A year ago, the hottest idea in Democratic circles was “abundance” — a growth-friendly agenda with centrist appeal that would help the party prove it was capable of shoving aside special interests and governing again. Fast-forward a year, and the far left is on the march in primary after primary, sending centrists into alarm and despair.
Left-Wing Victories Reshape Democratic Primaries
Last week’s victories for socialist candidates against the establishment in New York’s Democratic primaries, including New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, have demonstrated a shift in energy, excitement, and attention away from centrist ideas and toward the left. While traditional establishment figures continue to win many primaries elsewhere, high-profile socialists have been enormously successful at winning attention and steering public discourse. With more opportunities ahead, including Tuesday’s primaries in Colorado, the left is building on its momentum.
According to Liam Kerr, co-founder of the centrist group WelcomePAC, the left’s superior organization has enabled it to contact, persuade, and turn out voters in major races. “I would say Matt Yglesias’s Substack is the only place where 10,000 centrist Democrats are paying dues every month,” Kerr told the reporter, referring to the blogger who has urged the party to moderate.
The Rise and Fall of the Abundance Agenda
Just a year ago, many center and center-left Democrats had united around abundance as an optimistic, attention-grabbing vision for the party’s future. Inspired by the bestselling book by journalists Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, the idea was that by cutting through red tape, being less beholden to interest groups, and helping unleash the private sector, Democrats could deliver abundant housing, clean energy, and new infrastructure. “Abundance” moved beyond the book to become a factional rallying cry for many Democratic commentators, advocates, and operatives dissatisfied with the party’s establishment but skeptical of far-left solutions.
However, a spirited public debate ensued, and by June of last year, a three-way battle for the Democratic future was underway: the left versus the establishment versus those on the center-left who had flocked to abundance. Now, that has collapsed to a two-sided contest: the left versus the establishment. Ideas from Abundance have been adopted by figures on both sides, including Mamdani and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, but public attention has shifted to other issues such as Israel-Gaza, leaving centrists unmoored without a clear cause to mobilize around.
Why Centrist Democrats Have Struggled
The book Abundance was a sales success and drove elite Democratic discourse for months, but centrists haven’t been able to take the next step and make a real contest for the party’s future. Klein and Thompson are journalists, not factional political leaders, and their prescriptions could be taken up by leaders from any ideological camp, making it harder for allied centrists to use “abundance” as shorthand to differentiate between groups of candidates. Left-aligned members of Congress like Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) were enthusiastic early backers, as were centrists like Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA).
As the calendar moved into primary season, there was no wave of centrist primary challengers who could shake up the establishment. The closest likeness to an “abundance-coded” candidate in a major race was San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, who ran for governor of California and finished with 3.5 percent in the primary. Kerr noted that WelcomePAC has been focused 100 percent on districts that Trump won, and questioned whether that is the way to build a stronger and more enduring Democratic Party.
Issues Driving the Left’s Momentum
On Democratic primary voters’ main topic of interest — how to stop what they saw as Trump’s outrageous and authoritarian actions — cautious centrists seemed to have less to offer. In an environment where the Democratic base was increasingly horrified about Trump’s aggressive deployments of ICE in US cities, which led to the killings of two US citizens in Minneapolis, debates over what Democrats had been doing wrong felt less relevant. Opposition to Israel also proved to be an intensely motivating primary issue, with the left appearing more in touch with the party’s increasingly anti-Israel voters. Candidates who were especially early and strident critics of Israel tended to be further left and far removed from party leadership; opponents backed by pro-Israel super PACs tended to be more moderate.
The Future of the Abundance Agenda
As a policy agenda, abundance ideas continue to be quite relevant. Housing remains a major issue in Congress and especially in state and local politics. The need for abundant energy has only grown more intense, with AI sucking up gigawatts. The next Democratic president could well refer to the abundance playbook. But as an organizing project for centrist attempts to remake the party politically from within, it hasn’t done the trick. The real contest shaping the party’s future is now between the left and the establishment, with reformist centrists dropped from contention for now.
