"Abundance" ideology

A lot of people are wondering why the Democrats are so stuck in their deservedly unpopular set of ideas. Maybe the Left needs a new focus. Are they finding it?

“Abundance” ideology is making its appearance largely, in my view, because the Democrats have buried themselves with a stale, perverse message that doesn’t sell, and no very compelling spokesman to sell it in any event.

This is fine with me but, regardless of my own reaction, might have finally inspired some on the Left to re-think the product. Hence the appearance of the “Abundance” movement.

Which is what, exactly?

I found what strikes me as an honest (and comprehensible) definition, here (emphasis added):

Abundance as a political agenda is about focusing less on redistributing things in society (especially important things like housing, healthcare, etc.) and more producing said things at lower cost, greater quality, and most importantly, in more unique and innovative ways. Much of the political debates in the past decade had focused on equalizing the ability to purchase and consume these goods, often through subsidies such as food stamps, housing vouchers, and health insurance subsidies.

The problem is that when the ability to supply these goods is restricted (or “inelastic”), whether through regulations or market failure, these subsidies are more likely to increase the price of these goods rather than their quantity. As such, the status quo has not been able to do much to put a dent in the rising cost of important goods such as housing, healthcare, or even the price of higher ed.

The author is, conspicuously, not trying to hide the ball about why Abundance is now all the rage among Democrats who are still interested in thinking (and, as ever, interested in winning elections):

As the Democratic Party and those left-of-center start their long foray through the political wilderness, they hope to find a new exciting ideology and message that they can take to the electorate, one that provides a compelling narrative about the era’s problems, solutions, and—most important of all—villains.

Trump isn’t enough? Well, he wasn’t ten months ago, and Orange Bad Man won’t be center stage forever anyway. Recall that he’s not that much younger than Joe Biden (three years to be exact).

Within that struggle, an idea has emerged: the Abundance Agenda. It’s so promising, in fact, that it's even got a Congressional Caucus now. Abundance is a simple concept: in the current era, public policy should focus more on the supply side; making sure that we can produce more of the things we value most, such as housing, healthcare, and energy among others.

Richard Hanania has a long and thoughtful essay about it as well.

Abundance is usually framed as an intra-coalitional fight under the Democratic umbrella. But it clearly seeks to be something much larger. Truly victorious movements do not become identified with one side of the political aisle. Mothers Against Drunk Driving spearheaded a social movement that made operating a vehicle while intoxicated into a serious crime everywhere while stigmatizing the practice. Deregulation in the late 1970s and 1980s spanned both the Carter and Reagan administrations. Part of the reason the Epstein hysteria is so out of control is that the entire political spectrum is into panics over pedophilia and human trafficking.

This is insightful, I think, except the last sentence. I’m not seeing a national “panic” over pedophilia and human trafficking. What I’m seeing is largely a politically-inspired pseudo-shock wave about the putative public importance of information about Epstein that Merrick Garland’s Justice Department spent four years sitting on, to no one’s great consternation. It’s only grabbing the spotlight now because the Trump administration has been so maladroit in knowing how to handle it.

Still, “Abundance” might be more than just an intellectual fad or — more likely but not a sure thing at this point — the more usual dodge of the Democrats’ calling their same old Leftist ideas by more opaque names, e.g., castrating ten year olds becomes “gender affirming care” or partial birth abortion becomes “women’s health alternatives.” Thus Hanania quotes Prof. Steven Teles of Johns Hopkins:

The politics of MAS [a subset of the theory called “Moderate Abundance Synthesis”] are much more explicitly partisan than single-issue. The most distinctive example of MAS at the urban level is [thinking that] seeks to build political power through a fusion of traditional Abundance priorities like housing and transportation with “moderate” priorities like crime prevention, back-to-basics education and school choice, and a more assertive policy toward the homeless in public spaces. The failures of urban Democrats are becoming harder to deny, but the nationalization of politics means that Republicans can’t take advantage of them.

There are a number of important points in this observation. First, it provides a clue as to why, with the Democrats in the tank, the Republicans don’t seem to be gaining an advantage either, which I discussed here and here. Second, it recognizes the legitimacy, indeed the importance, of crime, unchecked homeless encampments, and shockingly bad public education, particularly in but not limited to our big cities, virtually all run by Democrats. I have long thought these issues were a very important backdrop to Trump’s winning last year and the way he is governing now. Third, it’s also a pointer about Abundance theory’s authentic appeal to conservatives, and why I’m less suspicious of it than I am of almost everything else I hear from academia.

Prof. Teles continues:

Abundance, state capacity, and moderation provide a genuinely ambitious governing agenda for Democrats in blue places, and a coalition of wealthy donors and moderate voters makes them electorally potent. In the single-party Democratic politics of big cities, MAS has a fairly obvious lane to pitch itself as the alternative to the governance of the party’s left.

If this is true, it would, perhaps oddly, tend to bolster both my suspicion of Abundance theory as at bottom a better thought-through political tool, and my sort-of respect for it as an authentic reconsideration of conventional Leftism.

[Full disclosure: Prof. Teles sat at my dining room table a few years ago gathering information for his book on the rise of conservative legal thinking in the courts during and after the Reagan years. I can’t say I know him, but he struck me as a very well informed and fair-minded man].

Hanania explains:

There is a symbiosis here between YIMBYism, school choice, and crime prevention. There are many social and economic benefits to living in a large city. People are often prevented from doing so by high housing costs, crime, and bad schools. Some cities, like Milwaukee, Detroit, and Baltimore, have dirt cheap housing, but still nobody wants to move there. In Detroit, the government at one point was having trouble selling abandoned homes for $1. The reasons are obvious enough, with many Midwestern cities having murder rates that rival those of some of the most violent Latin American countries. Moreover, if you’re going to have kids, the public schools that you support with your taxes are practically unusable.

A central lesson of Abundance is you want housing to be affordable because supply can rise to meet demand, not because demand has crashed. If city living has benefits in terms of making people more social and productive, then one cannot ignore the fundamental importance of public safety and the schools question.

I don’t necessarily agree with all of Hanania’s points, but his article is a good place to start with what may, or may not, be the road back to relevance for the Democrats. Still, make no mistake, what with rampant race huckstering, cultural astigmatism, deeply embedded redistributionism, and visceral antagonism toward America still at the center of the Party — issues I don’t think Hanania treats seriously enough — they have a long, long way to go.