The word “abundance” and the phrase “abundance agenda” are everywhere in blue political circles and causing quite a bit of consternation over there, so I decided to plow into it and see what it’s all about.

What is the “Abundance Agenda”?

Via a May 2025 Jonathan Chait piece in The Atlantic:

After percolating for years among policy wonks, the abundance agenda — a term coined by my colleague Derek Thompson in a 2022 essay — ascended suddenly in response to the deflating failure of the Biden administration’s policy program.

In short, the “Abundance Agenda” is the notion that government can and should do more vis-à-vis public and private building projects, both home building and infrastructure building, especially green projects, but in order to do that, the cumbersome leviathan of liberal regulations needs to be pared down considerably — and that’s where the trouble starts.  Bright blue progressives don’t like that part.

The Atlantic piece goes on to describe the left’s general disappointment with the lack of “shovel ready projects” in Obama’s big spending programs and then later with the lack of anything tangible or durable coming out of Biden’s big spending programs.

They just couldn’t understand why trillions of government dollars didn’t result in a glistening utopia on the order of I.G.Y. by Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen.  I’d never noticed before, but dang, it tracks perfectly with their vision for an urban green Xanadu:

Here at home we’ll play in the city
Powered by the sun
Perfect weather for a streamlined world
There’ll be spandex jackets one for everyone

What a beautiful world this will be
What a glorious time to be free...

On that train all graphite and glitter
Undersea by rail
Ninety minutes from New York to Paris
(More leisure for artists everywhere)...

What a beautiful world this will be...

So they sat themselves down and had a think.  The “Abundance Agenda” in policy and book form is what they came up with.  It’s surprising in some ways...and in others, just your standard redistribution scheme.  The most important piece of it is the cutting regulations piece.  Yes.  Democrats.  Advocating cutting regulations — just the ones to advance their agenda, but still...

An actual moment of self-reflection!

Via an August 15, 2025 Axios piece entitled ”‘Abundance’ Movement Sparks Dems’ Identity Fight for 2028”: 

“Abundance” was popularized by this year’s bestselling book of the same name by New York Times columnist Ezra Klein and journalist Derek Thompson.  The idea: Democrats have lost voters’ trust because of governing failures in blue cities and states, and need to respond by cutting excess regulations to build more housing, energy projects and more.  “Liberals speak as if they believe in government — and then pass policy after policy hamstringing what it can actually do,” the authors wrote.

Indeed.  Hence the fight among themselves over it.  The Los Angeles Review of Books summarizes it this way:

Why is it so hard to build in the United States? Over the last 50 years, a set of regulations and procedural obstacles pioneered primarily by those on the left have, in Klein and Thompson’s view, gone from asset to liability. Environmental review processes cost millions of dollars and slow projects by years. Requirements to use union workers on public projects decrease the number of bids and increase costs.

Consider just the environmental faction here.  Many of these progressive green groups derive their entire identities — thus the entirety of their funding — through the promise of litigation and rule-making.  The “Abundance Agenda” is taking direct aim at them and their livelihoods, and they don’t like it one little bit.

How popular is it?

According to Jonathan Chait at The Atlantic:

Three new books have expressed abundance-agenda themes: Abundance, by Thompson and Ezra Klein; Stuck, by my colleague Yoni Appelbaum; and Why Nothing Works, by the Brown University scholar Marc Dunkelman. The proliferation of such works is a sign of the excitement these ideas have generated. And the abundance libs are rapidly winning over Democratic politicians, especially moderate ones.

It’s really the Thompson/Klein book that’s caught fire.  Via the June 1 Wall Street Journal:

The book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson has been a surprise hit, with a sold-out national tour, hundreds of thousands of copies sold and two months on the bestseller list since its release in March. 

“Hundreds of thousands of copies” is insane.  That’s a hugely successful book.  Most nonfiction books will sell a few hundred copies in the first few months, and maybe one to three thousand copies over their “lifetime.”  There are exceptions, of course, but that’s the point: They are exceptions.

Who’s on board with it?

There’s a bipartisan (!) “Abundance” caucus in the House, and there’s this familiar group of motley fools, says the WSJ.

Democratic politicians are rushing to embrace the new mantra. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis have all name-checked it publicly. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker discussed it at length in his recent 25-hour Senate speech. Former Vice President Kamala Harris and the U.S. Senate’s Democratic caucus are among the many politicians who have recently sought the authors’ counsel. Not one but two congressional caucuses have recently formed to push legislation advancing the ideas laid out in the book. 

Who’s not on board with it?

Hardcore progressives, mostly.  They regard it as a way to take away their power to shape policy.  Much of their power derives from non-profit groups practicing what the right might call, for one example, eco-lawfare, like the launching of a (ridiculous) lawsuit over an “endangered” frog (or something) to stop a builder from building.  “Abundance” appears to be a shot across their bow.  It also has in mind what we used to call “blue dog” Democrats, the more moderate wing, which has all but disappeared nowadays.  The “Abundance” movement seems to have acted as a kind of permission structure for those more moderate Democrats to now come forward and show themselves.

What the Abundance Agenda is not

This is not a paean to regulatory conservatism.  Via The Wall Street Journal, April 16:

A rightward turn, however, theirs is not. Messrs. Klein and Thompson appear to have only contempt for American conservatism, their knowledge of it confined to what liberal journalists and academics have written about Reagan, the Tea Party and Donald Trump. The authors might best be described as Marxist technocrats smart enough to know they’ll need a market economy to pay for their utopian vision. I don’t use the term “Marxist” for effect. The book’s conclusion includes three paragraphs on how the “Communist Manifesto” was right about production. 

Conclusion

In short, the Abundance movement has caused a fissure in the Democrat party.  They may have actually found a way to grow the party instead of shrink it further, and instead of embracing it wholesale, they are circular sniping. 

I say stand back and let them fight.

Image via Pixabay.