Jake Auchincloss

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jake_Auchincloss#Political_positions

Political positions

In 2022, Auchincloss criticized the far-left and far-right as "carnival barkers for socialism or strong-man rule". He said that the goal is not to "scold the other side" but to "work on what the two sides agree on".

He has held varied political positions over his career, starting as a Republican in local government, then running for Congress as a moderate, and later emphasizing his progressivism in his first term in Congress. He returned to his moderate positions after his first term in 2022.

Auchincloss calls himself a Barack Obama-Charlie Baker (my add - Baker is a Rethug) Democrat and is a critic of the Democratic Party's progressive wing. He is a fan of Jonathan Haidt's moral psychology and believes Democrats lost ground by not being seen as upholding "social order", which he defines as care, fairness, authority, and loyalty.

He argues that the "cost disease" is a key factor eroding this sense of order and has also targeted social-media companies for delivering "digital dopamine" to children citing Haidt as an influence. He said that open-air encampments should be cleared and criticized Democrats for not being "muscular" enough in addressing homelessness and crime.

He has argued that the current Democratic Party is too preoccupied with policing ideology, "There used to be this old joke: 'Democrats fall in love and Republicans fall in line, It is exactly the opposite. Democrats are much more ideologically straitjacketed these days. We cancel each other." He said that he misses when "it was cool to be a Democrat." Reflecting on the party's pre-COVID image, he recalled Bill Clinton's 1992 saxophone performance on The Arsenio Hall Show, calling it "the coolest freaking thing".

Drug pricing

Auchincloss attracted attention in 2021 for his objections to H.R. 3 (Elijah Cummings Lower Drug Costs Now Act), House Democrats' prescription drug pricing reform. Alongside Representative Scott Peters, he co-authored a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi warning that international reference pricing "would discourage research and development" and undermine the "innovation ecosystem".

Auchincloss later specifically objected to H.R. 3's clause capping prescription prices subject to federal negotiation at 120% of the average price in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom and argued that "price controls … because of the uncertainty they create, are a massive deterrent to risk capital that invests in the next generation of drugs" warning of lost jobs in Massachusetts' biotechnology sector.

Health policy experts characterized these arguments as indistinguishable from pharmaceutical industry rhetoric; Boston University professor Rena Conti remarked that "there is very limited daylight, if any, between what his position was in May and Pharma's positions," while Harvard Medical School's Aaron Kesselheim described the claims as a "scare tactic".

Auchincloss' position drew additional scrutiny because his 2020 campaign had benefited from a super PAC Experienced Leadership Matters which raised a total of $575,000; funded partly by pharmaceutical insiders, including $105,000 from his mother, Dr. Glimcher, the president of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and a GlaxoSmithKline board member, and because he had personally raised nearly $95,000 from top executives and investors in the industry.

Progressive groups criticized him for "blocking efforts to lower your drug prices" and mounted local pressure campaigns and ads, after which he became a co-sponsor of H.R. 3. Auchincloss' office rejected claims of undue influence, stating that "donations do not impact his views" and that he "doesn't make his decisions based on positive or negative IEs".

Economics, free trade and populism

In response to polling by the progressive group Demand Progress showing that pro-growth "abundance agenda" messaging performed significantly worse with voters than anti-corporate economic populist themes, Auchincloss dismissed the findings saying, "It’s what happens when you test an economic textbook for the Democratic Party against a romance novel, it's such a bad poll."

Auchincloss has argued that "the Republicans engage in identity politics that is intertwined with Christian nationalism. The Democrats engage in identity politics that is intertwined in evaluating individuals based on group identity, rather than as individuals. I think the path for Democrats is to reject both".

He added, "I'm worried that the version that Democrats are going to align on is Diet Coke when MAGA is Coca-Cola: dial down the wokeism and then amplify the economic populism." and has instead called for supply-side economics that avoids protectionism, embraces free trade as a tool to contain China, and more closely resembles the now-"unfashionable" approaches associated with Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

He has criticized the "boldface-name Democrats have been leaning into populism". He has promoted an "abundance agenda" and has likened left-wing populism to "offering a Diet Coke to voters who ordered a Coca-Cola" and asked Democrats to reject it. He said Democrats "win by offering an agenda of our own, not a diluted version of MAGA."

Race

In August 2023, Auchincloss was one of nine House Democrats who voted in favor of a Republican-led amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) prohibiting the teaching of "race-based theories" in schools operated by the Department of Defense Education Activity, introduced by Republican Representative Chip Roy.

While most Democrats opposed the amendment as part of a broader Republican effort to target so-called "Critical Race Theory", Auchincloss described it as a "tough vote". In a statement, he said he was "reluctant to lend credence to the GOP's parade of preposterous claims about the military, an institution I served and deeply respect for historically being on the vanguard of diversity and inclusion efforts."

However, he also argued that the amendment was "tightly constructed to affirm that the military shouldn't teach service members' children that any race is inherently superior to any other or that an individual's worth is determined by their race", calling it "an appropriate affirmation for military schools at a time when both the military and schools are under increasing political pressure from bad actors on the right."

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