LGBTQ Agenda: Liberal writers make pitch for ‘Abundance’ mindset at SF event

Some Democrats grappling with a leaderless party in the wilderness after last fall’s election defeats have turned to two journalists who see a reformation in the party’s mindset about delivering material abundance as the way forward.

The two writers – Ezra Klein of the New York Times and Derek Thompson of the Atlantic – were interviewed as part of their book tour at San Francisco’s Sydney Goldstein Theater March 26 by Manny Yekutiel, the gay proprietor of Manny’s civic event space and cafe, as well as the executive director of the Civic Joy Fund. They will host another event in the same venue Thursday (March 27).

Klein and Thompson, who are both straight, are the authors of “Abundance,” which came out March 18. During the discussion, Yekutiel asked the pair how they’d define the term, and their argument, if they were talking to someone drinking at The Page, a bar on Divisadero Street.

“You know how shit feels kind of broken?” Thompson answered. “Government should make shit work.”

He continued, “One thing this book is trying to do is organize politics on a new axis of abundance versus scarcity, slow versus fast. … Abundance is not a list, but a lens."

To that end, Thompson argued that political paradigm shifts in American history, such as the New Deal Coalition of the 1930s and the rise of neoliberalism in the 1970s and 1980s, happened in response to internal economic crises, such as the Great Depression in the former case, and stagflation in the latter.

In the present moment, Americans are dealing with scarcity in a post-industrial economy. The two authors argue that politicians of both parties – Republican President Donald Trump, for example, with his support for tariffs, and some Democrats, with their opposition to housing construction and what the authors characterize as an excessive devotion to procedure and bureaucracy – have made this worse, and that the key to victory going forward is to make life more affordable by growing the economy.

Giving an example of how government processes can make government ineffectual, Klein discussed $42 billion in the 2021 infrastructure law that was set aside for broadband connections in rural America. In the end, nobody got broadband internet installed, and now Elon Musk’s Starlink might get some of the money, the Times reported.

“Despite lofty promises, the Biden-Harris administration’s broadband agenda left many Americans behind,” House Committee on Energy and Commerce chairpersons Brett Guthrie (R-Kentucky) and Richard Hudson (R-North Carolina) stated in a news release before a March 5 hearing on the topic. “The Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program was saddled with unnecessary red tape to appease the left wing of the Democratic Party, without a single inch of fiber actually being laid.”

The reason, Klein argued, was that there were so many federal preliminary requirements to receive the money that no smaller level of government satisfied all of them by the time of the 2024 election. These included rules requiring public comment on map proposals; that states ensure providers had hired local, union workers; and that states had planned for climate change.

There was also a vaguely-termed requirement that “high-quality broadband services are available to all middle-class families … at reasonable prices.”

“It sucks, and for two reasons,” Klein said, “You didn’t get broadband … and, two, that did not happen in time to keep a fascist [Trump] out of the White House.”

Though they mostly avoided specific reforms they’d like to see, Klein, a former San Franciscan, made a few suggestions.

“We all know CEQA is used as a tool of mass blackmail,” he said, referring to the California Environmental Quality Act. Last month, gay state Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) introduced Senate Bill 607 to make changes to CEQA, which is more extensive than similar laws in other states, in an attempt to streamline housing and other infrastructure projects.

“For California to succeed as a state, we need to build an abundance of housing, child care centers, transportation, clean energy, and all the things that make life better and more affordable for people,” Wiener stated in a news release, explicitly nodding to the abundance terminology. “CEQA provides communities with important safeguards against projects like fossil fuel plants and warehouses that have caused real harm. But too often it has also been abused as a tool to block and delay projects for reasons that have nothing to do with environmental protections. That includes projects that are absolutely essential to protecting our environment like clean energy, urban housing, and public transportation.”

Klein, who said he was also interviewed on Governor Gavin Newsom’s podcast this week, said he raised the issue of CEQA abuses with the Golden State’s leader.

Asked Yekutiel: “Did you tell him that?”

Answered Klein: “Yes.”

Asked Yekutiel: “What did he say?”

Answered Klein, to laughter from the audience: “He agreed!”

Thompson argued more access to housing is an issue of individual freedom, as much as the other, earlier political paradigm shifts in the Roosevelt and Reagan eras were couched in the language of freedom, abundance-minded Democrats should argue that, “The anxiety of rent and mortgage … that’s about freedom, too,” Thompson said.

Klein agreed, saying that while he chose to leave the City by the Bay of his own accord, “Too many people are getting run out of town because they can’t afford to be here. Can’t save the human soul, that’s for the priests; but, we can build more homes.”

Klein also had advice for the city’s new mayor, Daniel Lurie, who defeated incumbent London Breed in last November’s election, as well as a Board of Supervisors with four new members this year.

“If I were Mayor Lurie and the Board of Supervisors, there are a couple things that need to be laser-focused on – obviously housing, housing the homeless, public disorder, making the kinds of disorder you see illegal again, and generally making the city affordable,” Klein said. “All these are gonna be hard. … [But] San Francisco is in an emergency. The fact some emergencies are fast and some are slow doesn’t mean one is greater than another.”

Those priorities line up with the stated goals of Lurie and his staff, as well as gay Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman, who as the Bay Area Reporter previously reported said the city should prioritize “safety, cleanliness, and an economic climate in which people try to pursue their dreams” at an Alice B. Toklas LGBTQ Democratic Club event last month. Mandelman also referenced Klein’s thinking at that event.

Ultimately, Thompson said, the writers hope someone with political skill can galvanize their ideas into a movement, the way former President Ronald Reagan did with neoliberal economists, or that former President Franklin D. Roosevelt did with Keynesian economics. One person Klein referenced as someone who had signed on to the abundance mindset is gay Colorado Governor Jared Polis.

As the B.A.R. previously reported Democrats are still grappling with the ultimate failure of their yearslong efforts to keep Trump, who incited an insurrection against the government in 2021 and has expressed admiration for authoritarian leaders, out of Washington – this time losing every swing state and even the popular vote.

Yekutiel said at the event that, “It has felt like we don’t have an answer,” but that, “This is the first book that called to me, that this could be our answer.”

LGBTQ Agenda is an online column that appears weekly. Got a tip on queer news? Contact John Ferrannini at [email protected]