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Democrats Quietly Form New Think Tank
Democrats Quietly Form New Think Tank
June 3, 2025 at 9:15 am EDT By Taegan Goddard 87 Comments
https://politicalwire.com/2025/06/03/democrats-quietly-form-new-think-tank/
“At a private meeting last month, a top Democratic strategist pitched party leaders and donors: We need to break down ideological lanes and reject interest group agendas if we plan to win again,” Politico reports.
“Adam Jentleson, former chief of staff to Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) and top aide to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), used the retreat to preview his new policy research and messaging hub, called Searchlight. Its goal: push the Democratic Party toward the most effective, broadly popular positions regardless of which wing of the party they come from, with an eye toward 2028.”
74 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/16/opinion/democrats-interest-groups-majority.html
And of course he praises consevadems with problematic voting records and stances, like Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Jared Golden.
And of course he praises consevadems with problematic voting records and stances, like Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Jared Golden.
SUPPLY-SIDE CHIC: The Gaping Hole in the Center of the Abundance Agenda
The new YIMBYism misses something critical: All the supply in the world won’t help if economic inequality continues to grow.
https://newrepublic.com/article/193346/economic-inequality-keynes-abundance-agenda
https://archive.ph/8LWxb
Construction workers settle their lunch bills next to graffiti scrawled on the wall of a construction site reading "eat the rich" in New York City.
America has a housing affordability crisis. Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s Abundance, Yoni Appelbaum’s Stuck, and Mark Dunkelman’s Why Nothing Works argue to varying degrees that land-use restrictions, mostly at the local level, are what created this problem and that easing them will solve it. Build more housing, and it will become more affordable.
Last week I argued that there are sound reasons for local communities to exert some control over their neighborhoods—reasons that the new supply-side liberals are reluctant to acknowledge. Protecting the environment, scaling building size to limit opportunities for crime, and preserving architecture of historical significance are all legitimate goals. People should have some power to make their communities livable, because if your community doesn’t do that, it’s doubtful outside forces will—either commercial or governmental.
I don’t disagree that these defensible goals often act as a smokescreen for indefensible goals—such as the exclusion of lower-income people, or the elimination of racial or ethnic diversity. It happens often enough that supply-side liberals are right to call for greater regulatory flexibility, mostly at the local level, to make it easier to build stuff, and not just housing. We need to make it easier to build all sorts of things, including (to cite a central example in Abundance) a bullet train from Los Angeles to San Francisco.
My main problem with supply-side liberalism isn’t what it contains, but what it omits. To address the housing shortage, to build vital infrastructure, and to address all sorts of other problems, judiciously targeted deregulation will be nowhere near sufficient. We also need to address the demand-side problem of distribution.
snip
The Abundance Agenda: Neoliberalism's Rebrand
https://prospect.org/economy/2024-11-26-abundance-agenda-neoliberalisms-rebrand/
The past few years have seen a widespread move away from free-market dogma, as policymakers search for new economic perspectives. The election of Joe Biden in 2020 proved to be a crossroads for economic orthodoxy. For the first time in more than a quarter-century, a Democratic administration did not entrust its economic policy exclusively to adherents of Robert Rubin’s philosophy, for whom the solution to any economic issue was usually “Be less of a Democrat.”
Instead, the Biden-Harris administration trusted progressives as a coalition partner, rather than an electoral faction that had to be dealt with, not worked with. The Biden administration attempted true industrial policy for the first time in over a generation, rekindled enforcement of the Sherman Antitrust Act, and didn’t shy away from stimulating the economy when it was foundering. And while Biden’s term has been a rousing success on most macroeconomic measures—the electoral loss turned in part on global inflation and the rollback of the temporary pandemic safety net—progressives’ increasing power within Democratic politics has caused some moderates to become enraged that they’re now expected to settle for the position of senior partner, and denied near-total control.
Enter the “abundance agenda,” an attempt to generate new messaging for a new political era in which neoliberalism has fallen rapidly out of favor. The term has been floating around for years, but has more recently become a rallying cry for a whole array of deregulatory causes. The abundance agenda has also offered shelter to effective altruists, who have been searching for a flag to rally around that isn’t associated with one of the largest frauds in world history. The Biden administration has started to usher in a post-neoliberalism, with more heterodox ideas competing for acceptance. Abundance is neoliberalism repackaged for a post-neoliberal world.
What exactly abundance adherents believe varies, of course, but there are a number of broad precepts: building more housing, producing more energy, and fostering more technological innovation. None of these are objectionable goals; the differences with progressives arise, largely, in how to get there. Abundance starts from a “growth above all” mindset. The agenda’s advocates hate residential zoning laws—which, contrary to what they frequently imply, is something they have in common with us and most progressives—but also detest the National Environmental Policy Act, support fracking, oppose tenant protections, and are often deferential to the policy preferences of Big Tech.
snip
The new YIMBYism misses something critical: All the supply in the world won’t help if economic inequality continues to grow.
https://newrepublic.com/article/193346/economic-inequality-keynes-abundance-agenda
https://archive.ph/8LWxb
Construction workers settle their lunch bills next to graffiti scrawled on the wall of a construction site reading "eat the rich" in New York City.
America has a housing affordability crisis. Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s Abundance, Yoni Appelbaum’s Stuck, and Mark Dunkelman’s Why Nothing Works argue to varying degrees that land-use restrictions, mostly at the local level, are what created this problem and that easing them will solve it. Build more housing, and it will become more affordable.
Last week I argued that there are sound reasons for local communities to exert some control over their neighborhoods—reasons that the new supply-side liberals are reluctant to acknowledge. Protecting the environment, scaling building size to limit opportunities for crime, and preserving architecture of historical significance are all legitimate goals. People should have some power to make their communities livable, because if your community doesn’t do that, it’s doubtful outside forces will—either commercial or governmental.
I don’t disagree that these defensible goals often act as a smokescreen for indefensible goals—such as the exclusion of lower-income people, or the elimination of racial or ethnic diversity. It happens often enough that supply-side liberals are right to call for greater regulatory flexibility, mostly at the local level, to make it easier to build stuff, and not just housing. We need to make it easier to build all sorts of things, including (to cite a central example in Abundance) a bullet train from Los Angeles to San Francisco.
My main problem with supply-side liberalism isn’t what it contains, but what it omits. To address the housing shortage, to build vital infrastructure, and to address all sorts of other problems, judiciously targeted deregulation will be nowhere near sufficient. We also need to address the demand-side problem of distribution.
snip
The Abundance Agenda: Neoliberalism's Rebrand
https://prospect.org/economy/2024-11-26-abundance-agenda-neoliberalisms-rebrand/
The past few years have seen a widespread move away from free-market dogma, as policymakers search for new economic perspectives. The election of Joe Biden in 2020 proved to be a crossroads for economic orthodoxy. For the first time in more than a quarter-century, a Democratic administration did not entrust its economic policy exclusively to adherents of Robert Rubin’s philosophy, for whom the solution to any economic issue was usually “Be less of a Democrat.”
Instead, the Biden-Harris administration trusted progressives as a coalition partner, rather than an electoral faction that had to be dealt with, not worked with. The Biden administration attempted true industrial policy for the first time in over a generation, rekindled enforcement of the Sherman Antitrust Act, and didn’t shy away from stimulating the economy when it was foundering. And while Biden’s term has been a rousing success on most macroeconomic measures—the electoral loss turned in part on global inflation and the rollback of the temporary pandemic safety net—progressives’ increasing power within Democratic politics has caused some moderates to become enraged that they’re now expected to settle for the position of senior partner, and denied near-total control.
Enter the “abundance agenda,” an attempt to generate new messaging for a new political era in which neoliberalism has fallen rapidly out of favor. The term has been floating around for years, but has more recently become a rallying cry for a whole array of deregulatory causes. The abundance agenda has also offered shelter to effective altruists, who have been searching for a flag to rally around that isn’t associated with one of the largest frauds in world history. The Biden administration has started to usher in a post-neoliberalism, with more heterodox ideas competing for acceptance. Abundance is neoliberalism repackaged for a post-neoliberal world.
What exactly abundance adherents believe varies, of course, but there are a number of broad precepts: building more housing, producing more energy, and fostering more technological innovation. None of these are objectionable goals; the differences with progressives arise, largely, in how to get there. Abundance starts from a “growth above all” mindset. The agenda’s advocates hate residential zoning laws—which, contrary to what they frequently imply, is something they have in common with us and most progressives—but also detest the National Environmental Policy Act, support fracking, oppose tenant protections, and are often deferential to the policy preferences of Big Tech.
snip
The Democratic party is like a monster with many heads. All the heads have their own ideas and criticize each other in public instead of voicing their disagreements in private. There is hardly ever a unified message. A ridiculous amount of energy and even resources is spent disagreeing with each other. It doesn't help.
Have a bloody private convention where you can voice your disagreements and then come up with a strong playbook that works in incredibly turbulent times before it's too late. And nobody leaves until it gets done. Black smoke means we're working on it, white smoke means it's done. 
