There’s currently a war raging for the soul of the Democrats. Having been repudiated in the 2024 election, the party appears rudderless and leaderless, with two of its most prominent current faces being an ex-bartender and a career-politician lawyer, both from New York. (Yes, that would be Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Chuck Schumer.) And learning wokeness doesn’t play with Americans raised on realness — i.e., most everyone — Dem policy wonks seek a new agenda. Some believe they’ve found it, too:
Embrace Republican economics.
Or, at least, something approximating it.
You might not have heard about this policy proposal, but it’s called the “Abundance Agenda.” What’s that?
Grok AI, with whom I’ve developed a relationship, puts it succinctly:
The Abundance Agenda is a policy idea that focuses on creating more of everything society needs — housing, energy, food, healthcare, and opportunities — by removing barriers like excessive regulations, high costs, and restrictive laws. It aims to make life more affordable and prosperous for everyone by boosting supply and innovation, rather than fighting over limited resources.
My, let’s see, deregulation, eliminating high costs — lowering barriers to productivity generally — what novel ideas. But where have we heard that before?
Oh, yeah, that’s President Donald Trump’s agenda!
In the 1980s, of course, it was known as part of Reaganomics. And well before then, Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman advocated such common sense. Before that, Adam Smith did in the 18th century.
But then there’s a dissimilarity, according to Grok, anyway. It claims that there’s a fundamental difference because
Abundance, pushed by progressives like Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, aims for equitable access to housing, energy, and healthcare, supporting government investment and climate action.
So is this a matter of using the same means to achieve different ends?
Movement Toward Sanity?
The term “Abundance Agenda” was originated in 2022, and the concept was popularized, by the aforementioned Thompson, a liberal journalist. He later collaborated with co-ideologist Ezra Klein to write the 2025 book Abundance, which calls for a “new politics of growth.” They do aim to be thought leaders, too. As the People’s Policy Project writes, in their book’s conclusion the two men
make it very clear that they want Abundance to be part of a vanguardist movement that remakes the Democratic party [sic] and then the political order.
Certainly, many would consider this a refreshing change. The Democrats have, shockingly, been a party that for many years has had one overriding agenda: attack Donald Trump. Hurl names, too, such as fascist and Nazi, at anyone who disagrees. As for policy proposals, most notable have been efforts to sex-switch children, defund the police, play racialist identity-politics games, erode sexual mores (further), and open the border. The Democrats have been, as late Vice President Spiro Agnew once put it, nothing but “nattering nabobs of negativism.”
So something, anything, involving building up and not tearing down may be welcomed. But what of “Abundance”?
Insofar as it does represent “GOP economics,” it’s understandable that liberals would aim to rebrand it. How else could they sell it to their base? Leftists love language innovation, too. That’s how “sex” became “gender,” “affirmative action” “DEI,” and “black” “African-American” (and it’s why some call “pedophiles” “minor-attracted people” — MAPs). Moreover, catchy new terms and titles attract attention.
But does this catchy title, the “Abundance Agenda,” reflect a positive development? It won’t be if it simply ends up being another ruse power-hungry leftist demagogues use to gain power. Insofar as it means greater acceptance of economic freedom (what some call “capitalism”), however, it does.
Abundant Data on Economic Reality
The verdict of history, after all, is crystal clear. Note that we have at least 200 years of socialist failure behind us. (Scotsman Robert Owen launched a socialist-like commune in New Harmony, Indiana, in 1825; it failed miserably.) We also have witnessed the fruits of economic freedom. Even left-wing ThinkProgress admitted, in 2013, that worldwide living standards were the highest they’d ever been in history.
This was because, too, of market activity. Nothing catalyzes the common man’s creative capacities — and hence yields productivity and innovation — like the incentives healthy free markets offer. That we’re even still arguing about this obvious truth is tragic and is, in part, an indictment of American education. (Apropos here, socialist Bernie Sanders is drawing big crowds.)
But what of the Abundance Agenda’s environmentalist focus? The reality is that there should be liberal-conservative common ground here. Why? My 2020 essay “Why the Greentopians Would Destroy the Earth” tells the tale. “Contrary to greentopian myth, poorer, more-undeveloped, less-free lands have the worst environments,” I wrote. “In contrast, the freest, richest nations enjoy by far the cleanest environments and have flourishing, well-preserved wilderness.” This is because freedom — i.e., being able to choose your leaders — and prosperity are prerequisites for good natural-world stewardship. And healthy market economies are prerequisites for prosperity.
Old Habits Die Hard
This said, the Abundance Agenda isn’t part of the Democratic platform — and it probably won’t be any time soon. Wokeness, an intensification of political correctness, is a powerful, malevolent force that imbues the Democrats. And they’re still winning too many special elections to really get the message.
On a tangential note, PJ Media’s Scott Pinsker promulgated his own theory on who’ll become the Democrats’ new leader. Writing Friday, he points out that the Democrats’ base is livid that they were “lied to” about Joe Biden’s dementia. (Of course, they didn’t want to know the Truth.) Pinsker asserts that whoever can channel this anger will become their new hero. He calls this opportunity “low-hanging fruit” and says that this “avatar” will emerge within the next nine days.
As for “abundance,” though, many may say that what’s best for the country is abundantly clear: that the Democrats go the way of the Whigs. After all, it isn’t set in stone that the two major parties must be the Reps and Dems. They could be the Republicans and the Constitution Party, too — or, maybe, the Republicans and the Libertarians. Just sayin’.
