> While these problems are real, MAGA’s explanations are fake. And because MAGA’s explanations are fake, it can offer no real solutions. It only offers an ever-escalating story of victimization and outrage.

True. And yet, lately the left's explanations have also been fake, only offering an escalating story of blame and shame. No real surprise that, given the choice between the left's message that it's all their fault ("white fragility", "toxic masculinity", and such), and MAGA's story that they're the victim, they have chosen to believe MAGA.

If the left wants to stop this, if they want to stop breeding the resentment that MAGA exploited, they need a more compelling story than blaming everything on whites and males, and white males in particular.

Krugman's solutions are underwhelming. Raise pay for occupations like nursing? Yeah, we've already got a problem with affordability of medical care. And there's no appetite for raising taxes to pay for it. Deficit spending? That's eventually going to ruin us.

Unions? We've already got that for occupations like teachers; the pay is still lousy. And I don't want to need to go to the hospital when there's a nursing strike.

But at least he's admitting that there's a real problem, and that what the Democrats have been doing hasn't addressed it, either practically or politically. That's something.