Delivery Democrats: Breaking Points, WelcomeFest, & the Factions of "Abundance"
A hope of a "majoritarian left-liberal politics that could fundamentally change people's lives by delivering them things"
This exchange crystallizes how "abundance" has become a Rorschach test for the Democratic Party—the same word meaning radically different things to different factions, revealing incompatible theories of political change.
Breaking Points: Abundance as Democratic Delivery
On Breaking Points, Kosloff begins by acknowledging the concept's complexity: "Abundance is a bunch of different things, right?" He identifies three distinct camps claiming the abundance mantle:
The Ezra Klein/Derek Thompson wing: Authors of a successful policy book advocating for building more and removing regulatory obstacles
The "dark abundance" tech right: VCs like Marc Andreessen supporting Trump's deregulatory agenda
The defensive centrists: Who've "adopted abundance as part of that project" of moderating on social issues while needing "something forward-facing to say"
Kosloff's critique of the Klein/Thompson book is telling. He objects to their 2050 vision opening: "I actually really did not like that first chapter, especially from the perspective of articulating to the left why they should actually care about these ideas." Why? Because "we live in an era where people are backlashing against oligarchy, where people aren't excited about technology."
Instead, Kosloff offers an alternative grounding—one rooted in Robert Caro's biography of LBJ. His favorite chapter covers the Rural Electrification Administration in 1937: "We had electricity in the country for more than 50 years, but the private sector was not delivering electricity to the Hill Country, to poor, hardscrabble farmers."
This becomes Kosloff's touchstone for abundance: "A vision of broad left liberalism that delivered for people and really mattered... a majoritarian left-liberal politics that could fundamentally change people's lives by delivering them things that are powered by technology."
Drawing on Marc J. Dunkelman's Why Nothing Works, Kosloff explains the tension between "Hamiltonian instincts" (big, ambitious projects like the New Deal) and "Jeffersonian instincts" (protecting local communities from those projects' excesses). The 1960s environmental and civil rights movements weren't wrong to challenge Robert Moses bulldozing Black neighborhoods—they were essential democratic feedback.
Kosloff's vision is explicitly "yes, and"—build more housing AND protect tenants, expand green energy AND respect local input. He's particularly wary of how abundance is being weaponized: "If you're trying to supplant an anti-oligarch agenda with a YIMBY agenda and a deregulatory agenda? Yes, those two things are actually at odds with each other."
His pitch moving forward: "Most people are not actually looking to do a big centrist interests versus progressive fight."
Krystal Ball, remarking on her interview with Thompson on another Breaking Points episode, drives home the political reality: abundance messaging polls worse than populist messaging. "To fight back against [techno-authoritarianism] with zoning reform," she argues, "feels so wildly inadequate to the moment."
WelcomeFest 2025: Abundance as Efficiency
At WelcomeFest, Thompson and Congressman Jake Auchincloss present abundance as a technical problem with technocratic solutions. Thompson's book promises to diagnose how "liberal policies restrain housing development, energy construction." The prescription is always the same: remove obstacles, unleash markets, optimize efficiency.
When Kosloff asks about narrative and meaning, Thompson's response is notable. After stating—"Stories are for children. Americans need a plan. Americans need solutions. You don't need a story."—he maintains this anti-narrative stance represents "a different kind of storytelling."
This reflects a strategic shift. Having failed to deliver material improvements after promising to restore the soul of the nation, some Democrats have concluded the error was making promises rather than failing to deliver them. Or worse, promising solutions that never really come.
Auchincloss makes the philosophy explicit: "Good economics tells you to be agnostic as to what is an impairment of a functioning market. You just go unplug that bottleneck." Whether it's environmental protection, labor standards, or democratic input—all are potential "bottlenecks" to be removed.
WelcomeFest itself, themed "Responsibility to Win," embodies this approach. Speakers include
complaining that unions block development, multiple candidates who won by avoiding "purity tests," and panels on "Wins Above Replacement"—reducing politics to sabermetrics. This despite the AFL-CIO being extremely supportive of permitting reform, with President Liz Shuler stating "money won’t do any good if we can’t get the project built. We know permitting is a top priority for you and it’s a top priority for us." Or one of Josh’s favorite governors, Josh Shapiro cutting through red tape to rebuild a highway bridge in 12 days using union labor. Josh Shapiro told the workers. “I’m proud we came together around the union way of life.”Beyond Surface Politics: The Real Divide
The competing visions of abundance outlined in the Kosloff-Thompson exchange—democratic delivery versus technocratic efficiency versus defensive positioning—manifest across American politics in unexpected ways.
has an interesting article that I would recommend you to read on California's housing debates and calls abundance politics "scrambling classical political alliances." This scrambling validates Kosloff's observation that abundance means "a bunch of different things" to different actors.Consider the construction union split:
The Carpenters partner with developers to maximize total construction jobs
The Building Trades oppose projects unless they guarantee union-only labor
Both claim to be "pro-labor" while supporting opposite policies
Or state legislators:
Scott Wiener champions housing abundance while supporting trans kids and climate lawsuits
Democratic Socialist Alex Lee votes for pro-housing bills while advancing rent control
Republican Joe Patterson backs housing reform to protect property rights
These unconventional alliances suggest the divide concerns what Thompson might call "solutions" versus what Kosloff frames as competing visions of "who benefits and how." The traditional left-right spectrum dissolves into questions about delivery mechanisms and beneficiaries.
Organizational Fractures in Abundance Politics
The 2025 NYC Democratic mayoral primary demonstrated how organizations claiming similar principles reach opposite conclusions. It’s a practical test of the theoretical tensions discussed on Breaking Points.
NYC New Liberals endorsed four candidates without ranking either frontrunner. Abundance NY endorsed the same four, then crucially added a fifth choice between Cuomo and Mamdani. The divergence proved telling: Whitney Tilson (NYC New Liberals' top pick) endorsed Cuomo second, while Brad Lander (endorsed by both groups) backed Mamdani second.
Mamdani himself embodies these contradictions—supporting permit reform to speed up the MTA and New York's City of Yes zoning reform, while advocating rent freezes and free transit. He doesn't fit traditional camps in New York politics, and while people may disagree with him, he represents a chance for new networks and new politics to emerge. At the same time, those prioritizing police funding have historical reasons for distrust, and if they don't want to vote for Mamdani because of those issues, it's Mamdani's job to convince them.
On that note, the establishment's response proved revealing. The New York Times editorial board came out against Mamdani, while Reverend Al Sharpton attacked him for ranking Lander over Adrianna Adams (despite Mamdani fundraising for Adrianna), claiming "Somehow that politics ain't progressive to me." Both Sharpton and the Times represent established New York political players. Tellingly, these established players, along side Andrew Cuomo, haven't delivered a better—or more affordable—city or even state.
This split mirrors the broader abundance divide. NY New Liberals approach maintains maximum flexibility—what some might call defensive positioning. Abundance NY engages with messy realities, accepting that coalition building requires imperfect choices. The endorsed candidates themselves demonstrated this pragmatism.
The pattern exposes how "lesser evil" arguments become weapons of convenience. NYC New Liberals routinely lecture progressives about strategic voting and pragmatic compromise. They dismiss concerns about moderate Democrats as destructive purity politics, especially as Andrew Cuomo represents the “moderates” as is shown to be against many of the New Liberals’ stated policies of YIMBYism and permitting reform. Yet faced with their own imperfect choices, they discovered principled abstention. The same logic they condemn as naive when progressives use it suddenly became sophisticated positioning when it preserved their flexibility.
This selective deployment of pragmatism raises questions central to Kosloff's coalition-building emphasis. Organizations that demand strategic voting in some contexts while preserving their own flexibility create uncertainty. If you don’t want partner with or form a coalition with someone or some faction. That’s fine! If you do or demand their votes, well partners need consistency about when pragmatism versus principle prevails—a lesson relevant beyond this single primary. Trust requires reciprocal standards or at the very least you deliver something, not one-way demands for compromise.
Abundance in Practice: The Governors
Speaking of Democrat Governors, YIMBYism has been growing more popular among Democratic governors such as Tim Walz, Connecticut’s Ned Lamont, so on and so on. However, only a few actually bearhugs the abundance verbiage, and these Democratic governors provide some idea of how different abundance narratives perform, lets’s say California's Gavin Newsom and Colorado's Jared Polis.
Newsom's Healthcare Calculations
California's proposal requiring disabled and elderly residents to have no more than $2,000 in savings illuminates one interpretation of abundance politics. The limit, unchanged since 1989, affects 115,000 Medi-Cal recipients while Governor Newsom maintains rhetoric about expanding opportunity.
The proposal includes:
Reinstating the $2,000 asset limit from 1989
Applying it to savings, property, even funeral plots
Creating eligibility changes at age 65 when Medicare's gaps require Medi-Cal
The fiscal dynamics prove complex. Home care costs $25,400 annually; nursing homes run $114,000. The proposal's savings might be offset if people forced into institutional care cost more than those maintaining independence. Over 120 organizations pooled half a million dollars opposing the changes.
Jim Mangia of St. John's Community Health observes: "Everything at this point, unfortunately, is about the political calculation of a presidential campaign." Meanwhile, Newsom opposes Republican healthcare proposals affecting 3.4 million Californians' coverage.
This approach resembles what Breaking Points discussed as "defensive centrists"—adopting abundance language while implementing policies that restrict rather than deliver. The gap between forward-facing rhetoric and 1989-era limits echoes the organizational dynamics seen in NYC, where positioning trumps consistent application of principles.
Polis's Market Protection Strategy
Colorado's Jared Polis demonstrates a different abundance interpretation. His systematic vetoes of consumer protection bills align with the "remove regulatory obstacles" vision championed in certain abundance circles.
The RealPage veto exemplifies this approach:
The software increased Denver rents by $136/month through algorithmic pricing
Creates coordinated pricing without direct communication
Polis argued banning it would harm the rental market
Critics called it protecting digital collusion as innovation
This also reflects NY New Liberals’ view of lesser evils for others and “dark” abundance’s removing barriers that doesn’t seem to benefit (or even get stuff built) except for a few. This is just cause more coalition distrust and infighting, especially as further permitting and zoning reforms requires *more* trust to pass clean bills. Coalition partners don’t need to agree on everything, and Polis did veto more expansive bills in the past, but this time after compromises been made burn capital that we *need*.
Institutional Logic & the Musk Test Case
The appeal of technocratic abundance to Democratic leadership follows clear institutional patterns. Tech billionaires and real estate developers favor deregulation. Financial sector donors appreciate "removing bottlenecks.” This approach allows courting such donors while maintaining progressive rhetoric. It also sidesteps redistribution questions—building more sounds less confrontational than taxing more.
This framework helps explain Democrats' pursuit of Elon Musk. Congressional Democrats and pundits actively court him:
Rep. Ritchie Torres: "I'm a believer in redemption"
- : Urges leaders to call Musk about "electric cars and solar panels"
- (WelcomeFest co-founder): "It's a zero-sum game. Anything he does that moves more toward Democrats hurts Republicans."
This occurs after center left and the left factions both agree that the DOGE cuts resulted in estimated 300,000 deaths in developing nations, loss of HIV medication access, and refugee camps operating on starvation rations.
The electoral calculation appears flawed. Musk's endorsement alienates educated suburban voters Democrats need. He lost Wisconsin despite spending millions. His platform amplifies anti-Democratic messaging. The pursuit suggests institutional incentives override electoral strategy.
It is one thing that someone in the more conservative camps or associated with the Tech Industry were to defend and promote them. People are influenced or limited by their social networks at the end of the day. It’s another when your base rejects Musk and the issues he support, with yourself claiming he unleashed death and destruction.
Intellectual Contradictions on Display
The tension between abundance theory and political practice becomes visible when advocates encounter successful politicians. At WelcomeFest, Matthew Yglesias—who has written extensively against localism, antitrust enforcement, and right-to-repair laws—moderated a panel with Representatives Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Jared Golden.
The successful centrists Democrats as described by WelcomeFest emphasized:
The importance of "standing up for independent businesses"
Protecting "chicken farmers in Washington and lobstermen in Maine"
How "localism" and "preserving strong communities" creates "winning politics"
Yglesias, who dismisses these concerns coming from anyone else as economically inefficient, listened while the representatives explained how defending local interests against corporate power wins elections—positions he has argued against in other contexts, especially when he is telling other coalitions to expect nothing and vote for the lesser evil.
The Technocratic Critique
Charles Marohn of Strong Towns offers broader criticism, comparing Thompson and Klein's book to past technocratic initiatives—1950s "Planning for Permanence," 1990s financial "modernization," each promising prosperity through expert management.
These share "the conviction that structural complexity can be overridden by technocratic clarity."
This critique identifies patterns but may miss distinctions. Kosloff's vision explicitly includes democratic feedback—balancing Hamiltonian ambition with Jeffersonian humility. When Thompson states "stories are for children," he's expressing a different view about the role of narrative in policy legitimacy.
Political Reality vs Political Theory
The 2024 election results tested competing abundance visions against Kosloff's concern about "an era where people are backlashing against oligarchy."
What Lost:
Democrats hemorrhaged non-white working-class voters
The least politically engaged swung hardest against incumbents
If only 2022 midterm voters had voted, Harris would have won
Technocratic messaging about "removing bottlenecks" showed no positive movement
What Won:
Defending local interests against corporate power (as verbally championed by Gluesenkamp Perez and Golden)
Candidates emphasizing tangible, immediate benefits
Clear villains and clear actions
Politicians who live in their communities
The results validate concerns about technocratic abundance failing to address anti-oligarch sentiment. Voters rejected abstract efficiency arguments while rewarding concrete protection and delivery.
Patterns across levels reveal how different abundance interpretations perform. Defensive positioning creates messaging contradictions—whether in organizations avoiding tough choices or governors implementing austerity while preaching opportunity. Pure deregulation concentrates benefits upward. Institutional courtship of tech billionaires while imposing means-tested limits confirms voter suspicions about whose interests matter.
The vision least evident in practice, democratic delivery to abandoned communities, appears most successful electorally. Candidates channeling this approach, consciously or not, outperformed those offering technocratic solutions or defensive positioning. Whether party leaders recognize this pattern shapes the future of abundance politics and its competing camps.