Abundance for Normies
Prof. Steve Teles talks abundance with two frontline House Democrats and Inclusive Abundance’s Brianna Johnson.
Steve Teles came to WelcomeFest to discuss the past, present, and future of moderation and abundance. Teles, a Johns Hopkins professor and Niskanen Center senior fellow, told the room he spent his college years e-mailing the DLC and PPI to get transcripts of their speeches and held onto his copy of Galston and Kamarck’s “The Politics of Evasion” like a sacred document.
He currently frames his preferences around “civic abundance.” His definition: “abundance for normies, abundance for people who represent normal, middle-class, mostly suburban people in politically competitive places.”
His challenge to the panel was more blunt: democratic socialists are taking power inside the party, and the response should be to learn from them (see our Centrist School series). While it’s true that democratic socialists are taking power, it’s not clear that their pie-in-the-sky solutions are better than incremental bite-sized solutions. After all, a failed pie-in-the-sky attempt to pass single-payer in Vermont led to the state’s voters picking a Republican Governor.
Teles and Rep. George Whitesides (who flipped California’s 27th in 2024), Rep. Janelle Bynum (who flipped Oregon’s 5th the same year), and Brianna Johnson of Inclusive Abundance discussed the future of Abundance and the factional fight in the Democratic Party.
Teles on the scale problem:
Democratic socialists, whatever their flaws, and they’re many, are at least proposing solutions at the scale of the problems faced by the United States, while moderates seem attracted to incremental, bite-sized solutions that seem so much smaller than our problems. Faced with a 10-foot climb, we always seem to only propose a five-foot ladder.
Whitesides answered with a number: take the roughly $100 billion being spent on the Iran war and build houses with it instead:
Imagine if we could take $100 billion and split it into two pieces. $50 billion of which we do advance purchase commitments for factory-built modular housing. That would jumpstart that industry and would potentially be a pathway towards radically decreasing the cost of housing in America. The second thing would be to put $50 or $100 billion in a construction finance facility through Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, at a low interest rate, which is a key part of the problem in building in America. Each of those things could catalyze, I estimate, half a million to a million units every two years. So over the course of the next decade, we could produce five or 10 million units, which is roughly the order of the problem that we have.
Johnson noted the socialists are already borrowing the playbook:
Even if democratic socialists and progressives are doing it under that banner, they are increasingly taking up Abundance proposals. Mayor Mamdani just released a housing plan, which was very Abundance-y. It was very supply oriented; it had permitting reform and zoning reform. I don’t think we should be so upset that we are losing power if the democratic socialists are increasingly taking our ideas.
Bynum answered the institutions question as a mom of four with a DSA daughter, a son with a MAGA hat under the bed, and a mother who calls every day:
I always ask every room: how many of you have kids who are still on the family plan? See, people are still on the family plan. The economics are still there. I still have that kid coming home every week. She was just home on Sunday with a whole shopping bag, going through my pantry, getting toilet paper, paper towels, crackers, lunch for the week. She’s in grad school. We call her Free 99 when she comes through the door. And then I’m seeing it on the other end, where my mother’s telling me our generation has too much real estate property, and that is one reason why young people can’t even pick off the market what they need. So the question about DSA, and any other philosophy around here, is a matter of: can you be practical, and can you understand what is actually happening in American homes?
Bynum on wins versus ideals:
We don’t defend the institution for the institution’s sake; we defend the institution because it provides some level of stability. And the people will defend the institution if it’s working for them. If it’s not, they’ll tell you. When I call Social Security and I have to wait 40, 50 minutes, or I never get an answer, they’re telling you it’s broken. I would argue this: 100% of nothing is nothing, and 50% of a million is half a million. So do you want the win, or do you want the ideal? I want to take the win, because I need the win to continue moving on.
Whitesides on mission versus process, from a former space industry executive:
We are not output focused in what we do in Congress. We do not say: right now we have to create 5 million homes in America in the next four years, or 100 gigawatts of power production. What we would do in the space industry is decompose that. In order to achieve that, we need this amount of housing produced per year, these are the ways we produce housing, and it has to cost this much less. That is a fundamental shift in how we would think about governance in this country.
What the American public is so hungry for is a collection of public servants who are going to be focused on getting something done rather than following process or rules. When they see the system start to effect change, it starts this dynamic positive cycle of greater engagement, because they see: my schools are getting a little bit better now, or there is housing being produced.
Bynum, asked why moderates won’t run as a pack, declined the premise:
Moderates are people who think of themselves as individuals. I have my own mind. I might be with you on one issue, I might not be with you on a different issue. I’ve never felt safe running with the pack. I don’t want somebody that’s shaped by their group and is afraid to step out of their group, because that group will eat its own.
Johnson’s counter: moderates don’t need a faction, they need cover:
Before this job I was communications director for Governor Laura Kelly of Kansas, and we had to break with the party all the time in order to win. What’s great about a place like Welcome, or Searchlight, or The Bench, or Third Way, is providing cover to Democrats who need to run with the party but take positions that are different from Democratic norms. Talarico just embraced oil and gas. That’s not a standard Democratic position, but very necessary to win in Texas. It would be helpful if more groups provided that cover, pushing against the interest groups that tend to push the party to the left in a way that is unhelpful for winning elections.
Whitesides closed with the frame he wants the next nominee to pick up:
We win the presidency with great ideas. Part of the purpose of this group is to develop the armory of great ideas that will be picked up by the next Democratic nominee. There’s this interesting idea of “strong floor, no ceiling.” We’re going to have a social safety net, but we’re going to encourage Americans to succeed beyond their wildest dreams. That is an idea that appeals to people in a way that is different than what the left side of our party is selling.