of a stop we were headed to our plane at the Deadhorse airstrip. I unthinkingly picked up the governor’s bags and started carrying them to the plane.

The governor’s old friend and trusted “body man” stopped me and said to the effect – “why are you carrying his bags, he should be carrying yours. He works for you.”

At the time I had no idea whatsoever what the man was saying – or at least what point he was trying to make. It took me decades to understand the sad irony: the very things we reward in politics—power, attention, dominance—are reshaping leaders into people less fit to wield them. The qualities we need—empathy, impulse control, reason—are the first casualties in this neurological war.

So when you ask, “Why does it all seem so crazy right now?” Maybe the answer is because we drove them crazy with our attention

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Biden’s bombshell does more than change the trajectory of the Presidential contest and potentially American history. It fundamentally changes our November race for Mayor of San Francisco because in an instant the foundational messages of at least two of the leading candidates now echo Donald Trump’s key talking points.

We have heard constantly from Mark Farrell, and regularly from Daniel Lurie, that San Francisco is a dangerous and fundamentally broken place. We once, strangely, also heard a similar refrain from incumbent Mayor London Breed – who embraced the “San Francisco is broken” narrative to drive progressive DA Chesa Boudin from office and then kept using that frame in an attempt to shift blame for her own failures onto the progressive and liberal members of the Board of Supervisors.

Now – they all sound a whole lot like Donald Trump. And that’s going to be one giant political problem for the San Francisco doom loop caucus.

You may have heard the phrase – Negative Partisanship. It is the phenomenon of deciding what we are for, or against, based on what the other party is for or against. And at this moment in our political history the level of Negative Partisanship has perhaps never been higher. We now have super majorities of both parties telling pollsters that members of the other parties are not just wrong – but dishonest and even immoral.

And as we just witnessed in the past few days – absolutely nothing unites Democrats faster than their fear of, and loathing for, former President Donald Trump.

Harris was considered by many a weak choice as the Democratic Party’s nominee for President until the very moment in which she became the Democratic Party’s standard bearer against Trump. In a heartbeat, virtually the entire party united around her with overwhelming enthusiasm. And this excitement wasn’t just young people sharing memes – it was voters of all ages sharing their hard earned dollars with Harris, who has raised an unprecedented quarter billion dollars since Biden said he would not run for re-election.

Now we are going to see Trump attack “San Francisco values” at every rally as he tries to taint Harris by painting our city as a dystopian hellscape. If this past week is any guide, such attacks will prompt San Franciscans to recoil from and reject these right-wing talking points.

There will be two factors driving the coming shift from doom to dream. First, it isn’t true. While the Tenderloin and certain blocks in Civic Center and South of Market are a disgrace, most of San Francisco has never been nicer. If you are strolling on upper Fillmore, or on 24th Street in Noe Valley, or up and down Hayes Street, Clement Street, in West Portal, or in any one of our thriving neighborhoods – you see with your own eyes that most of San Francisco is vibrant.

But by far the strongest factor will be San Franciscans defending San Francisco to stand against Trump. Just as Democrats rallied to our hometown candidate – Kamala Harris – we will see them rally around the city she once served.

Mark Farrell – who has based his entire campaign on the doom loop narrative – will suffer the most. Lurie has been more nuanced, and his own generally sunny personality has tempered his criticism of his hometown. But a large part of his very-well funded campaign has been based on the doom loop narrative.

Breed is a long-time Harris ally and there is likely some truth to the conventional wisdom that a Harris candidacy boosts Breed. But it remains to be seen if the Mayor’s history of workshopping what are now Trump’s talking points comes back to haunt her.

But for those candidates anywhere on the ballot who see San Francisco as a vibrant and beautiful place that needs to be better, not a failed project that needs to be demolished, a Harris candidacy is an unexpected and powerful gift.

And just as Biden dropping out is forcing Trump to completely retool his once surging campaign, the candidacy of San Francisco’s own Kamala Harris will force the local doom loopers to rethink their core message – which now makes them all sound a whole lot like an increasingly deranged Donald Trump.

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