Power Grab
Want to know what Abundance Liberalism will look like in practice? Pennsylvania House Bill No. 502 gives us an ominous preview of things to come.
There is something peculiar about the Abundance debate supposedly raging within the Democratic Party. In the months since the release of Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s New York Times bestseller Abundance, the debate over this new vision for Democrats feels both tediously stale and woefully underdeveloped. Maybe it’s because many of Klein and Thompson’s most vocal critics on the progressive left, who dismiss Abundance’s deregulatory agenda as rebranded neoliberalism, have admitted to never even reading the book. Maybe it’s because those like me who have read the book found it so lacking in details about the political power dynamics needed to make Abundance a reality that there wasn’t all that much of substance to engage with. It’s hard to argue against promises of cheap electricity and affordable housing, especially if there is no honest accounting of who would be the winners and who would be the losers in a Democratic regime guided by the Abundance agenda.
My sense of why this debate seems so fruitless and why many Abundance skeptics never even bothered to read the book is that we know the debate really isn’t happening at all within the Democratic Party. Consequential debates don’t usually happen within the highest ranks of the Democratic Party, at least not until something undeniably dire happens, like watching a sitting President struggle so badly in a debate that casual observers are forced to question whether he is capable of caring for himself, let alone capable of leading our entire country another four years. Anyone with a keen ear listening to the way Democratic superstars have been talking lately will realize that there is no debate about the Abundance agenda within the party establishment. The Abundance agenda is a done deal. In its recent article Can the ‘Abundance Agenda’ Save the Democrats? The Wall Street Journal has keyed us in on just how deeply entrenched Klein and Thompson’s thinking has become within elite Democratic circles:
Democratic politicians are rushing to embrace the new mantra. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis have all name-checked it publicly. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker discussed it at length in his recent 25-hour Senate speech. Former Vice President Kamala Harris and the U.S. Senate’s Democratic caucus are among the many politicians who have recently sought the authors’ counsel. Not one but two congressional caucuses have recently formed to push legislation advancing the ideas laid out in the book.
In the party’s typical top-down, hierarchical style, the Democratic establishment has decided its voters are getting the Abundance agenda whether they like it or not. We are now even getting glimpses of how Abundance would work as a Democratic agenda, not just in messaging but also in proposed legislation. In Pennsylvania, our Governor Josh Shapiro unveiled his “Lightning Plan,” an ambitious program to jumpstart an abundant energy future while paying homage to our state’s legacy of energy innovation stretching back to when Ben Franklin was conducting electricity from the sky with his kite. Like Ezra Klein’s Abundance, Shapiro’s vision is full of wonderful advancements that I would love to see in Pennsylvania’s future: cheaper utility rates, a more reliable electrical grid to endure intensifying storms, and 35% of the state’s energy generated from renewable sources by 2035. To make the Governor’s vision a reality, Pennsylvania’s Democrat controlled General Assembly introduced Pennsylvania House Bill 502, which would take the approval of energy-generating and storage facilities out of the hands of local municipalities and invest it in a newly formed Reliable Energy Siting and Electric Transition (RESET) Board. The accompanying memo to House Bill 502 sounds like snippets pulled directly from Klein and Thompson’s book, lamenting how “red tape” stifled energy innovation and declaring, “It’s time to build big things again in Pennsylvania.” What will actually get built is the big question. Will the RESET board be used to fast-track solar production in rural areas awash in Big Oil misinformation, or will it be co-opted by fracking companies eager to push forward gas-powered electricity plants without all the public outcry they normally face at municipal-level meetings? Only time will tell. But within House Bill 502, there are ominous signs that advancement of the Abundance Agenda in Pennsylvania will come at the cost of reinforcing some of the Democrats’ greatest political liabilities.
Abundance is Elitist
Within Democratic circles, Abundance has been presented as the more sensible alternative to the economic populism sweeping the country in the form of Bernie Sanders’ Fighting Oligarchy tour. Despite recent polling showing Americans far more receptive to the populist message of fighting corporate power than the Abundance message of cutting red tape and pushing deregulation, Abundance enthusiasts have tried to avoid the elitist label by recasting the elites as busy-body rich liberal NIMBYs blocking new housing and energy projects rather than large corporations accumulating greater and greater amounts of our country’s financial wealth and political power.
Looking over the composition of the RESET Board created by PA House Bill 502, the charge of elitism against Democrats will be harder and harder to shake once Abundance principles are put into action by state legislatures. Who gets to sit on the RESET Board and decide where energy sector projects are sited in Pennsylvania? The Secretary of Community and Economic Development, the Secretary of Labor and Industry, the Chairperson of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, The President of the Pennsylvania Building and Construction Trades Council, The President of the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry, the Chairperson of the department's Environmental Justice Advisory Board etc. House Bill 502 takes power away from local elected officials and places it in the hands of unelected, appointed officials in Harrisburg, politically-connected elites from the state bureaucracy and industry trade groups. While this may be necessary for Governor Shapiro to advance his Lightening Plan and cement his status as one of the Abundance faction’s top candidates for a 2028 presidential nomination, House Bill 502 will only strengthen Republican portrayals of Democrats as an elitist party that takes power away from the people and their elected representatives only to transfer that power to the remote, faceless bureaucrats of the managerial state.
Abundance is Anti-Democratic
As a local elected official, I have found the best way to rebuild the trust in the Democratic Party is to be a relentless defender of my constituents against outside corporate interests seeking to profit off projects that threaten the public’s health, safety, and welfare. Taking a populist approach, I negotiate as hard as the law allows me against developers and frackers who want to make money in our Township but do not have to suffer the negative consequences inflicted on those who live around their operations. Maybe it was just a rationalization to find meaning in my relatively insignificant position as Township Supervisor, but I was inspired by the idea of local officials acting as protectors of the people’s interest as a way for the Democrats to win back the hearts of rural and suburban fringe voters who have felt abandoned by the party.
For those of us who campaigned or voted for Josh Shapiro, local control over the energy industry has been a sore spot of bitter disappointment. As our Attorney General, Shapiro convened a Grand Jury in 2020 that found the right to clean air and water guaranteed by the Pennsylvania Constitution was infringed by fracking operations closer than 2500 feet from residences and other inhabited structures. Under the 2012 law signed by fracker-funded Republican Governor Tom Corbett, local municipalities faced extreme legal risks when attempting to extend setbacks from fracking operations beyond 500 feet. With Shapiro’s win in the 2022 Governor’s race, there was a hope that even if he didn’t extend statewide fracking setbacks to 2500 feet, he would at least allow local elected officials to increase setbacks without facing crushing lawsuits from gas companies. He has done neither, instead choosing to cut deals with the same gas companies like CNX that he once prosecuted as AG, allowing them greater ability to self-regulate in exchange for trivial increases in setbacks far short of those deemed to be the constitutional right of all Pennsylvanians.
Rather than invest democratically accountable officials with greater local control over the energy operations our constituents fear and loathe, PA House Bill 502 builds upon Pennsylvania’s sullied legacy of stripping local communities of the power to safeguard citizens’ rights to clean air and water. Shapiro weakening democratic local control over energy projects without enacting the safeguards his own Grand Jury found to be the right of every Pennsylvanian is a slap in the face of every municipal-level Democrat who must now admit to their constituents that the Governor has weakened rather than strengthened our ability to protect them. We must tell the mom of the child struggling with asthma or the resident recovering from thyroid cancer that their safety is not in the hands of the person they know and voted for, but in the hands of unelected political insiders far away in Harrisburg. The Abundance Agenda enacted through PA House Bill 502 further solidifies the Republican talking point that Democrats are, in fact, not particularly fond of democracy.
Abundance is Corporate Coddling
No one who has interacted with me in the local political sphere would regard me as sympathetic to developers and frackers. But even I can feel vicarious discomfort watching their representatives squirm at a public hearing when the citizens pack the room to shout down their proposed projects in my Township. It’s a hard job, pitching these projects to the wary public. But that’s the way it should be. It is in these packed town halls where the voice of the people can be heard and the will of the people is felt. Unlike the Abundance crowd’s stereotype of the NIMBY as rich liberal hypocrites, those who show up at Public Hearings in my Township are often rural folk whose drinking well could be tainted by fracking fluid, whose homes could be inundated by run off from construction, and whose children’s lungs could be compromised by increased pollution. Rather than the tree-huggers and Nader’s Raiders villainized in Abundance, some of the strongest voices against these projects have come from residents wearing MAGA hats, thin blue line t-shirts, and other right-wing coded apparel. Unable to afford an attorney, many residents rightly view the Public Hearing at the town hall as the only chance to make their voices heard and protect their community.
Thanks to House Bill 502, Pennsylvania energy companies no longer have to pitch their projects in front of elected representatives who are directly accountable to the sometimes angry mob. Instead, they get to present their case to a RESET Board composed of members who are much more likely to know the corporate applicant’s Harrisburg-based lobbyists than any of the residents potentially adversely affected by approval of the project. A Public Hearing is still required under House Bill 502, but it does not require that the hearing be held in the municipality where the project is to be sited. Shielding companies from such intense public scrutiny is an exceedingly generous gift to the corporate sector, but in the eyes of Josh Shapiro and the rest of the Abundance crowd it’s the kind of red tape cutting we need to “Get Shit Done.”
You want to cut red tape? Fine, I do too. But access to clear air and water is not red tape, it is the constitutional right of every Pennsylvanian. If Josh Shapiro doesn’t want citizens to think he cares more about burnishing his presidential resume than the health, safety, and welfare of Pennsylvanians, he would at least protect us with 2500-foot setbacks from fracking operations before any energy projects get fast-tracked. The proposed RESET Board is not unique - most states rely on such boards rather than local officials to approve large-scale energy projects. But what is unique to Pennsylvania is our feeling of betrayal by Democratic state officials who we thought would fight to protect our constitutional rights from corporate interests, rather than shower those companies with tax breaks. Without a robust protection of citizens’ rights, Abundance is weak groveling at the feet of corporate interests masquerading as the kind of strong leadership needed to “Get Shit Done.” Prioritizing getting shit done without protecting the basic rights of the people will assure that whatever does get done will be shit for everyone but the corporations and the politicians who coddle them.
Will a full embrace of the Abundance Agenda doom the Democrats’ chances of reclaiming the White House in 2028? Not necessarily. The levels of incompetence and growing internal division within the Trump Administration (e.g, the escalating Elon-Trump catfight) coupled with an enduring mood of anti-incumbancy could all but guarantee a Democratic victory regardless of whether the party embraces Abundance elitism or anti-oligarchy populism. But a widespread adoption of Abundance policies will bang the final nail in the coffin of the Democratic Party’s tradition stretching from Jefferson to Jackson to FDR of standing up for the little guy against the moneyed elites. This is a serious political gamble, not the rosy win-win arrangement peddled by Klein and Thompson. Democrats are sacrificing the short-term political capital of being the common citizen’s defender of health, safety, and welfare in the hope that it will pay off in greater long-term political capital generated by job creation, cheaper energy, more affordable housing, etc. A similar gamble was made by the Biden Administration with an industrial policy wagering that the short-term costs of corporate-friendly tax breaks and monetary stimulus would be offset by long-term improvements in energy, transportation, and the cost of living. We know painfully well how those long-term strategies turned out in 2024 for Biden and his successor, Kamala Harris. John Maynard Keynes’ famous admonition, “in the long run we are all dead,” is all the more relevant within the four-year cycles of presidential politics. Before wagering all of our current political capital as defenders of the people against corporate interests, Democrats should heed Keynes’ warning and think twice about betting the farm on Klein and Thompson’s long-term vision of liberal Abundance. If the Democratic Party succumbs to death by Abundance, the supposedly sensible pro-corporate wing of the party will have no one to blame but themselves.