this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2025
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I don't know if there has ever been a US election that wasn't about change. It's an easy thing to promise because the voter can self-insert whatever they themselves think needs to be different. The candidate doesn't actually have to have a plan beyond that.
The problem with systems-level change is that it usually comes with unexpected consequences and that can cost lives. Small changes may be less satisfying but they can gradually get you the same changes in a slower but safer way.
I think maybe a more helpful descriptor than big or little, as it concerns change, would be 'meaningful'. People have been yearning for meaningful change. Meaningful changes can be big, but they don't have to be. Obamacare didn't bring about socialized medicine, but still brought some meaningful change. That said, it was just one step in the right direction, but failed to be followed with more meaningful changes to a system that we've been trying to fix since Eisenhower. The more meaningful change is put off, the more desperate people become and the more urgent the problem becomes, the more people are willing to accept dramatic and unconventional changes as meaningful changes. The Democrats, to their credit, are occasionally capable of small, meaningful changes, such as investment in rail infrastructure. There's also unfortunately a lot of parading of meaningless change as meaningful, or apologetics as to why meaningful change isn't convenient just now. Repeat that for twenty years and you've basically got the post-2000s DNC platform; a few scattered, meaningful steps on disparate items, couched with a whoooooooole lot of high-octane mediocrity.
Look at the Build Back Better act. It was to be the largest investment in infrastructure, social, and environmental programs since the 1930s. It was big and meaningful.
The first part, the American Rescue Plan was enacted putting $1.9 billion in public stimulus. Republicans chiseled down the rest to a fraction of what it was supposed to be. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is $1.2 trillion. The Inflation Reduction Act spent $891 billion on energy, climate change, and a few other things.
The problem isn't that it wasn't big or meaningful. It was. It was too big to easily understand and necessarily slow to implement. Real change takes time. More than a 4 year presidency. Real change doesn't fit in a campaign slogan. Trump lied about making change and that is easy to fit into a slogan.