"Abundance" Does Not Offer a Viable Electoral Strategy

The Democratic Party is currently going through the usual rounds of soul-searching that follows a party’s defeat in an election, but this time it is more urgent than ever. The Trump administration has done so much damage thus far to our democracy, and if given larger majorities in the 2026 midterms and a second term for its agenda (even if Trump himself departs the political stage) it might result in irreversible damage. There is an opportunity for policy entrepreneurs to provide their solutions to the Democrats’ current woes. With their new book Abundance, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson attempt to provide their own contribution to this debate. However, regardless of whether their plan would benefit America if implemented, the political programme will probably alienate more voters than it will win, and presents no workable solution to breaking America’s political divisions and establishing a new political order to turn the page from Trumpism.

Before interrogating the actual substance of Klein and Thompson’s book, it is worth noting that people are paying attention to what they have to say. Ezra is one of the few regular New York Times opinion columnists, and when he publishes new columns people pay attention. He also hosts a podcast, The Ezra Klein Show, that at writing sits at #11 on Apple Podcasts’ rankings. Derek writes for The Atlantic and hosts his own podcast, Plain English, for the Ringer. Both men have made appearances on a number of other podcasts, from Bill Simmons to Gavin Newsom and Richard Hanania. As a result, the book is #2 on the Times’ list of bestselling nonfiction books, also placing high on Amazon’s rankings. Given how concerned many left-of-center people are about the next few years, Abundance and its proposals will be key in the coming debates.

Klein and Thompson establish early on that abundance will be the way for Democrats to come back from the political wilderness. They argue that this will happen if, on the state level, Democrats model what successful governance looks like. “A good way to marginalize the most dangerous political movement is to prove the success of your own. If liberals do not want Americans to turn to the false promise of strongmen, they need to offer the fruits of successful governance.” Make abundance work in California and Massachusetts, and voters in Pennsylvania and Georgia will want that too. This logic on its own is not wrong. When Franklin Roosevelt ran for president in 1932, much of his argument was showing that he could bring his success in New York to the entire nation. But that depends on voters linking those specific policies to the Democratic government in charge. 

So what exactly does the book call for? There are really two separate agendas on offer, which do not have much to do with one another but perhaps reflect the proclivities of their authors (and, indeed, Thompson mentioned in his interview with Bill Simmons that they divided the writing of the book thusly.) The first three chapters discuss the way in which it has become harder to build, be it housing, high-speed rail, or clean energy producers (this part was led by Klein.) The last two chapters focus on the invention and deployment of new technologies, with special emphasis on medical innovation. 

What brings these two sections together, in Klein and Thompson’s view, is the removal of regulatory barriers to allow the government to get more done. “To pursue abundance is to pursue institutional renewal… if you believe in government, you must make it work.” Some critics have argued that the book is neoliberal in its call for deregulation, but that is unfair to the authors. Rather, it calls for an expansive state, drawing on the concept of state capacity to point to the failures of American governance. “Sometimes that requires more government. Sometimes it requires less government. But it always requires a focus on what the state is trying to achieve and what is in its way.” 

Indeed, while Klein and Thompson reference how the abundance agenda might require smaller government, they never actually criticize a government program. They want, for the most part, big-government liberalism with fewer constraints on its action. That means the end of restrictive zoning laws (in part so the government can build more social housing), bypassing legal barriers to eminent domain, and removing environmental protections, all to allow for more construction, and a more risk-friendly approach to science funding. 

All of this is compatible with achieving the goals of welfare-state liberalism. In a tweet, Klein noted that abundance and welfare programs, like public housing and Medicare for All, are “two great tastes that go together.” That is quite literally the opposite of neoliberalism. In all, Abundance is about increasing the power of the government rather than decreasing it. Klein and Thompson believe their agenda can bring rational conservatives to support a Democratic candidate (which was why Thompson appeared on Hanania’s podcast) but, removing environmental laws aside, the overwhelming majority of Republicans are not going to back a platform that wants to expand the government.

Nevertheless, most voters are not doctrinaire conservatives and could be open to abundance as long as it shows demonstrable results. And herein lies the problem for any Democrat who would run on this platform, and by extension the authors. Very few voters are actually going to notice the changes that Klein and Thompson suggest in their book. Cost of living is certainly a politically potent issue right now, but if that changes and voters are no longer concerned about prices, that does not mean they will vote for the incumbent who brought the change about. They will just focus on other issues. After all, even as wage growth outstripped price growth by 2024, the Democrats did not benefit from the changing situation. 

So who will notice the changes? High-speed rail, which the authors support, could bring in new voters, although these projects tend to take more than 2-4 years to build and are generally not useful for political efficacy. Green energy projects could also boost employment and in turn greater electoral support. But the Biden administration did that through the Inflation Reduction Act (which the authors positively mention) and even while there are hundreds of projects under construction, this did not help Biden at all. As for housing policy, which the authors are clearly most passionate about, it is extremely unlikely that voters will connect changes in zoning rules to lower housing prices. No reasonable politician can expect people to support their agenda when its benefits will not become clear until after their re-election. From a moral standpoint, meanwhile, the Trump administration has caused so much damage that the Democrats should try to retake power as soon as possible to begin reconstructing the government. Otherwise, 2028 may be the last time we even have a free and fair election.

But there are many people who would stand to lose thanks to the regulatory changes of abundance, and they will notice. During the section on California high-speed rail, the authors decry the legal processes needed to begin construction, with endless lawsuits to take the land they need through eminent domain. But that ignores the people who live on that land who do not want it used for a federal project. Klein and Thompson both praise Robert Moses, who was certainly effective at building expressways quickly, but the human cost was felt in neighborhoods like East Tremont in the Bronx, which was gutted by the construction of the Cross-Bronx Expressway. People living near, for example, the high-speed rail project will definitely connect being deprived of their land to a government project intended to benefit people who are not them. These legal processes exist precisely so people do not lose their homes in an unfair manner. This is why 61% of Californians voted in 2008 to restrict the usage of eminent domain. 

In any case, the political outrage that will result from people affected by eminent domain does not compare to what will happen if the government attempts zoning rules. As mentioned earlier, renters wanting to buy homes will probably not notice that government policy has changed to make home prices decline, but homeowners will. According to the Richmond Fed, between the 25th and 99th percentile of household wealth, housing is the largest component of assets. They will be acutely sensitive to changes in their home values. This is something that Klein and Thompson reference in Abundance, but a point they quickly elide to move onto a criticism of environmental policies.

This state of affairs is something that supporters of an abundance agenda should figure out how to solve, unless they want to see millions of aging Americans without any source of wealth. But there are clear political consequences to expansive zoning reform that lowers housing prices. The average homeowner in America is 56 years old, within an age demographic that voted solidly for Trump in 2024. This is a demographic any Democrat needs to win, especially since many of these homeowners live in the much-vaunted suburb. They also turn out to vote at a rate much higher than renters who would benefit from lower housing prices. 

In other words, if any presidential candidate proposes a significant program of zoning reform, they will antagonize homeowners. And they will go down to a swift defeat.

Aside from alienating various voter blocs, on a rhetorical level, the abundance agenda has some very clear weaknesses. Since its entire ethos revolves around removing constraints on government spending, it will be very easy to argue how this will lead to waste and fraud. On a conceptual level, voters like having their tax dollars be spent better. 46% of voters thought DOGE was a good idea as recently as mid-March. Ronald Reagan’s welfare queen line was a racist smear, but it was popular because voters were angry that the government was misusing their tax dollars. The authors criticize people like Sen. William Proxmire, who handed out “Golden Fleece Awards” to satirize government malfeasance, for stifling science innovation. But the awards were a response to a genuine public desire for accountability in government. They certainly didn’t stop Proxmire from winning five terms in the Senate, even as he went beyond highlighting studies on Chicago prostitutes to criticizing military spending.

The other issue is that the supply-side focus of abundance happens to coincide with a strongly anti-corporate mood in American society. Big business polls very poorly among members of both parties, with the pharmaceutical industry ranking worst of all (below insurance and airlines.) Abundance includes a proposal for the federal government to use advance market commitments (AMCs) to support new technologies, but taxpayers will surely not appreciate seeing their money go to a drug company. Conservatives decry the usage of industrial policy to “pick winners and losers,” but this is the federal government deciding how to value a new innovation by pledging to buy the product.

On its own, abundance does not seem like a workable basis for a successful political platform. But we already have an example of a Democrat who attempted to run on abundance. Kamala Harris’ entire economic policy blueprint lacked the usual welfare policies, with nary a mention of a public option or a higher minimum wage. She focused almost exclusively on abundance, including proposals for permitting reform on housing and energy, along with new subsidies intended to increase supply. She also constantly talked about improving the cost of living, and even after her defeat mainstream Democrats have still been talking about lowering costs as their top priority. So far this approach has barely done a thing to improve the party’s fortunes, but at least there is a frisson of populism when they reference cutting the price of drugs and Big Pharma. Klein and Thompson do not even have that element (the only reference to healthcare comes with a mention of increasing the supply of doctors.) 

There are a lot of ideas in Abundance that Democratic policy makers should consider implementing. But these should not be used as the basis for a nationwide political platform. Harris may have had an abundance agenda, but Trump literally provided Americans with checks signed with his name. Elon Musk has suggested that he will repeat the trick to provide the checks supposedly derived from all the government efficiency (in reality, probably the result of deficit spending.) No amount of wonkery can compete with direct payments from the government. Unless Democrats can find something better, which voters like more than free money, then they had better keep looking for their next future policy platform. But as it stands, the ideas suggested by Klein and Thompson are no solution.

Correction (April 8, 2025): This article when originally published said that taxpayers may not appreciate the government’s use of advance market commitments (AMCs) to support a new drug-company product “particularly if it does not end up working,” and further, it described AMCs as “taking a gamble on a new innovation” and imagined a scenario in which an AMC “fails.” However, AMCs are offers to purchase new products that meet pre-defined goals, and so it is not quite apt to say that the products purchased may “not end up working” or to characterize the use of an AMC as a “gamble.”

Featured image is the city from Fritz Lang's Metropolis