Ideas

The Coming Democratic Civil War

A seemingly wonky debate about the “abundance agenda” is really about power.

First published in The Atlantic on May 25, 2025

by Jonathan Chait, The Atlantic
May 29, 2025 | reading time: 18 Min.

A civil war has broken out among the Democratic wonks. The casus belli is a new set of ideas known as the abundance agenda. Its supporters herald it as the key to prosperity for the American people and to enduring power for the liberal coalition. Its critics decry it as a scheme to infiltrate the Democratic Party by “corporate-aligned interests”; “a gambit by center-right think tank & its libertarian donors”; “an anti-government manifesto for the MAGA Right”; and the historical and moral equivalent of the “Rockefellers and Carnegies grinding workers into dust.”

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