To put it starkly, in the last election almost all the counties in the blue state of California drifted in Trump’s direction.
Whether Democrats win back voters depends on their willingness to reengineer their agenda. They need to address the concerns of the great mass of voters, rather than drive an elitist grievance agenda.
For ideas on how the Democrats can get back on track, the party can’t do much better than read “Abundance,” a new book by Ezra Klein of the New York Times and Derek Thompson of The Atlantic. It is a roadmap for making government work better for everyone.
Here is one sentence that illustrates the book’s approach: “While Democrats focused on giving consumers money to buy what they needed, they paid less attention to the supply of the goods and services they wanted everyone to have.”
The title of the book – “Abundance” – speaks to their argument that we can have a comfortable future if we do the right things now.
The subtitle of this book could be “How liberals make it so difficult to get anything done.” In the authors’ words, “Liberals speak as if they believe in government and then pass policy after policy hamstringing what it can actually do.”
Take the issue of affordable housing. We do not have enough. One reason is that we have anti-growth regulations. California is a good example. As a result of zoning restrictions designed to prioritize high-value enclaves, the number of homes completed each year is less now than it was during the 1950s and 1960s. Meanwhile, the number of homeless in the state is a disgrace that gives ammunition to Republicans.
The solution to the housing problem, argue Klein and Thompson, is to think differently, for instance, building more boarding-house type dwellings. In many communities, these have a bad name and are banned. But aren’t they better than tent encampments?
Many liberals are distraught over the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle regulations. But many, many Americans in big and small businesses applaud, even if they don’t like the clumsy way the dismantling is done. In the case of housing, the number of rules faced by home builders slows construction and raises the price of homes.
The same criticism can be leveled against the projects the government takes on itself. In 2022 President Biden signed legislation providing $7.5 billion to build electric vehicle charging stations. By December of last year, 37 stations had been completed.
Why? States must submit complicated plans to an office jointly run by the Energy and Transportation departments. The bidding process is an ordeal that takes months, even years. Although this is not an example in “Abundance,” the lesson is the same for many of the problems the book does treat: Don’t let the danger of doing something wrong get in the way of getting something worthwhile done.
Remember, too: It is not only that we need more charging stations. Much of that $7.5 billion is spent on putting people to work building them.
A common anti-government theme is that it cannot do anything efficiently. But comparisons with other countries show that governments can be more efficient than ours. The average cost to build a kilometer of rail in the United States is $609 million. In Canada and Japan the average cost is less than half that.
The federal government has shown that it can speed up projects – if it wants to. Legislation in 2024 exempted semiconductor-manufacturing facilities subsidized under the CHIPS and Science Act from environmental reviews. In his first administration, President Trump was able to speed up border security construction thanks to fast-tracking legislation that was passed years before.
Projects often have too many objectives. With regard to the CHIPS and Science Act, not only were environmental reviews required in the initial call for proposals to build electric vehicle charging stations, but bidders were required to say how they would address such social considerations as inclusion of minority-, veteran- and female-owned businesses and promotion of workforce diversity.
As Klein and Thompson note, these are laudable goals. But given the urgency of getting underway, were they necessary for this project? “There is some margin at which trying to do more means ultimately achieving less.”
Our attitudes toward science are similarly counterproductive. American advances in science have come in large measure because of talented immigrants. But the share of international students on academic visas who apply to stay has declined by more than one-third since 2007. The reason is backlogs in processing. Applicants have given up waiting and gone elsewhere.
At the same time, science funding has done what academic research routinely does – favor derivative projects that make incremental advances. Rather than playing safe, the National Institutes of Health and other science-driven government organizations could make big gains by leaping at bold ideas.
Again, too, the rules at NIH and elsewhere pile up in mountains of paperwork. Writing those reports takes away time from doing research; reading the reports distracts bureaucrats from looking for talented individuals to solve problems and finding ways to apply the solutions quickly.
In so many ways liberals have contributed to illiberalism, whether canceling people with views they dislike or, as the book “Abundance” shows us, applying zoning restrictions that limit the amount of affordable housing.
Klein and Thompson have accomplished something rare: writing a wonky book that is highly readable. Their ideas come from deep research in history and social science. Their writing and their message are compelling.
This think-outside-the-box book does not provide all the answers as to how Democrats can make things right in our country. But it is a good start toward thinking about an agenda that will attract voters and make their lives better.