Abundance and Mugwump Movements

Abundance shouldn’t be a Democratic movement to fix a broken Democratic Party. How about an American movement to fix a broken America?

America is talking about Abundance, so more than a few people have asked me what I think. Anyone who reads me should surmise the answer—I love Abundance as an idea. I think it gets at important causes of America’s present dysfunction and offers solutions that can help make broken parts of America better. Abundance can—and I think should—play a major role in national reform.

However, while Abundance is the right idea, I have grave concerns about the way it has so far been presented to America. I don’t think Abundance should be relegated to merely a Democratic movement seeking to fix a broken Democratic Party. It has the potential to be more, part of a broader reform agenda to fix what’s broken in America.

Put simply, I fear Abundance becoming another Mugwump movement.

WHAT IS ABUNDANCE?

Abundance is more than the recent book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. It’s an ideological movement that’s been growing in influence in policy circles for years. Anyone paying attention to the Washington scene has noticed more and more writers suddenly throwing around the word Abundance. An increasing number of think tanks have become de facto Abundance affiliates. It’s been the most successful new intellectual movement in the center and center left space in the last decade, if not longer.

I’ve been following Abundance for a long time. In fact, I was tangentially involved with some Abundance-related efforts some time ago. The basic idea should be reasonably uncontroversial. We have an official version of America with institutions charged with important missions to accomplish things we need done. Countless people get paid well to advance those missions. Yet those things never seem to happen. America is stagnating, institutions don’t carry out their missions, and nothing seems to work.

As the Abundance book explains, we allocate billions to build the marvel of high-speed rail, and years later there’s no high-speed rail. We allocate billions to build broadband networks and charging stations, and years later we’ve built neither broadband nor charging stations. I think this discussion, however, is too narrow in suggesting the problem is only limited to building infrastructure through government. This same illness permeates every institution. It’s expensive schools that don’t really reach students. It’s a corporate sector increasingly organized to provide frustrating and shoddy services on purpose. It’s a Congress that refuses to do its job to legislate. It’s incentives that allow finance to eat the real economy. It’s an America that costs a lot, has a lot of processes, and is presided over by people with impressive resumes and paychecks, but provides a barely acceptable experience to the ordinary American.

As a movement, Abundance simply says America should be organized to actually produce the things it says it wants. When institutions undertake responsibilities, they should actually fulfill them. When governments allocate billions and make ambitious claims, they should actually achieve the results they promise. When we entrust national institutions to provide essential services, they should provide those services with excellence. We entrust our institutions with missions that are critical to people’s lives, so their primary goal should be to fulfill those missions with competence and excellence. It shouldn’t be to churn through money and go through the motions for the benefit of the people running them, nor should it be chasing secondary goals at their expense.

People always tend to make this case in the neutral language of economists. America’s institutions are wasteful and inefficient. America lacks state capacity. We have erected impediments to investment. How about, it’s infuriating? We need things done. We pay institutions to accomplish them. People who live in nice houses and are paid well to accomplish things simply don’t—and don’t seem to even care that they don’t.

Institutions ought to fulfill their missions. Things ought to actually work.

In their book, Klein and Thompson pitch this as a message for Democrats looking to reform the Democratic Party. I get it. Klein and Thompson are coming at this as Democratic partisans. They believe in the twentieth-century Democratic Party project and Obama-era progressive coalition. Klein in particular has built a career championing Obama-era Democrats. Democrats are the party with a worldview centered around using government and institutional heights to achieve economic and moral progress. The failure of the Blue model of governance to accomplish things is a major drag on Democrats. If, when Democrats seek to carry out their agenda, their efforts don’t work, the Democratic project fails and the party gets discredited.

On the other hand, Abundance seems unlikely to resonate in a Trump-era Republican Party committed to the idea that government should get out of the way instead of into the driver’s seat. While an Abundance message in theory seems complementary to efforts like DOGE, in practice a message about getting more from government investment isn’t likely to resonate with a party committed to getting government to invest less.

At the same time, presenting Abundance as purely a Democratic idea for party reform misses the potential significance of Abundance and this political moment. I fear Abundance is the right idea, but presenting it as a Democratic reform instead of an American one places it in danger of becoming yet another failed Mugwump movement.

WHAT IS A MUGWUMP MOVEMENT?

In 1884, the Republicans nominated Senator James G. Blaine for president. Blaine was a distinguished Republican Party giant with a storied career who, like most Gilded Age politicians, had a reputation as a bit corrupt. His nomination outraged the Republican Party’s reformist good-government faction, which walked out to support the Democratic candidate. These good-government reformers were the Mugwumps.

Back in the late nineteenth century, the Republicans were what we would consider the more liberal party. The Republicans had long contained a large and powerful faction of good-government liberals who regularly waged war with their party’s more pragmatic and flexible establishment. In the Gilded Age, all of American politics was, even to jaded modern observers, shockingly corrupt. It was largely controlled by political machines and politicians in the pockets of corporations and money. For decades, Republican idealists—mainly prosperous old-money Protestants from the Northeastern establishment—fought for good government, to break up political machines, to chase cronies out of government, and to stop railroads and national corporations from corrupting politics. They were Liberal Republicans when they broke with Grant, Half-Breeds when they fought establishment Stalwarts, and now would become Mugwumps—a Native American word for “great man” used to suggest these reformers were holier-than-thou.

Whether Blaine was truly corrupt is a matter of perspective. He was a powerful politician in an era in which American politics was staggeringly corrupt on the whole. He had an impressive career in politics, serving as House Speaker, Secretary of State, and now Senator. However, he had also been implicated in one major national scandal over trading political influence for stocks and money, as well as hints of other similar corruption. His actions were no doubt shady, but also sadly likely par for the course in a Gilded Age fueled by machines and graft.

Blaine’s nomination, however, was too much for the Mugwumps. They refused to back him for president and, then, taking a costly moral stand, walked out of the party to help elect Democrat Grover Cleveland, who had a reputation as a reformer. With their support, Cleveland became the first Democrat to win the White House since the Civil War. Cleveland was mildly better than most presidents of his era on corruption, although he didn’t markedly clean up the system, nor did his Democrats suddenly become the party of good government. The Republicans didn’t change much either. Most Mugwumps, now considered traitors without a party, got drummed out of politics, their political careers destroyed.

In other words, the Mugwump rebellion played out like most good-government reform movements in American history—John Quincy Adams’s National Republicans, the Barnburners, the Greenbackers, the Liberal Republicans, the Half-Breeds, or any of the many modern iterations. It did a bit a good, but couldn’t push back the political ocean, leaving the broken system it decried intact. Ultimately, when the reformist moment passed, the entrenched establishment that owned the system maintained control and things more or less remained as before.

As Tammany Hall machine boss George Washington Plunkett said:

College professors and philosophers who go up in a balloon to think are always discussin’ the question: “Why Reform Administrations Never Succeed Themselves!” The reason is plain to anybody who has learned the a, b, c of politics.

I can’t tell just how many of these movements I’ve seen started in New York during my forty years in politics, but I can tell you how many have lasted more than a few years—none. There have been reform committees of fifty, of sixty, of seventy, of one hundred and all sorts of numbers that started out to do up the regular political organizations. They were mornin’ glories—looked lovely in the mornin’ and withered up in a short time, while the regular machines went on flourishin’ forever, like fine old oaks.¹

Most political reform movements in America end up like Mugwump movements.

However, one important Republican reformer survived the Mugwump disaster. By background and inclination, he absolutely should have been a Mugwump. However, seeing the political moment clearly, he decided to hold his fire until he could really make a difference. He stayed with his party and thereby preserved a political career that surely would have been destroyed before it made a difference. Theodore Roosevelt waited a few more years until he could embrace a movement that could actually turn these ideas into actionable reform—the historical Progressive Movement.

ABUNDANCE AS A DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT

Abundance shouldn’t be a Democratic idea to reform the Democratic Party. It should be an American movement to fix what’s broken in America—one that just happens to seek influence among (but not exclusively among) the Democrats. That’s the difference between a Mugwump movement and a paradigm-shifting ideology like the Progressive Movement.

The Democrats would no doubt be better off if they embraced Abundance ideas, although I don’t have much faith this version of Abundance can truly reform the current Democratic Party. The unstated problem is progressive factions don’t hinder building things by accident. The regulations that Klein and Thompson decry aren’t really the problem; the powerful groups of people who use those regulations and processes as tools to pursue other goals are the actual problem. This isn’t just an administrative accident we can clear up by tweaking a few dumb laws. Powerful people with influence are doing this on purpose.

This is why there’s already been so much pushback in Democratic circles against Abundance. Many progressive groups perceive it as hostile to their priorities, and for good reason—because it is. It’s a problem for the Democratic Party that nothing works, but it’s quite often in the interest of its constituent factions not to let them work. Factions that burden government to pursue priorities they rate higher than their official missions aren’t in politics to see those institutions perform their official missions; they’re in politics to seize control of those institutions to advance other priorities. Officials and operatives who twist and corrupt good government to pursue selfish goals aren’t in it for good government; they’re in it to pursue those selfish goals. For them, the Abundance agenda is a direct attack on their strategy and goals

Abundance Democrats seem to believe they can wrest control of this broken machine to fundamentally change it. The Democratic Party machine, however, holds together a lot of moving parts—factions, interests, agendas, and officials. This machine sustains loyalty and cooperation from all these groups by producing exactly what it has always produced. If you feed hostile new ideas into such a machine, it will either spit them out or mangle them into a rebranded version of what every gear inside it is designed to make. There isn’t a lot Abundance can offer these kinds of Democrats, but they’re internally stronger and naturally will fight back. Even if you were to somehow succeed in taking control, pushing these people from influence, what’s stopping them from just leaving and waging war against you from outside?

If you did somehow manage to reform the Democrats around these ideas, however, what then? If what you care about is improving governance in a few Blue pockets, that could happen. If you want to build a winning national coalition that can implement these ideas, sustain them over time, and create a new governing philosophy for America, how can a version sold as a technocratic Democratic reform achieve that? This is an era of national rebellion around the idea that America’s technocratic and professional elite ignored the interests of the majority, looked out for its own interests, and failed to govern wisely or well. It’s fueled not just by a failure of governance, but also a national breach in trust. Abundance as a Democratic Party reform not only fails to address this breach in trust, but essentially asserts the same professional classes that made the mistakes have now learned their lessons and so should be re-empowered once again because this time they’ll do better.

How does that address the discontent and calm the national storm?

The most likely outcome of making Abundance an internal Democratic Party reform is another Mugwump movement. It will likely do a bit of good before getting ground down by the machine it’s trying to fix. What’s most frustrating is Abundance can actually be part of the solution to our national problems and political discontent.

ABUNDANCE ISN’T FOR DEMOCRATS, BUT AMERICA

I would suggest don’t sell Abundance as a way to reform what’s broken with the Democrats. It’s a way to reform what’s broken in America. Roll it into a larger and bolder agenda that speaks directly to the causes of the rebellion tearing America apart.

A few years after the failure of the Mugwumps, the same Teddy Roosevelt who wisely skipped the Mugwump revolt spearheaded another reform movement that worked—the historical Progressive Movement. This movement, instead of trying to reform a dysfunctional political party like the Mugwumps had done, offered a comprehensive ideology and agenda directly attacking the true source of the discontent and popular anger tearing America apart—the one-two punch of the economic shock of industrialization and Gilded Age stagnation, corruption, and decline.

The Progressive Movement tied anti-corruption reforms like those the Mugwumps championed to other reforms like ending child labor, imposing maximum work hours, breaking up abusive monopolies with antitrust, creating public schools, ending sweatshops, and winning the vote for women. It presented all these reforms as related solutions flowing from one common ideology directly addressing the source of what was actually making Americans angry—the economic disruption, national dysfunction, crowded cities, abusive factories, political corruption, and sense of middle-class decline fueling national discontent.

The Progressive Movement also didn’t operate as an adjunct of a political party. It was organized as a force standing outside the system acting on politics. In practice, it mostly worked through Republicans, and in fact became a powerful bloc inside the party. However, where Democrats were willing to adopt Progressive ideas, it worked with them too. Eventually, the movement become so popular and powerful that Democrats under Woodrow Wilson sought to fully jump on board as well. Progressives won influence, and even control, of both national parties and got almost their entire agenda enacted and solidified. The 1912 election was essentially a national referendum over which candidate was the most Progressive.

This is the model Abundance should pursue. It shouldn’t be a Democratic Party movement. It should be an American reform movement working to influence politics with the goal of changing not just one party but the national debate.

Abundance also shouldn’t be packaged alone, but as one major solution within a larger agenda explicitly targeting what Americans are genuinely angry about. From the political left to right, Americans are angry at the system and people running it. They’re angry about ineffective government, but also ineffective private institutions, lack of transparency, poor leadership, corruption, middle-class decline, and unaccountable control. These all are related problems stemming from inter-related causes. Their root is a painful, but well-earned, collapse in national trust. Abundance is an answer to repairing this lack of trust, but not alone. Abundance is part of the solution to what’s broken in America, but America isn’t only broken because of anti-Abundance.

I think Abundance is bigger than many of its proponents realize. It’s not just an agenda about helping governments build. It’s an idea about making institutions work. It’s not just a way to reform the Democrats, or any single party. It’s a way to help address the collapse in national trust. I’m willing to support Abundance, but not as merely a Democratic Party reform. I want it integrated into an agenda meant to restore faith in the American system and to renew America.

I agree, America needs to work. We need more Abundance. This is a good idea worthy of becoming more than just another Mugwump movement.

What do you think about the Abundance movement? Join the conversation in the comments.

1. Riordon, William L. Honest Graft: The World of George Washington Plunkitt. Edited by James S. Olson, Potomac Books, 2006.