I feel almost physically incapable of resisting the bait about abundance. Like, the obsession with nitpicking the details and demanding perfection instead of saying “yes more abundance please!” is the reason Dems aren’t winners! This isn’t a dissertation, it’s a brand. Doesn’t have to be that deep
It's not that deep because it's not. It's an airport book, not real policy. And yet, people - read monied interests - are pushing that it is.
My benefit of the doubt for Klein and Thompson is that they wrote it for an alternate timeline. Like their portion on CA high speed rail and NEPA. Not thinking of something like "Alligator Alcatraz." Wrong as it was as it is... They thought "If A then B." Not "If fascism then we're F'ed."
Building more prisons faster is not in the book. The entire thing is when we agree something is good (houses, trains, solar, life saving medicines) we should build more of it and only get in the way of things we think are bad.
Yes oh my god yes. Please let us be a party of actual beliefs and leadership again. Not just mindless data regurgitation and “well once I know what the facts say about every aspect of the issue then we’ll move”. Dems have been right about all issues in the polls (pretty much) and yet gain no ground
The facts were pretty clear before the book came out. They are not new ideas. They are regurgitation. It's that they ignored prior facts that's the issue. And why their policy will fail to gain new ground.
Yes the party will continue to nitpick every possible policy platform to insure the losing continues. I’m aware.
We could have real discussion but what I'm hearing is "Vote blue no matter who" but with policy. Mhm....
I agree that building more prisons is not in the book. But while they also recognized that such regulations where put in place to prevent systems of abuse they seemed to fail to see the system itself could be abused. From the end of Chapter 2.
Maybe, and just maybe, most Americans want to hear values and direction and not detailed policy and they tune out the moment we start to fight each other over every single detail and think we’re a bunch of dorks. 🤷♂️
OH MY GOD YES EXACTLY. This is what has won. This is what will win with the existing infrastructure
Point me to a single gettable voter who’s going to vote for democrats just as soon as they embrace abundance lmao It’s a message designed to appeal to people like Neil. Dems already have Neil. People want big, bold messaging, yes, but “abundance” ain’t it.
The entire point is it’s directed at democrats.
Lol, no it's not. Look at the circuit they've been on. Welcome Fest, as I've said before, is just repackaged Third Way and I know for a fact on the ed side that the speakers are center right if not outright republicans. Abundance 2025 is full of republicans, including UT Gov. Cox as keynote.
Look at this list of speakers and tell me it's mainly directed at democrats. It's centrist at best, but mainly it's the same ol' "or every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia." www.abundancedc.org/speakers
Manhattan Institute, American Enterprise Institute, George Mason, the Hoover Institute, John Arnold (of Enron fame), and David Brooks. A list like this isn't about bringing out the Dem base, it's to suppress a progressive one.
…to what end? Answer: to change their policies and messaging to make people vote for them. Nobody is voting for abundance!
Apart from the authors and the conference and the book-do people disagree that selling the concept of government actually getting shit done so that Americans can have nice things (also just basic things) is a better sales pitch for Dems than what we currently have?
When your messaging is by Schumer and Jeffries it doesn’t matter what you’re saying. They can’t communicate it.
Amen.
I certainly don’t disagree with that!
To get people to do what they say they care about. I think they underestimated that now.
Who is “they” in this sentence?
One of the most off-putting things about abundance imo is that it is so incredibly technocratic. It dives so far into the details it misses the forest for the trees.
What's most insulting within that is It's not even ambitious technocracy. In their opening salvo, they can't even imagine a world that has surpassed subscription based bikes and scooters.
We can't even get fare-free bikes in their future, Nicole!
These are not "details." They are lives. I would humbly suggest Klein and Thompson present themselves digging into the details, as "wonks," when in fact they are messy and unserious. bsky.app/profile/ezra...
And we could agree there are many ways to the right direction. But there is absolutely a wrong direction presenting itself as correct. Disagreement is healthy in that regard.
A lot of NEPA *is* bad. It’s the reason the Woodland St bike lanes haven’t been built yet (which is also about lives)
Dems could’ve passed a categorical exemption for good things (transmission, urban infill, brownfield multimodal transportation). But we didn’t, because we prioritize Process and Engagement. There is negative value in assessing environmental impact of a bike lane on an existing road, but here we are
The process often isn’t even good! This feared result for NYC’s congestion pricing never came to pass, because the traffic models were inaccurate www.nytimes.com/2025/02/02/n...