Probably one of the more interesting and coherent socialists I've seen talk.

On housing, the dude literally said things like how fixing the supply side is more important than rent stabilization. In a lot of areas, he at least seems to understand how the underlying incentives give rise to outcomes, and how policy to address it has to work within peoples' incentive structures.

He's clearly an incrementalist. Pushing for policies that are politically realistic within a market economy that move society towards his socialist preferences.

That being said, he does claim to have a long run vision of a world without private ownership and profits. I think Douthat could have pushed him more there, because you could tell that he got more incoherent the longer he talked about his long run vision. I doubt he'd be able to respond well to the calculation problem, though I'm also unsure if Douthat is familiar with it.

Anyway, who knows, maybe he's only acting incrementalist to make himself palatable to Douthat's viewers? And maybe he'd act more extreme amongst his fellow socialists?

Still, it's rare for me to see an interview with a socialist who I found actually fairly coherent in their analysis of the economic situation and measured in their short-run policy preferences.