Decryption | “Abundance”, the idea that inspires Democrats

(New York) A high -speed train connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles in less than three hours. A project up to California, isn’t it? This is undoubtedly what the State Democratic Governor Hoped, Jerry Brown, by signing a law to study its feasibility in 1982.

Fourteen years later, the plan to carry out this new project in the United States was born. Twenty-six years later, Californian voters approved the construction of the first segment of the rail network, which was to be completed in 2020 for $ 33 billion.

Forty-three years later, where is the project? If all is well, the first segment will be finished between 2030 and 2033. It will connect the agricultural centers of Merced and Bakersfield, where nobody really wants it.

“During all this time when California failed to complete its 800 km rail network, China has built more than 37,000 km of high -speed lines,” said journalists Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, authors of a provocative test entitled Abundance.

Sold to several hundred thousand copies, the book is not only an unexpected bestseller in the United States. It is also a source of inspiration for many deleted democrats since last November. He explores the reasons why progressives or democrats are often unable to carry out their major projects.

Among these reasons are laws, regulations and procedures that have been wanted by these same progressives or democrats, often for good reasons, but which have become obstacles.

“Trains are cleaner than cars, but the high -speed line had to be the subject of an environmental examination on each centimeter of its route, with legal proceedings on every street corner. The environmental evaluation process began in 2012 and, in 2024, it was still not finished, “wrote Klein and Thompson (the first is a columnist and swinging at the New York Timesthe second recently left the magazine The Atlantic).

A strong reaction

Progressives or democrats fail on other fronts, including housing. In recent years, they have seen several states where they are in power, including California and New York State, lose young families for the benefit of Texas, Arizona or Florida, among other states where access to affordable housing and property is a more realistic objective.

In 2024, they also saw Texas produced almost twice as much wind and solar electricity as California.

It is therefore a change of attitude in the face of the excess of the regulations and the procedure claimed by Klein and Thompson in Abundance.

These progressive journalists define the concept of abundance as “a state (…) in which there is enough of what we need to create better lives than those we have had. This is why we focus on the constituent elements of the future. The accommodation. Transport. Energy. Health. And we focus on institutions and people who have to build and invent this future. »»

Even if they had the ambition to influence the Democratic Party, Klein and Thompson did not expect their little book to arouse such a strong reaction. Groups have emerged in several American cities under the brand of “abundance”. Two of these groups were created by elected Democrats in Congress.

The concept of abundance is also popular with Democratic governors – those of New York State, Minnesota, Colorado and Maryland, among others, have praised its merits in public.

But the California Democratic Governor, Gavin Newsom, is probably the first elected democrat to have linked one of his bills to what he calls an “abundance program”, an expression that has become common.

“A budget that builds”

Thus, the 1^er Last July, Gavin Newsom promulgated a reform of the Californian environmental protection rules that have been a date, but which the governor considers that they now hinder the fight against housing crisis in California.

This reform was part of the annual state budget.

“This is not just a budget,” said Gavin Newsom, to whom presidential ambitions are lent. “It’s a budget that builds. It proves what is possible when we govern in an emergency, with clarity, and with the conviction that abundance prevails over the shortage. »»

Environmental groups have denounced this reform. They are not the only ones, among progressives or left -wing democrats, to criticize the concept of “abundance”. Some see it as a return of “neo-liberalism” at a time when progressives or democrats should, according to them, marry the populist fight against the “oligarchy” led by Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others.

According to Aaron Regunberg, collaborator of the left magazine The NationKlein and Thompson “divert the anger of the public towards the parasitism of the economic elites and refer it to the regulatory regimes of the States and Democratic cities”.

But the authors ofAbundance do not invent the failures of the Democrats. One of the examples they give comes from the infrastructure bill that Joe Biden was boasted. The measure provided for $ 7.5 billion for the construction of a national network of 500,000 electric vehicle recharge stations. In March 2024 – more than two years after the adoption of the bill – only seven new charging stations were in service.

“If the (progressives) do not want the Americans to turn to the false promises of strong men, they must offer the fruits of an effective government,” write Klein and Thompson.