Abundance Offers Democrats a Path Back to their Core Strength
Abundance rediscovers what made Democrats great: the belief that government can and should makes everyone's life better.
For decades, the Democratic Party's best moments came when it delivered concrete benefits that improved millions of people's lives. Social Security. Medicare. Medicaid. Food Stamps. Head Start.
The abundance framework asks Democrats: what if we got back to that?
I come from a Spanish-speaking family of lifelong Democrats. But in the past years, they've felt less seen. They say the party focuses on issues that matter deeply to college-educated professionals i.e. student debt relief and issues championed by policy insiders, while the bread-and-butter concerns of working families get less attention.
To me, part of progressive values is remembering that restaurant workers and truck drivers (still America's most common job) care about housing, healthcare, daycare costs, and whether their kids can afford college. These are fundamentally Democratic priorities, but they require bigger solutions.
Abundance politics offers exactly that bigger thinking.
Instead of fighting over a limited pie, what if we made the pie larger?
We don’t even notice where we do have a big pie:
Community colleges. Almost everyone has a community college near them. Government grants help make it affordable.
Food. The U.S. doesn’t have food shortages of staples, unlike other countries I’ve lived in.
Gas stations: You know you can find one within a 10-minute drive.
People take access to these as a given.
We can make the pie bigger on other important things: housing, daycare, healthcare, and transit.
Take daycare. The median cost in the U.S. is between $5,300 to $17,000 per year, per kid. It is many parents’ biggest expense after housing.
Child care costs are high because there’s a shortage. There are roughly six young children for every one licensed daycare spot:
Both parties miss a core component of the child care shortage:
Local zoning and permitting barriers that literally ban child care facilities in most parts of most communities.
The same zoning rules that ban multi-family housing in most neighborhoods also ban child care.
Even in places where zoning allows child care, local governments often use discretionary approval processes that can last years... and often result in rejection anyway
Last year in Napa, where there are ten babies for every one daycare spot, neighbors sued under the California Environmental Quality Act to block a daycare from expanding into an existing church building.
The lawsuit claimed that kids’ pickup and drop off would create so much traffic as to irreparably harm the environment.
Meanwhile, building new gas stations gets streamlined approval.
Communities get more of what's easy to permit (gas stations, drive-throughs) and less of what they want and need (daycare, housing, neighborhood grocery stores, or cafes).
One Salt Lake community fought over rezoning a corner lot for a cafe or mixed-use building. They’re on track to get what can’t be easily vetoed and doesn’t require rezoning: a second gas station across the street from their current one.
We know how to create abundance when we want to.
Democrats can ensure the government creates an abundance of what ordinary families need. It takes work to find what's blocking progress in each area, but Democrats can choose to do that work.
Abundance itself isn't an easily resonant campaign slogan, but solving big problems is.
The opportunity is there for Democrats to get back to what they do best: making government work for families.
If you're interested in exploring these ideas further, there's a Liberalism for the 21st Century conference August 14-15 in DC. Use code LC20 for 20% off your ticket.