Hmm, while winning over swing voters might be what you were hoping their book was about, I don't think that's what it is actually about.
Nonetheless, one has to wonder why would swing voters trust Democrats to govern their nation given how poorly they are governing states that they perennially control like California and New York. Further the same tendencies that have hobbled CA and NY unsurprisingly reared their ugly heads during Biden's administration, preventing solar farms and electric vehicle charging infrastructure from being built in Democratic states. Indeed it was red states that are far less "anti-abundance" that benefited disproportionately from Biden's policies.
As for the swing voter issues that are called out here, they would definitely be quite relevant in a book about winning over swing voters in 2028. Still you have to wonder just how convincing these issues would be. Democratic candidates could absolutely point to states like California and New York as proof of higher minimum wages, expanded Medicaid, and subsidized child care programs. Democrats would just have to hope that those swing voters didn't notice that many of those Californians who received said benefits were living in RVs because they can't afford an apartment.
I agree that making CA and NY more affordable has some political benefits, although it's indirect. They need to have a stronger critique of the system in red states. Someone like Stacey Abrams was running on a platform that didn't demonstrate that she actually thought anything was wrong with Georgia (except maybe we don't have legal gambling?)
I also don't think most Georgians actually like sprawl. I think 3 things took the wind out of transit's sails in Atlanta:
1) Increasing WFH policies meant more Atlantans didn't have to do the long commute 5 days per week (although this is now changing for many)
2) The Atlanta suburbs aren't your dad's suburbs; cities like Alpharetta and Roswell which had next to nothing 30 years ago now have many of the hottest restaurants in the metro area and increasingly walkable constructs. Younger suburbanites this century brought the urban to the suburbs instead of vice versa.
3) While old fashioned racism certainly played a role, MARTA has long done a poor job policing its system, leading to a bad reputation which is exacerbated by hyperbolic exaggerations.
I think a lot of Georgians don't like sprawl theoretically but putting that into action has been a miserable failure so far because there hasn't been a good and coherent alternative put forward that fits the needs of the people now. There are some walkable areas in Metro Atlanta, they're always buzzing with people. Building that out is possible.
I don't know the specifics about the recent referendum, but I worked on the Connect Gwinnett plan that got rejected during the special referendum in 2019. In short, few of us thought it was a persuasive plan, even if it was better than the status quo. You were just not going to get the amount of money to do something like significant heavy rail extension based on a 1 cent sales tax increase. In public meetings, we would see the disappointment on people's faces as soon as they saw that the Gold Line would only be extended a couple of miles. The idea was to focus on bus to try to gain more widespread support throughout the county (and due to the cost of heavy rail extensions) in spite of the land use difficulties. Obviously, that didn't work.
I saw the failure of the referendum as a harbinger of Democratic party illusions that changing demographics would be a game changer for a bunch of other issues. As you often write about, people have complex beliefs that don't fit neatly along party lines and one of them is that Immigrants really like that American dream of a big house, car, and a lawn. Taking a bus, especially for some immigrant groups, is almost a sign that you didn't make it. I do not recall seeing a 1st gen Korean (my background) on a bus or train in my 10 years in Atlanta, despite using it nearly every day. So, transit may not be appealing to those groups at the moment, but you're right, something like hospital access and increasing access and affordability for senior housing (something Koreans love) could be something for the party to focus on.
If you want more doctors, wouldn’t be simplest to just raise the cap on US residency slots? It hasn’t been increased in the US in nearly 30 years. I don’t object to doctors immigrating, but it seems unfair not to give our own kids a shot at a medical career.
Let me start by thanking you for this article. I’ve been thinking a lot about these topics lately. I’ve also been frustrated by some of the commentary about this book I’ve seen online, which either misses the point in some way or (on the far left and right) takes the form of shrill angry accusations that represent a kind of politics I don’t want anything to do with.
I will say that I think there are things in the abundance idea that can apply outside the beltway. For one the book explores issues outside of housing (I have not read it yet, but know this from the things I’ve seen). I think there I are some arguments in there about bureaucracy and how we implement our ideas that need to be discussed.
I also think urbanism is good and if we could wave a magic wand and make the people of Atlanta understand what they were missing, they would have voted for the trains.
But I think you make a really important point here, which is similar to what I have been thinking.
The problem with the kind of technocratic focus laid out in Abundance is that this type of politics lacks potency; it appeals deeply to smart well informed people who enjoy understanding the intricacies of various issues. It’s hard to imagine how you can create a popular movement out of pro housing urbanism though. As you say this stuff ruffles people’s feathers and doesn’t really address some of the deep economic austerity that plagues the heartland.
On a deeper level the problem with an infrastructure based agenda is that infrastructure takes a long time to build. Even if we radically improve our processes such that we build faster (a good goal), it might still take years for people to see the tangible benefits of infrastructure. This makes it a poor basis for building a coalition.
I think the left needs to coalesce around one or two BIG welfare programs. The most obvious is Universal Healthcare. There’s a lot of untapped energy there. I also think UBI is a contender, and in some ways could be more powerful, but it is also untried and much more controversial. I think democrats should make one of these ideas the absolute centerpiece of their agenda. I think it will generate a lot of controversy and will turn off some fiscal conservatives voters. Who cares! If Trump has taught us anything it’s that you can bust through a lot of conventional policy wisdom and still win. I think it’s better to have a bold vision. I think if we could just pass a big bill at all costs (universal healthcare or bust) you then create a natural coalition of people who will support these policies.
Great perspective here. Atlanta is truly a wonderful place and you seem to have your finger on the pulse of the community there.
To add more nuance: I live in Metro St. Louis. While it seems like St. Louis City proper could use something like the abundance agenda, the suburban counties on the Missouri side (where most of the metro population lives) have some of the same struggles as you described (although Metro STL is definitely not experiencing the growth that Atlanta is; many of our residents are moving to you!).
All this to say: abundance is a nice idea for some places but is not a one-size-fits-all model for the country. And it certainly is NOT a model for how Democrats become relevant in former swing states turned deep red like Missouri again.
Middle class people in many urban areas don’t support mass transit for a reason no one wants to talk about. Black crime. Here I go anyway.
Young black men (15-34) are just 2% of the population and commit about half of the nation’s homicides. That’s a rate an astounding 50 times higher than the average American. Who wants to get on a bus or subway car (or allow their wife or daughter to do so) with such out of control individuals? Everyone knows this is true. We all watch the nightly news where the truth is revealed every single day and yet no one and especially no black politicians are even willing to discuss it. We need a serious national conversation about black crime and what is necessary to control it or attempts to increase investment in mass transit in our major metropolitan areas will continue to be fruitless.
“Every time I drive anywhere I see people with massive pickup trucks with $50,000 price tags (that’s probably a conservative estimate) going to palatial homes. Republicans and Democrats alike in Atlanta’s suburbs already have plenty of abundance. In general, it’s pretty easy to build here, and it’s pretty easy to start a business. The problems of New York City or the Bay Area of California really aren’t the problems of the Sunbelt.”
First, surely we can all agree that $50k trucks and palatial estates are not representative of the norm in this country, the heartland, or even in Atlanta.
Second, the only people who can reasonably say their problem is not a lack of abundance are those who would agree that things are not too expensive, which I feel confident is not something most would agree with.
Third, these are far greater issues in deep blue cities than most of the country, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t issues in most of the country. In 1960 the median home price to income ratio was about 2 in both Houston and NYC, but in 2025 it’s 5 in Houston and 10 in NYC. 10 is greater than 5, but 5 still too high.
As I listened to Klein and Thompson talk about their book on a podcast, I thought the same thing: the problems they’re talking about are big city problems. As someone who lives in suburban Texas, outside of Austin, few of the problems they describe exist here. Hence, the solutions don’t make sense. One point they did make, however, rang true: more political courage is needed to implement controversial programs. That’s the case no matter where you live. They talked about city council members voting no on a zoning change because of a council chambers full of angry neighbors opposed to it. But when the sentiment of the general public is on their side, and those kinds of programs are what they ran on in their election campaigns, they need to steel their political spines and vote yes anyway. That’s easier said than done — I’ve been in hundreds of council meetings as a journalist and local government communicator — but it gets easier the more you do it. And you should have done a better job engaging the public on the zoning change before it got the public hearing and final vote. I write about this stuff in my Substack, Good Government Files.
Although I recently moved away, I lived in the Atlanta area for 20 years, so I know that EVERYONE who needs to use 400 complains about its traffic. Given that, the most effective thing you can do to address it is support MARTA rail expansion- even if you yourself decide you will never get on a train. Every one of those (full) trains whizzing by you is taking a LOT of cars off the road and benefiting you. Sort of surprised that the educated professionals who make up much of the suburbs can’t see that.
I did hear some comments suggesting that if these transit referendums were about light rail rather than buses, they would've had more support. But pretty much guaranteed they would've used the money for buses.
Why is taking on NIMBYISM a worthwhile cause? I like you Zaid, we come from the same place, but that’s about as far as things go in terms of our similarities.
Every culture has NIMBYISM. In fact, some groups are fighting wars about it right this very second. Yet I don’t hear you condemning Palestinians.
Democrats are no longer a political party. They are a religion.
Really good piece.
Hmm, while winning over swing voters might be what you were hoping their book was about, I don't think that's what it is actually about.
Nonetheless, one has to wonder why would swing voters trust Democrats to govern their nation given how poorly they are governing states that they perennially control like California and New York. Further the same tendencies that have hobbled CA and NY unsurprisingly reared their ugly heads during Biden's administration, preventing solar farms and electric vehicle charging infrastructure from being built in Democratic states. Indeed it was red states that are far less "anti-abundance" that benefited disproportionately from Biden's policies.
As for the swing voter issues that are called out here, they would definitely be quite relevant in a book about winning over swing voters in 2028. Still you have to wonder just how convincing these issues would be. Democratic candidates could absolutely point to states like California and New York as proof of higher minimum wages, expanded Medicaid, and subsidized child care programs. Democrats would just have to hope that those swing voters didn't notice that many of those Californians who received said benefits were living in RVs because they can't afford an apartment.
I agree that making CA and NY more affordable has some political benefits, although it's indirect. They need to have a stronger critique of the system in red states. Someone like Stacey Abrams was running on a platform that didn't demonstrate that she actually thought anything was wrong with Georgia (except maybe we don't have legal gambling?)
I also don't think most Georgians actually like sprawl. I think 3 things took the wind out of transit's sails in Atlanta:
1) Increasing WFH policies meant more Atlantans didn't have to do the long commute 5 days per week (although this is now changing for many)
2) The Atlanta suburbs aren't your dad's suburbs; cities like Alpharetta and Roswell which had next to nothing 30 years ago now have many of the hottest restaurants in the metro area and increasingly walkable constructs. Younger suburbanites this century brought the urban to the suburbs instead of vice versa.
3) While old fashioned racism certainly played a role, MARTA has long done a poor job policing its system, leading to a bad reputation which is exacerbated by hyperbolic exaggerations.
I think a lot of Georgians don't like sprawl theoretically but putting that into action has been a miserable failure so far because there hasn't been a good and coherent alternative put forward that fits the needs of the people now. There are some walkable areas in Metro Atlanta, they're always buzzing with people. Building that out is possible.
Love your work Zaid.
I don't know the specifics about the recent referendum, but I worked on the Connect Gwinnett plan that got rejected during the special referendum in 2019. In short, few of us thought it was a persuasive plan, even if it was better than the status quo. You were just not going to get the amount of money to do something like significant heavy rail extension based on a 1 cent sales tax increase. In public meetings, we would see the disappointment on people's faces as soon as they saw that the Gold Line would only be extended a couple of miles. The idea was to focus on bus to try to gain more widespread support throughout the county (and due to the cost of heavy rail extensions) in spite of the land use difficulties. Obviously, that didn't work.
I saw the failure of the referendum as a harbinger of Democratic party illusions that changing demographics would be a game changer for a bunch of other issues. As you often write about, people have complex beliefs that don't fit neatly along party lines and one of them is that Immigrants really like that American dream of a big house, car, and a lawn. Taking a bus, especially for some immigrant groups, is almost a sign that you didn't make it. I do not recall seeing a 1st gen Korean (my background) on a bus or train in my 10 years in Atlanta, despite using it nearly every day. So, transit may not be appealing to those groups at the moment, but you're right, something like hospital access and increasing access and affordability for senior housing (something Koreans love) could be something for the party to focus on.
If you want more doctors, wouldn’t be simplest to just raise the cap on US residency slots? It hasn’t been increased in the US in nearly 30 years. I don’t object to doctors immigrating, but it seems unfair not to give our own kids a shot at a medical career.
Let me start by thanking you for this article. I’ve been thinking a lot about these topics lately. I’ve also been frustrated by some of the commentary about this book I’ve seen online, which either misses the point in some way or (on the far left and right) takes the form of shrill angry accusations that represent a kind of politics I don’t want anything to do with.
I will say that I think there are things in the abundance idea that can apply outside the beltway. For one the book explores issues outside of housing (I have not read it yet, but know this from the things I’ve seen). I think there I are some arguments in there about bureaucracy and how we implement our ideas that need to be discussed.
I also think urbanism is good and if we could wave a magic wand and make the people of Atlanta understand what they were missing, they would have voted for the trains.
But I think you make a really important point here, which is similar to what I have been thinking.
The problem with the kind of technocratic focus laid out in Abundance is that this type of politics lacks potency; it appeals deeply to smart well informed people who enjoy understanding the intricacies of various issues. It’s hard to imagine how you can create a popular movement out of pro housing urbanism though. As you say this stuff ruffles people’s feathers and doesn’t really address some of the deep economic austerity that plagues the heartland.
On a deeper level the problem with an infrastructure based agenda is that infrastructure takes a long time to build. Even if we radically improve our processes such that we build faster (a good goal), it might still take years for people to see the tangible benefits of infrastructure. This makes it a poor basis for building a coalition.
I think the left needs to coalesce around one or two BIG welfare programs. The most obvious is Universal Healthcare. There’s a lot of untapped energy there. I also think UBI is a contender, and in some ways could be more powerful, but it is also untried and much more controversial. I think democrats should make one of these ideas the absolute centerpiece of their agenda. I think it will generate a lot of controversy and will turn off some fiscal conservatives voters. Who cares! If Trump has taught us anything it’s that you can bust through a lot of conventional policy wisdom and still win. I think it’s better to have a bold vision. I think if we could just pass a big bill at all costs (universal healthcare or bust) you then create a natural coalition of people who will support these policies.
Great perspective here. Atlanta is truly a wonderful place and you seem to have your finger on the pulse of the community there.
To add more nuance: I live in Metro St. Louis. While it seems like St. Louis City proper could use something like the abundance agenda, the suburban counties on the Missouri side (where most of the metro population lives) have some of the same struggles as you described (although Metro STL is definitely not experiencing the growth that Atlanta is; many of our residents are moving to you!).
All this to say: abundance is a nice idea for some places but is not a one-size-fits-all model for the country. And it certainly is NOT a model for how Democrats become relevant in former swing states turned deep red like Missouri again.
Thank you for the great article.
Middle class people in many urban areas don’t support mass transit for a reason no one wants to talk about. Black crime. Here I go anyway.
Young black men (15-34) are just 2% of the population and commit about half of the nation’s homicides. That’s a rate an astounding 50 times higher than the average American. Who wants to get on a bus or subway car (or allow their wife or daughter to do so) with such out of control individuals? Everyone knows this is true. We all watch the nightly news where the truth is revealed every single day and yet no one and especially no black politicians are even willing to discuss it. We need a serious national conversation about black crime and what is necessary to control it or attempts to increase investment in mass transit in our major metropolitan areas will continue to be fruitless.
“Every time I drive anywhere I see people with massive pickup trucks with $50,000 price tags (that’s probably a conservative estimate) going to palatial homes. Republicans and Democrats alike in Atlanta’s suburbs already have plenty of abundance. In general, it’s pretty easy to build here, and it’s pretty easy to start a business. The problems of New York City or the Bay Area of California really aren’t the problems of the Sunbelt.”
First, surely we can all agree that $50k trucks and palatial estates are not representative of the norm in this country, the heartland, or even in Atlanta.
Second, the only people who can reasonably say their problem is not a lack of abundance are those who would agree that things are not too expensive, which I feel confident is not something most would agree with.
Third, these are far greater issues in deep blue cities than most of the country, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t issues in most of the country. In 1960 the median home price to income ratio was about 2 in both Houston and NYC, but in 2025 it’s 5 in Houston and 10 in NYC. 10 is greater than 5, but 5 still too high.
As I listened to Klein and Thompson talk about their book on a podcast, I thought the same thing: the problems they’re talking about are big city problems. As someone who lives in suburban Texas, outside of Austin, few of the problems they describe exist here. Hence, the solutions don’t make sense. One point they did make, however, rang true: more political courage is needed to implement controversial programs. That’s the case no matter where you live. They talked about city council members voting no on a zoning change because of a council chambers full of angry neighbors opposed to it. But when the sentiment of the general public is on their side, and those kinds of programs are what they ran on in their election campaigns, they need to steel their political spines and vote yes anyway. That’s easier said than done — I’ve been in hundreds of council meetings as a journalist and local government communicator — but it gets easier the more you do it. And you should have done a better job engaging the public on the zoning change before it got the public hearing and final vote. I write about this stuff in my Substack, Good Government Files.
Zaid, I don't know of another writer whose quality is so far above their upvote counts. Consider me an advocate for your brand. Off to recommend you!
Although I recently moved away, I lived in the Atlanta area for 20 years, so I know that EVERYONE who needs to use 400 complains about its traffic. Given that, the most effective thing you can do to address it is support MARTA rail expansion- even if you yourself decide you will never get on a train. Every one of those (full) trains whizzing by you is taking a LOT of cars off the road and benefiting you. Sort of surprised that the educated professionals who make up much of the suburbs can’t see that.
I did hear some comments suggesting that if these transit referendums were about light rail rather than buses, they would've had more support. But pretty much guaranteed they would've used the money for buses.
Why is taking on NIMBYISM a worthwhile cause? I like you Zaid, we come from the same place, but that’s about as far as things go in terms of our similarities.
Every culture has NIMBYISM. In fact, some groups are fighting wars about it right this very second. Yet I don’t hear you condemning Palestinians.
Democrats are no longer a political party. They are a religion.
Was this comment written by chatgpt?