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Episode 223: The Empire Strikes First, Part II — ‘Abundance’ Pablum as Counter to Left Populism

Added 2025-06-11 13:59:33 +0000 UTC

“Can Democrats Learn to Dream Big Again?,” wonders Samuel Moyn in the New York Times. “The Democrats Are Finally Landing on a New Buzzword. It’s Actually Compelling,” argues Slate staff writer Henry Grabar. “Do Democrats Need to Learn How to Build?,” asks Benjamin Wallace-Wells in The New Yorker.

For the past few months, news and editorial rooms have been abuzz with talk about a new, grand vision for the Democratic Party: abundance. Abundance, according to its media promoters—chiefly NYT’s Ezra Klein and The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson—is a political agenda that espouses the creation of more of everything we need: housing, education, jobs, and energy, to name a few examples. To accomplish this, we are told, we must aim to eliminate bureaucratic red tape that has for so long bogged down production, innovation, and capital’s innate capacity and desire to provide a better, more abundant life.

It’s an alluring promise—if suspiciously vague and devoid of class politics: obviously, doing more good things is better than doing fewer good things, right? Who can argue with this generic premise? Who wouldn’t want to support an agenda that’s effectively the Do Good Things Agenda?

Scratch the surface, however, and what one finds it isn’t just a folky, common sense treatise against red tape, but something more sinister and dishonest, something more slick and shallow. What one gets is a standard entryist strategy that begins with a so-vague-it’s-incontestable hook—illogical or corrupt regulations are bad—the quickly pivots into a Silicon Valley flattering, and often Silicon Valley funded, political agenda, a narrative designed to blame inequality and our objectively broken political system on too much regulation and “bureaucracy” rather than there being too much power in the hands of an elite few.

What one gets, in other words, is a counter to left populism. What one gets is the latest attempt to reheat neoliberalism as something fresh, innovative and able to excite the voting base.

Last week, in Part I of a two-part series we’re calling “The Empire Strikes First,” we discussed the Democrats’ post-2024 apologia, propped up by scapegoats ranging from trans people to “economic headwinds” to Harris actually being too far left.

On this episode, Part II of the series, we explore what comes next: the 2028 Democratic strategy and the so-called abundance agenda that is increasingly shaping it. We’ll examine how Democratic media influencers and policymakers use lofty, seemingly progressive rhetoric to rehabilitate and re-sell the same old neoliberal deregulation, privatization, and austerity narrative that got us here in the first place, and ensure that no left-wing movement—that could, god forbid, require a meaningful change in the party—get in their way.

Our guests are the Revolving Door Project's Kenny Stancil and Henry Burke.

Guests

Kenny Stancil (@kennystancil) and Henry Burke (@henryburke) are senior researchers at the Revolving Door Project.

Kenny Stancil's writing has been published in The Sling, Jacobin, The American Prospect, Rolling Stone, and The New Republic, among other outlets.

Henry Burke has been published in The American Prospect, Common Dreams, and other outlets.

Show Notes

WelcomeFest’s Billionaire Backers Reveal Its True Mission

Henry Burke and Vishal Shankar | June 4, 2025 | Common Dreams

Why Big Oil and Big Tech Are Big Fans of Abundance

Kenny Stancil | June 2, 2025 | The Sling

“We Need Five More Joe Manchins”: Centrists Gathered in DC to Try to Fix Democrats’ Woes

Syvie McNamara | June 9, 2025 | Washingtonian

Centrist Democrats want a fight with the left

Davie Weigel | June 4, 2025 | Semafor

Uh Oh! Abundance Group Does Not Like Abundance

Henry Burke | April 25, 2025 | Revolving Door Project

The Real Path to Abundance

Sandeep Vaheesan | May 22, 2025 | Boston Review

Why the “Abundance Agenda” Could Sink the Democratic Party

Mike Gecan | May 7, 2025 | The Nation

When It Comes to Building New Housing, Abundance Is More Like Avoidance

Mike Gecan | May 7, 2025 | The Nation

Make America Build Again

Noah Kazis | March 27, 2025 | The Guardian

An Abundance of Credulity

Hannah Story Brown | March 26, 2025 | The American Prospect

The Abundance Agenda

Matt Bruenig | March 24, 2025 | Jacobin

The Meager Agenda of Abundance Liberals

Paul Glastris and Nate Weisberg | March 23, 2025 | Washington Monthly

An Abundance of Ambiguity

Zephyr Teachout | March 23, 2025 | Washington Monthly

The Abundance Doctrine

Mike Konczal | Spring 2025 | Democracy

The problems of “Abundance”

Tony Dutzik | March 20, 2025 | Frontier Group

What’s the Matter with Abundance?

Malcolm Harris | March 18, 2025 | The Baffler

Matt Yglesias Is Confidently Wrong About Everything

Nathan J. Robinson | December 3, 2024 | Current Affairs

The Abundance Agenda: Neoliberalism’s Rebrand

Dylan Gyauch-Lewis | November 26, 2024 | The American Prospect

Democratic Elites Blame Everyone But Themselves for Historic Collapse

Adam Johnson | November 8, 2024 | In These Times

The Kochs Funded Third Way to Push Free Trade to Democrats, New Book Says

Ryan Grim and Andrew Perez | August 13, 2019 | The Intercept

YIMBYs Exposed: The Techies Hawking Free Market “Solutions” to the Nation’s Housing Crisis

Toshio Meronek | May 21, 2018 | In These Times

Third Way: ‘Majority of Our Financial Support’ From Wall Street, Business Executives

Lee Fang | December 11, 2013 | The Nation

How the DLC Does It

Robert Dreyfuss | December 19, 2001 | The American Prospect

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Transcript

For a full transcript of this episode, go here. You can also find transcripts of past episodes, live shows, Beg-a-Thons, Interviews and News Briefs here.

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