It isn’t easy being a Democrat these days, but don’t think for a moment that they haven’t come up with a brand-new agenda — one that somehow isn’t any different from the old one going back to FDR. But it has a shiny new name, so they’ve got that going for them. Which is nice.
Before I get to Derek Thompson, Ezra Klein, and their "Abundance Agenda," let's take a quick survey of where the Dems stand today.
"Democrats spending millions to learn how to speak to ‘American Men’ and win back the working class," the Independent reported today, with party leaders holed up "in luxury hotel rooms on a strategy codenamed SAM, or 'Speaking with American Men: A Strategic Plan.'"
Yeah, that'll work.
These guys are going to spend $20 million trying to convince men to rejoin a party whose unofficial anthem is "Lola" — Girls will be boys, and boys will be girls / It's a mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world — but don't be shocked. This is, after all, the same party that last fall praised Gov. Jazz Hands for his "stereotypically masculine traits."
The Democrats have guys like Walz, who is maybe one handful of confetti away from Rip Taylor. Republicans? Their top guy’s third wife is also his second supermodel. How are you gonna compete for the male vote like that?
Or, as Glenn Reynolds put it on Monday, "I dunno, maybe you guys should stop totally sucking?"
Sage advice, if not quite the delivery one expects from a professor of constitutional law. But that's exactly why I read Instapundit for years before I started writing there.
The only bright spot for the Democrats consists of out-of-control judges issuing one nationwide temporary restraining order after another against the Trump administration, effectively conjuring out of thin air a judicial veto over the agenda of a duly elected president. That will last only as long as the Supreme Court or Congress decides to let it last — or until Trump has had enough and goes full Andrew Jackson.
It would be better for our institutions and social cohesion if SCOTUS or Congress stepped up, but I'm not holding my breath. Absent wisdom from one of the other two branches, "the court has made its decision, now let it enforce it," will be the new normal.
But I digress.
Most worrisome for the Dems, according to a weekend report in the New York Times, is the party's "erosion of working-class support — among Black, white and Latino voters alike — has unnerved every ideological wing of the Democratic Party."
Democrats losing working-class voters is like Your Friendly Neighborhood VodkaPundit losing interest in martinis — are they dead and just haven't noticed yet?
Their brand is toast. Enter Thompson, Klein, and the Abundance Agenda.
And Another Thing: Seriously, if you have a little ice, gin, vermouth, and something tasty to stick on the end of a cocktail spear, we could make some magic happen. Yes, at this time of day.
Jonathan Chait, this weekend, covered the "Coming Democratic Civil War" for The Atlantic, with a big focus on the Abundance Agenda. Coined by lefty journalist Derek Thompson in 2022 and expanded on with Klein in their book this year of the same name, the agenda is "a collection of policy reforms designed to make it easier to build housing and infrastructure and for government bureaucracy to work."
Despite its cheerful name and earnest intention to find win-win solutions, the abundance agenda contains a radical critique of the past half century of American government. On top of that—and this is what has set off clanging alarms on the left—it is a direct attack on the constellation of activist organizations, often called “the groups,” that control progressive politics and have significant influence over the Democratic Party.
Chait reported that Democrat critics "decry it as a scheme to infiltrate the Democratic Party by 'corporate-aligned interests'; 'a gambit by center-right think tank & its libertarian donors'; 'an anti-government manifesto for the MAGA Right.'"
The Abundance Agenda is a direct attack on the failures of the Barack Obama and Joe Biden administrations, Chait wrote, which came in hoping "to follow FDR’s model, and again discovered it had somehow become impossible."
I have some bad news for Chait and the "abundance" Democrats: Obama and Biden were the next FDRs. Contrary to popular belief, FDR's spending on public works — and we did at least get the Hoover Dam and the TVA — didn't pull us out of the Great Depression.
"Recent empirical evidence by UCLA economists Harold Cole and Lee Ohanian," Reason reported way back in 2008, "suggests that FDR’s economic policy added 7 years to the Great Depression."
Obama gave us a trillion-dollar stimulus that failed to stimulate, and Biden couldn't even get a single rural home wired for high-speed internet despite waving $50 billion around. All three presidents spent like drunken sailors and regulated like your local HOA Karen on a cocaine bender.
One gave us the longest depression in American history, the other the weakest recovery since World War II, and the third the worst inflation since the 1970s.
Even with a Republican president giving Elon Musk’s DOGE his full support, it's almost impossible to cut government waste, fraud, and red tape. And our Abundance Agenda Democrats think they're just the party to combine massive spending without the red tape their base craves like oxygen?
They'd have better luck running Tim Walz for Mr. Universe.
Recommended: Seattle Cops Have Finally Had it Up to HERE With the City
Editor’s Note: Do you enjoy PJ Media’s conservative reporting that takes on the radical left and woke media? Support our work so that we can continue to bring you the truth. Join PJ Media VIP and use the promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your VIP membership!
Join the conversation as a VIP Member