When the Democrats dropped popular positions, Trump picked them up, and now there is nowhere for the Democrats to go back to, because they would have to agree with Trump. "cutting back on the environmental reviews, strict zoning, labor rules and other obstacles..." That's Trump's platform! The alternative being advocated on cultural issues is to walk back support for wildly unpopular positions ranging from BLM to DEI to Trans Militancy to Open Borders. That's also Trump's platform! So, Democrats are stuck between wildly unpopular positions and agreeing with the opposition. No wonder they can't agree on a new direction. All they have is "Trump and his supporters are Hitler," and unfortunately, we saw yesterday the consequences of that.
Clean energy isn't clean. It just moves the dirt somewhere else. China, Congo or flyover country-it doesn't matter as long it is not the cities where the Abundance advocates live. You get equity by internalizing the externalities. Put power generation where the power consumption is.
Ruy Texeira is, as usual, spot on. But how many times and in how many ways can The Liberal Patriot's fine columnists advise today's dysfunctional Democratic Party that you can't put lipstick on the proverbial pig, call it a Monet, and expect anyone to take you seriously? The party has a substance problem, a problem worsened by the undue influence of a radical Left that most Americans to their credit will have nothing to do with.
For any Democrat to treat this as a mere messaging problem in need of superficial imaging adjustment only underscores how fatally serious the disconnect has already become.
Your party has an assassination issue…maybe start by addressing that. All of the rest of this is, respectfully, moot this morning. I’m actually pretty surprised you would publish something political today…the anniversary of 9/11 and less than 24 hours following a political assassination.
I appreciate the level-headed and objective analysis you provide. I’m a Republican…I come here (paid subscriber) to learn a different perspective and sometimes to engage in thoughtful debate. I find your readers to be intelligent and engaging. As a conservative, who 90% of the time is reduced to a racist, Nazi, Fascist, cult member, I seek out opportunities to exchange ideas with people who seem to be operating in good faith. The objective always being to inspire someone to consider an alternative point of view and to perhaps re-consider their assumptions of people who do think differently.
Charlie Kirk did that as well…always with a smile and with love in his heart, and he was killed for it. His wife was made a widow for it, and his young children will grow up without a father for it.
Like millions of Americans, I am heart-broken this morning. I did not sleep last night. And more than sad, at least right now, I am very, very angry. There is no 'whataboutism here'…this is not a ‘both sides’ issue. There is one side that demonizes the other, that is intolerant of other views, who view words as violence and view actual violence as acceptable in the right circumstances.
Until the Democrat party addresses this, meaningfully confronts it with more than empty rhetoric, I consider the party to have forfeited its right to govern. There is a moral rot in your ranks, which your policies and liberal politicians, pundits, and influencers have nurtured.
Charlie Kirk’s death, while tragic, serves as a warning. We are on the brink. Two assassins attempted to kill president Trump. Just imagine where we’d be had they succeeded.
We are in a very dark place. If you pray, please pray for Charlie and that our country can find a way out of this.
I watched only snippets of Kirk, and found him interesting. At times too condescending from the political right, but that's pretty hard to avoid when you hear these young "progressives" on campuses.
The comment sections of the Facebook pages of the NYT and WaPo are chock full of praise for the murder. It is shocking but not surprising. I'm one of those pissed-off independent former Democrats who left about a decade ago when I saw the party I once called home abandon just about everything that had made my stick with them for 40 years.
I can't call myself a Republican -- once burned, twice shy -- but I sure hope the Republicans realize what a perilous situation this has become, and play it as smart as they can. Above all, if they ever really want us to switch, someone(s) will prevail on Trump to call off the trolling. I find it increasingly offputting. The man needs to quit it with the Dennis the Menace act. In the absence of that wish coming true, I'll be watching J.D. Vance very closely,
Another great article. I love the first point “get out of jail card”. The Democrat leaders are a bit clueless and/or spineless that they cannot see what you are saying. One of the things that I believe gets in their way is ever admitting that their opponent (ie Trunp) has been right about several things or that they have been wrong. If they don’t change they may be a long time in the wilderness
Bullseye. Have read that only a small fraction of Americans realize electricity is a delivery system, not energy. The power must come from somewhere. Thus the occasional diesel generator, sitting next to an EV charging station. Moreover, energy produced in the US is some of the cleanest in the world. Oil is always coming out of the ground, somewhere on the globe. Better to extract it in the West, where it is removed in a far cleaner manner.
Not just Abundance Dems, but the world is running headlong into energy reality. Germany, long the economic engine of the EU, is in its' 3rd year of economic contraction, owing largely to crazy climate polices, the loss of their nuclear energy and the disappearance of cheap Russian oil. Idle German factories are not only leveling the living standards of previously wealthy Germans, they leave the entire EU working without a net.
At home, new versions of Solyndra are about to start falling from the sky. As government subsidies disappear, Green corporate bankruptcies are going to soar. The economic deaths will prove many Green companies, founded in a sea of Biden handouts, are really just unsustainable fantasies, without taxpayers perpetually picking up the very expensive tab.
If the professional managerial left had a good idea they wouldn't need to attach a new name to it.
Reduce the rat's nest of regulations, and streamline permits? Great! Safe nukes? Sure. Technology and cheaper greener energy? You betchem.
Abundance of low wage subservient workers flooding the labor market for service work combined with an abundance of high quality cheap imports? well not until it's combined with a less abundant work week, more abundant health care, a much higher min wage, an end to homelessness, no more stabbing Ukrainian immigrant women, secure employment with a retirement, and a route to doing better than our parents.
I think abundance is a word destined to enjoy a short life. Even those lefty socialist types don't like it, 3% of the population is not enough to win elections.
The whole Abundance! idea has always struck me as a feel-good slogan embraced by the virtue-signalling clueless, rather than a serious policy platform. Am I the only one who suspects that the term “Abundance” was designed by committee to have “maximum impact” on “voter perception” of the Democratic Party?
Then there’s the hypocrisy built into it. The people touting abundance are the same ones who continue to define Trump voters as stupid racists who are knuckle-dragging the country into fascism. I’m supposed to believe that suddenly they’re embracing people they have contempt for? Or is it only an embrace on the D’s terms? So, business as usual?
As Texeira says here, they’re using it to paper over their toxic ideas.
The entire movement seems prefabricated. At best, it hints at a dim awareness that a millions of people are unhappy with Dem policies, mixed with denial about why. And it’s a desperate attempt to be seen to be doing something without actually having to do something.
It's worth touching on the conversation Ezra Klein had with Jon Stewart to understand that the average brunch liberal would be truly astounded at the cluster-eff that is our current regulatory environment. The futility of the abundance movement lies not in the sincerity of people like Ezra Klein, but in the fact that they are attempting to make the Democratic Party a vessel for the abundance agenda. At best, we could see smaller blue cities (likely in red states) build a few more townhouses. However, what we really need is a full-blown nationwide overhaul that establishes US energy dominance which is necessary to win the AI arms race. The only realistic way that happens in 2025 is a brute force political battle between Trump allies and the sclerotic, entrenched bureaucracy which is categorically a client class of the Democratic Party. We can't wait another 5-10 years for a political realignment where abundance becomes a truly bipartisan issue.
An important side note is that law and order goes hand-in-hand with abundance. You can't have abundance when we have hundreds of zip codes that are unlivable because a critical mass of a major Democratic Party client class is unwilling to interact safely with the general public.
If you spend any time in pro-Second Amendment circles you’ll find a plethora of anecdotes about leftists trying to buy a firearm, getting angry about all the hoops they have to jump through and blaming the guy behind the counter.
“The contrast between what most liberal Democrats, including abundance advocates, want such voters to want and what they actually do want is a fundamental problem.“
Why is listening to the voters so hard? Why is promoting their priorities out of the question? Look at the voters top three issues and work to deal with them.
Although I came to TLP after your extremely astute takedown of pre-election Dem CW on , I think, Pod Save America , i think you are missing someone really important with Abundance. You seem to be seeing what Kkein, Thompson, and others have as mostly a yuppie Green wet dream, with overtones of elitism. What I saw in reading " Abundanance" and related stuff was, over, and over, and over again how excessive and unnecessary regulation had made everything from housing to high speed rail unaffordable and/or eternally incompetent. And thatcthis could be substantially resolved not by abolishing sensible regulations, but by prioritizing their completion, or eliminating them when excessively duplicatcaive, or weighted down by NIMBYISM. One example, given in an "Atlantic" article , would be to contract out regulations completion to private agencies, under contact to complete them speedily, correctly, and honestly, with oversight by government agencies.
The bigger boat you are missing is one that unites most liberals and Trumpies up here in Stefanik's NY 21st District: Freedom. Because of Federal, New York State and, most of all, Adirondack Park Agency regulations devised 50 years ago to prevent overdevelopment of the Adirondacks , it is virtually impossible to build middle income housing outside specified areas, most of which are already built up, andx substantially with short term rentals or second, third, or 4th homes for the wealthy . And of course, made unaffordable for the non-wealthy whose parents lived here. From where I sit, an Abundance agenda that would sensibly reduce and speed up restrictions on housing and other sensible projects that would employ regular folks and small contractors who now seethe at these restrictions, would also be a Freedom agenda that would appeal to voters far beyond the Adirondacks.
My career revolved around large organizational change associated with systems changes. I have been reading your excellent observations on the change in the Democratic Party. Based on my experience, I think that you may be underestimating the difficulty of changing the direction in the Democratic Party.
In that work, a key to succeeding in the change is strong leadership with the authority to take action when objections or roadblocks arise. At least, in my experience, when blocks occur, the leadership takes advantage of the block to eliminate the objectors. In business, this often means firing or removing the objectors. The intent is to begin the breakdown of the legacy organization.
The removal of Hogg might be viewed as that type of action. However, it seems to me that there was no related elimination of personnel supporting him. The key takeaway was simply not to be noticed. This can be achieved by doing nothing or by appearing extra helpful in promoting change, ultimately taking over the change process over time. From experience, this may be the process in place now. The mass of the hive survived, and based on your excellent articles, no change occurred.
Once again, in my experience, the hive learns to” run silent, run deep.” That often means volunteering to do the work of change, only to find it difficult to implement, or making the change essentially what things were under a different name. And report things are going well.
A final point, before beginning a change effort, ask what things will be like when the change is achieved. I can find no clear definition of what abundance will mean. Will it mean that when Abundance is achieved for society that it will be able to provide “from each according to ability to each according to need?”
If that is what it will mean, the party will be back where it started from. This has been a problem for left-leaning parties for many decades.
BINGO! Ruy Teixeira, articles like this one are why I actually pay money to subscribe. Once again, a grand slam home run. Bravo!
From where I sit, the Democrats have spent the past decade doing their damndest to undermine the structure of an American economy that did an outstanding job of delivering abundance. And now they want to proclaim an "Abundance" agenda? It's a good example of just about everything they've been doing: hypocritical, insulting, condescending, and darkly humorous.
When the Democrats dropped popular positions, Trump picked them up, and now there is nowhere for the Democrats to go back to, because they would have to agree with Trump. "cutting back on the environmental reviews, strict zoning, labor rules and other obstacles..." That's Trump's platform! The alternative being advocated on cultural issues is to walk back support for wildly unpopular positions ranging from BLM to DEI to Trans Militancy to Open Borders. That's also Trump's platform! So, Democrats are stuck between wildly unpopular positions and agreeing with the opposition. No wonder they can't agree on a new direction. All they have is "Trump and his supporters are Hitler," and unfortunately, we saw yesterday the consequences of that.
Clean energy isn't clean. It just moves the dirt somewhere else. China, Congo or flyover country-it doesn't matter as long it is not the cities where the Abundance advocates live. You get equity by internalizing the externalities. Put power generation where the power consumption is.
Ruy Texeira is, as usual, spot on. But how many times and in how many ways can The Liberal Patriot's fine columnists advise today's dysfunctional Democratic Party that you can't put lipstick on the proverbial pig, call it a Monet, and expect anyone to take you seriously? The party has a substance problem, a problem worsened by the undue influence of a radical Left that most Americans to their credit will have nothing to do with.
For any Democrat to treat this as a mere messaging problem in need of superficial imaging adjustment only underscores how fatally serious the disconnect has already become.
Your party has an assassination issue…maybe start by addressing that. All of the rest of this is, respectfully, moot this morning. I’m actually pretty surprised you would publish something political today…the anniversary of 9/11 and less than 24 hours following a political assassination.
I appreciate the level-headed and objective analysis you provide. I’m a Republican…I come here (paid subscriber) to learn a different perspective and sometimes to engage in thoughtful debate. I find your readers to be intelligent and engaging. As a conservative, who 90% of the time is reduced to a racist, Nazi, Fascist, cult member, I seek out opportunities to exchange ideas with people who seem to be operating in good faith. The objective always being to inspire someone to consider an alternative point of view and to perhaps re-consider their assumptions of people who do think differently.
Charlie Kirk did that as well…always with a smile and with love in his heart, and he was killed for it. His wife was made a widow for it, and his young children will grow up without a father for it.
Like millions of Americans, I am heart-broken this morning. I did not sleep last night. And more than sad, at least right now, I am very, very angry. There is no 'whataboutism here'…this is not a ‘both sides’ issue. There is one side that demonizes the other, that is intolerant of other views, who view words as violence and view actual violence as acceptable in the right circumstances.
Until the Democrat party addresses this, meaningfully confronts it with more than empty rhetoric, I consider the party to have forfeited its right to govern. There is a moral rot in your ranks, which your policies and liberal politicians, pundits, and influencers have nurtured.
Charlie Kirk’s death, while tragic, serves as a warning. We are on the brink. Two assassins attempted to kill president Trump. Just imagine where we’d be had they succeeded.
We are in a very dark place. If you pray, please pray for Charlie and that our country can find a way out of this.
I watched only snippets of Kirk, and found him interesting. At times too condescending from the political right, but that's pretty hard to avoid when you hear these young "progressives" on campuses.
The comment sections of the Facebook pages of the NYT and WaPo are chock full of praise for the murder. It is shocking but not surprising. I'm one of those pissed-off independent former Democrats who left about a decade ago when I saw the party I once called home abandon just about everything that had made my stick with them for 40 years.
I can't call myself a Republican -- once burned, twice shy -- but I sure hope the Republicans realize what a perilous situation this has become, and play it as smart as they can. Above all, if they ever really want us to switch, someone(s) will prevail on Trump to call off the trolling. I find it increasingly offputting. The man needs to quit it with the Dennis the Menace act. In the absence of that wish coming true, I'll be watching J.D. Vance very closely,
Another great article. I love the first point “get out of jail card”. The Democrat leaders are a bit clueless and/or spineless that they cannot see what you are saying. One of the things that I believe gets in their way is ever admitting that their opponent (ie Trunp) has been right about several things or that they have been wrong. If they don’t change they may be a long time in the wilderness
Bullseye. Have read that only a small fraction of Americans realize electricity is a delivery system, not energy. The power must come from somewhere. Thus the occasional diesel generator, sitting next to an EV charging station. Moreover, energy produced in the US is some of the cleanest in the world. Oil is always coming out of the ground, somewhere on the globe. Better to extract it in the West, where it is removed in a far cleaner manner.
Not just Abundance Dems, but the world is running headlong into energy reality. Germany, long the economic engine of the EU, is in its' 3rd year of economic contraction, owing largely to crazy climate polices, the loss of their nuclear energy and the disappearance of cheap Russian oil. Idle German factories are not only leveling the living standards of previously wealthy Germans, they leave the entire EU working without a net.
At home, new versions of Solyndra are about to start falling from the sky. As government subsidies disappear, Green corporate bankruptcies are going to soar. The economic deaths will prove many Green companies, founded in a sea of Biden handouts, are really just unsustainable fantasies, without taxpayers perpetually picking up the very expensive tab.
If the professional managerial left had a good idea they wouldn't need to attach a new name to it.
Reduce the rat's nest of regulations, and streamline permits? Great! Safe nukes? Sure. Technology and cheaper greener energy? You betchem.
Abundance of low wage subservient workers flooding the labor market for service work combined with an abundance of high quality cheap imports? well not until it's combined with a less abundant work week, more abundant health care, a much higher min wage, an end to homelessness, no more stabbing Ukrainian immigrant women, secure employment with a retirement, and a route to doing better than our parents.
I think abundance is a word destined to enjoy a short life. Even those lefty socialist types don't like it, 3% of the population is not enough to win elections.
The whole Abundance! idea has always struck me as a feel-good slogan embraced by the virtue-signalling clueless, rather than a serious policy platform. Am I the only one who suspects that the term “Abundance” was designed by committee to have “maximum impact” on “voter perception” of the Democratic Party?
Then there’s the hypocrisy built into it. The people touting abundance are the same ones who continue to define Trump voters as stupid racists who are knuckle-dragging the country into fascism. I’m supposed to believe that suddenly they’re embracing people they have contempt for? Or is it only an embrace on the D’s terms? So, business as usual?
As Texeira says here, they’re using it to paper over their toxic ideas.
The entire movement seems prefabricated. At best, it hints at a dim awareness that a millions of people are unhappy with Dem policies, mixed with denial about why. And it’s a desperate attempt to be seen to be doing something without actually having to do something.
It's worth touching on the conversation Ezra Klein had with Jon Stewart to understand that the average brunch liberal would be truly astounded at the cluster-eff that is our current regulatory environment. The futility of the abundance movement lies not in the sincerity of people like Ezra Klein, but in the fact that they are attempting to make the Democratic Party a vessel for the abundance agenda. At best, we could see smaller blue cities (likely in red states) build a few more townhouses. However, what we really need is a full-blown nationwide overhaul that establishes US energy dominance which is necessary to win the AI arms race. The only realistic way that happens in 2025 is a brute force political battle between Trump allies and the sclerotic, entrenched bureaucracy which is categorically a client class of the Democratic Party. We can't wait another 5-10 years for a political realignment where abundance becomes a truly bipartisan issue.
An important side note is that law and order goes hand-in-hand with abundance. You can't have abundance when we have hundreds of zip codes that are unlivable because a critical mass of a major Democratic Party client class is unwilling to interact safely with the general public.
If you spend any time in pro-Second Amendment circles you’ll find a plethora of anecdotes about leftists trying to buy a firearm, getting angry about all the hoops they have to jump through and blaming the guy behind the counter.
“The contrast between what most liberal Democrats, including abundance advocates, want such voters to want and what they actually do want is a fundamental problem.“
Why is listening to the voters so hard? Why is promoting their priorities out of the question? Look at the voters top three issues and work to deal with them.
I
Although I came to TLP after your extremely astute takedown of pre-election Dem CW on , I think, Pod Save America , i think you are missing someone really important with Abundance. You seem to be seeing what Kkein, Thompson, and others have as mostly a yuppie Green wet dream, with overtones of elitism. What I saw in reading " Abundanance" and related stuff was, over, and over, and over again how excessive and unnecessary regulation had made everything from housing to high speed rail unaffordable and/or eternally incompetent. And thatcthis could be substantially resolved not by abolishing sensible regulations, but by prioritizing their completion, or eliminating them when excessively duplicatcaive, or weighted down by NIMBYISM. One example, given in an "Atlantic" article , would be to contract out regulations completion to private agencies, under contact to complete them speedily, correctly, and honestly, with oversight by government agencies.
The bigger boat you are missing is one that unites most liberals and Trumpies up here in Stefanik's NY 21st District: Freedom. Because of Federal, New York State and, most of all, Adirondack Park Agency regulations devised 50 years ago to prevent overdevelopment of the Adirondacks , it is virtually impossible to build middle income housing outside specified areas, most of which are already built up, andx substantially with short term rentals or second, third, or 4th homes for the wealthy . And of course, made unaffordable for the non-wealthy whose parents lived here. From where I sit, an Abundance agenda that would sensibly reduce and speed up restrictions on housing and other sensible projects that would employ regular folks and small contractors who now seethe at these restrictions, would also be a Freedom agenda that would appeal to voters far beyond the Adirondacks.
My career revolved around large organizational change associated with systems changes. I have been reading your excellent observations on the change in the Democratic Party. Based on my experience, I think that you may be underestimating the difficulty of changing the direction in the Democratic Party.
In that work, a key to succeeding in the change is strong leadership with the authority to take action when objections or roadblocks arise. At least, in my experience, when blocks occur, the leadership takes advantage of the block to eliminate the objectors. In business, this often means firing or removing the objectors. The intent is to begin the breakdown of the legacy organization.
The removal of Hogg might be viewed as that type of action. However, it seems to me that there was no related elimination of personnel supporting him. The key takeaway was simply not to be noticed. This can be achieved by doing nothing or by appearing extra helpful in promoting change, ultimately taking over the change process over time. From experience, this may be the process in place now. The mass of the hive survived, and based on your excellent articles, no change occurred.
Once again, in my experience, the hive learns to” run silent, run deep.” That often means volunteering to do the work of change, only to find it difficult to implement, or making the change essentially what things were under a different name. And report things are going well.
A final point, before beginning a change effort, ask what things will be like when the change is achieved. I can find no clear definition of what abundance will mean. Will it mean that when Abundance is achieved for society that it will be able to provide “from each according to ability to each according to need?”
If that is what it will mean, the party will be back where it started from. This has been a problem for left-leaning parties for many decades.
BINGO! Ruy Teixeira, articles like this one are why I actually pay money to subscribe. Once again, a grand slam home run. Bravo!
From where I sit, the Democrats have spent the past decade doing their damndest to undermine the structure of an American economy that did an outstanding job of delivering abundance. And now they want to proclaim an "Abundance" agenda? It's a good example of just about everything they've been doing: hypocritical, insulting, condescending, and darkly humorous.