The Abundance Agenda Has A Power Problem

This weekend, I read Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein's new book Abundance. I loved it, but as someone who talks about CEQA at dinner parties (apologies to my wife), I felt like a preacher reading the Gospels. I'm already converted.

Their thesis sounds deceptively simple: "to have the future we want, we need to build and invent more of what we need." The authors spend 300 pages making this case to Democrats, arguing that improving people's lives means actually building things like housing, clean energy, and infrastructure rather than just talking about them.

The book (politely) asks Democrats to confront an uncomfortable truth: many of their beloved policies and processes are the very reason America (especially blue states) struggles to build the housing, energy infrastructure, and innovations people need.

As you would expect, California figures prominently in the book. In fact, California is the book’s poster child of liberals’ failures, a state that champions progressive goals while maintaining a legal and bureaucratic system seemingly designed to prevent achieving them. Readers of this blog are familiar with examples like high-speed rail and housing and need no convincing that California exemplifies what happens when good intentions collide with dysfunctional governance.

While I’ve already bought what the book was selling, I still want this book to succeed. I want California Democrats to embrace its message and usher in a new era of growth and shared prosperity. I want our state to hear the Abundance message and reform how our government operates. But after a decade in politics, I’m not optimistic a book will do the trick. Why?

Because the Democratic Party doesn’t have an ideas problem. It has a power problem.

You can talk about abundance all you want, but until you’re willing to tell your own interest groups “no,” then nothing is going to change. Until the power dynamics within the party shift, Democrats, certainly in California, will remain captive to a coalition that blocks the very abundance they claim to support.

The Groups Who Say No

The Abundance authors work hard to maintain an optimistic, non-adversarial tone throughout the book, but their diagnosis of the problem is clear. The Democratic Party is beholden to a policymaking culture that prioritizes process over outcome. They fail to be pragmatic because they pursue what Ezra calls “Everything Bagel Liberalism,” contorting every government program to try and achieve every social goal.

As an example, Ezra points to the CHIPS Act, Biden’s landmark investment in the U.S. semiconductor industry. The headline goal of the bill couldn’t be simpler: make America the leader in advanced chip production. But he then looks at the actual rules and requirements to get CHIPS funding to show the program is trying to do so much more. There’s requirements to include daycares in the facilities, to hire union labor, to hire locally, and countless other provisions. Any one of these requirements don’t sink a project on their own. But the accumulation of all these rules creates the type of bureaucratic red tape that prevents liberal policymakers from building.

How did we end up here? The book explains it in a way as to not offend liberal readers, good intentions gone awry in a generational overcorrection. They tell the story of how in the 1960s and 1970s, the public realized the negative consequences of rapid growth, especially the negative environmental impacts. In response, leaders passed environmental review laws and launched a generation of idealistic young lawyers inspired by the likes of Ralph Nader committed to slowing growth to ensure infrastructure projects served the public interest.

This historical analysis is nice, but it glosses over the hard reality facing Democratic politicians today. That army of interest groups, whose entire existence is premised on fighting abundance-style policies, still make up their base and shape elections.

Everyone loves the idea of abundance until it threatens their little fiefdom.

• Everyone loves new power plants and transmission lines to produce more clean energy until environmental groups sue to block every project.

• Everyone loves government efficiency until public sector unions block civil service reform, oppose charter schools, and resist accountability.

• Even the coining of the term NIMBY was to describe people who like the idea of housing, just “not in my back yard.”

Ezra Klein knows this. He’s one of the journalists who has highlighted the negative impact of interest groups on Democrats. Just this fall, when talking about the demands made by progressive interest groups he said, “One of the critiques many people made of the Democratic Party in this period, and I think it’s true … is that just nobody said no to anything.”

This is a problem for the Abundance book because diagnosing the problem isn’t the same as solving it. This is the fundamental challenge for the Abundance agenda: most Democratic politicians can’t afford to alienate these groups, even if they wanted to.

Politicians Vote Like Their Reelection Depends on It (Because It Does)

Let’s follow the money, shall we?

Why don’t Democrats champion public sector accountability and reform? Maybe it has to do with the fact that 96% of campaign giving by public sector unions goes to Democrats.

Why is the party unwilling to reform the laws that enable lawyers, those Ralph Nader types highlighted in the book, to endlessly sue projects as they’re being built? Maybe it’s because lawyers and law firms give to Democrats over Republicans by a 4-to-1 margin.

Why do Democratic politicians bend over backwards to appease environmental groups who oppose solar farms and wind projects? Perhaps because environmental organizations and their donors give to Democrats over Republicans by a more than 10-to-1 margin.

Republicans have their own favorite special interest groups, so don’t mistake me for saying Democrats are the only party catering to donors. What I’m saying is that the Democratic coalition is powered by Klein and Thompson’s enemies of abundance. Until that changes, no amount of scolding will cause politicians to violate their own political self-interest.

California's Abundance Coalition Is Waiting to Be Rebuilt

At the end of the book, the authors rightfully pointed out that their ideas aren't radical. The idea of an abundant future overflowing with promise and material wealth is deeply American, and deeply Californian.

Former Governor Pat Brown captured this spirit perfectly in his 1959 inaugural address, "We must accept both the perils and the promise of this magnificent growth. No longer can we afford to stay on dead center, unresponsive and inert. I pledge a confident, pioneering leadership, ready to welcome growth, pursue its promise, and prepare for tomorrow."

This wasn't empty rhetoric. California once had a powerful coalition that delivered abundance. Together, they created the water systems, universities, and infrastructure that made California's golden age possible. That coalition was built by people invested in the future: parents who wanted better opportunities for their children, immigrants chasing the California Dream, workers who actually built things, and small business owners risking it all for a chance at economic mobility.

Stepping back and considering the long-term, today’s Democratic Party may be losing these natural abundance constituencies. Democrats like to think of themselves as the party of the young. Comedian Shane Gillis even has a bit asking, “Do you think your dad wanted to be a Republican?!” But this past election, Harris only beat Trump with young voters by 4 points. While single voters (men and women) are overwhelmingly Democrat, parents with kids lean more Republican than non-parents. Democratic-leaning counties have 25% lower birthrates than Republican ones.

I’m not leaving California, so I’m rooting for Democrats to embrace abundance, but that might take an overhaul of the party’s support structure for determining who gets into power. The only reason I didn’t focus on California Republicans in this piece is because they’re so out of step with California voters they don’t have enough influence in Sacramento to matter.

I want to see a more abundant future in California; I’ve said that since my very first essay. These ideas are overdue, and while the coalition for abundance is waiting to be rebuilt, the only question is which of our state’s leaders will have the courage to reject the status quo and turn it into reality.

[Final note: while editing this I came across Brian Chau’s essay on the broader Democratic coalition’s structure in regards to abundance. If you find yourself dying for more, wanting a more provocative take, I recommend you check it out.]