Abundance Liberalism – A new ethnographic study of conservatives in Michigan, South Carolina, and Wyoming suggests many are not simply voting on economics or policy disputes. When asked about democracy itself, 14 of 21 participants reacted negatively—some rejecting the concept outri
A pitch built to win over wavering voters is running into a wall that has nothing to do with housing permits or regulatory carve-outs.
Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s “Abundance Liberalism. ” released amid the Democratic establishment’s post–2024 election funk. argued that Democrats could gain ground by leaning into more of everything Americans want: housing. green energy jobs. and infrastructure—while dropping what the book calls phobias about environmental degradation. urban sprawl. interstate highway construction. and other “quality-of-life” concerns. The promise was political as much as economic. The book’s case is that Democrats should engineer an economy that “crank[s] out more stuff for the masses” by defanging regulations embedded in the National Environmental Policy Act. the Endangered Species Act. zoning restrictions. and other rules described as “Luddite do-gooderism. ” and that voters would flock and right-wing extremism would lose momentum.
But the reaction the authors faced in public debate was only the first warning sign. A New York Times reviewer said the book seemed to be “channeling ‘a few elite finance and tech bros in two or three coastal cities.’” Another reviewer flagged a blunt incongruity: the proposal to gut regulations just as Donald Trump and Elon Musk are taking a “chainsaw” to parts of the federal government.
The skepticism deepens when the argument is placed inside the country’s recent policy reality. The source material points back to Ronald Reagan’s appointments—James Watt at the Interior Department and Anne Gorsuch Burford at the Environmental Protection Agency—as part of a long Republican push to eliminate regulations. It then argues that outcomes have been mixed. but that under Trump the pace accelerated. “with his three—and counting—appointees to the Supreme Court. ” with safety. environmental. and other policies falling by the score.
On the Democratic side, the material insists administrations have not simply stood still. It cites Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act. describing it as insuring 21 million people at its height. and it argues that Joe Biden pushed through the largest infrastructure program in decades. It also cites the Chips and Science Act as “a welcome start in reshoring high-tech manufacturing.” But it pairs that with a legal and political counter-sweep: since 2010. Republicans and GOP front groups filed over 2000 lawsuits against the Affordable Care Act. and the “second Trump regime” is described as having succeeded in gutting it. The account also says Trump used executive orders to halt tens of billions of dollars of Biden’s infrastructure funding.
Still, even after laying out this policy tug-of-war, the core claim in the text is that “Abundance Liberalism” may struggle for a more basic reason—one that doesn’t hinge on Democrats offering the “right” economic mix.
The argument is that the groups the book hopes to convert don’t want it.
The evidence offered comes from an opinion study that the writer says many people have “never read or read about.” Published in May by the Johns Hopkins Agora Institute and ReD Associates. the study examined conservatives in three red counties in Michigan. South Carolina. and Wyoming. The work’s subject is described by its title: “Faith. Freedom. Family. Place: An Ethnographic Study of Conservative Americans’ Relationships to Democracy.” The researchers’ approach is described as ethnographic—“sustained immersion in people’s homes. lives. and communities through extensive interviews. observations. participation. and relationship-building”—with the stated purpose of examining how and why worldviews form in the context of daily experiences. relationships. and surrounding social environments.
The central issue the study tried to resolve. as presented here. is what conservatives think about democracy—especially the “American secular faith in democracy” that the writer suggests is often treated as a civic norm. In the study’s findings. the respondents either held a notion of democracy that “greatly differed” from what’s taught in Civics 101 (if such a course exists). or they rejected the very concept outright.
And the negative reaction is not incidental. The material says that in the study, 14 out of 21 participants had an immediate negative reaction when asked about democracy. It then puts a face and a quote to that finding: Sarah. a homeschooling mother in her mid 30s from Wyoming. is described as answering plainly. “I don’t like the word democracy.”.
The text links that posture to a broader political atmosphere. It argues that this may help explain why some conservatives are “untroubled” by Donald Trump’s assertions that he would be “dictator on day one” or that he intended to “terminate” parts of the Constitution—and that. in contrast to what outsiders might assume. the writer says it’s what they want.
What the study participants emphasize. in this account. is not economic grievance in the way conventional political storytelling often frames elections. The material contrasts the lack of discussion of “economic anxiety” among respondents with how major media. academia. and think tanks have focused on it as a driver of Trump’s 2016 victory. A single reference is described: Maria from Michigan. it says. pointed to losing her job as a result of what she called “the economic collapse under Obama”—despite the writer’s added claim that the collapse actually occurred under George W. Bush. The material also adds a GDP detail: it says economic growth was positive in seven of Obama’s eight years. with a rate of -0.2% only in 2009. while pointing to -3.4% gross domestic product decline in the last year of Trump’s first term.
But even that is presented as secondary to a different organizing system of belief. Maria’s verdict on Democrats is quoted through the study’s description, saying Democrats had dedicated their playbook to Satan and chosen the “platform of death,” with no room for “normal civic constraints to apply.”
From there. the text describes the respondents’ central concern as their so-called “moral foundations.” Democracy. in the participants’ view. is valid only if it vigorously upholds “faith. family. freedom and place. ” which the study’s title spells out. The writer describes the participants as perceiving their values as being under relentless attack by the institutions of democracy. and as concluding that democracy must therefore be sacrificed. In that mindset, political opponents are described as not acting in good faith but as demonic.
The account insists on specificity about those values. It says “faith” means their faith, not a non-Christian religion or no religion. It says “family” does not include forcible family separation of immigrants or gay marriage. It says “freedom” is framed so that getting vaccinated as a civic responsibility to protect the frail and immune-deficient is “incomprehensible” to them. And it says “place” typically means small-town and rural life, with cities described as “dens of iniquity.”.
The political implication the text draws is stark: if the voters most courted by “abundance” economics see themselves as engaged in a moral and spiritual conflict. then an emphasis on deregulation and rapid growth may not land—not because it’s unconvincing on paper. but because it’s being judged inside a different test.
The material also revisits a long-running U.S. talking point about “the silent majority.” It contrasts Richard Nixon’s conception of traditional religious conservatives as a “silent majority” and Jerry Falwell Sr.’s phrase “moral majority” with the study’s respondents. who are described as not believing they are the majority. Instead, they see themselves as a minority under pressure from a “godless and wicked majority.”.
The writer quotes the study’s characterization: “Most participants believe that the cultural conditions necessary for a viable democracy no longer exist.” It says that a “true” democracy of majority rule would require “a population with shared values. shared realities. and the capacity for self-governance. ” conditions the participants feel America has lost.
That belief also feeds a practical fear of being outvoted in an ungerrymandered world. In one quoted example. Kyle. a delivery driver in his mid 20s from Wyoming. extends the logic: “Every single small town would be outvoted by every single city. We wouldn’t be able to feed people cows. We’d all be eating seaweed.”.
The account then links those attitudes to a psychological portrait from Robert Altemeyer’s 2008 book “The Authoritarians,” describing similarities the text draws: strong loyalty to in-groups, compartmentalized thinking, double standards, and being “often hypocrites.”
The study’s view of Trump is treated as a key illustration of that dissonance. The text says that given the moral expectations attributed to the participants. one might think they would reject Trump. described here as “a twice-divorced serial adulterer and rapist. ” as “stipulated by the presiding judge in the E. Jean Carroll lawsuit.” It also refers to him as “compulsive liar and multiple indictee.” Yet the study’s account is that they see him as a “protector” of both their values and themselves. The writer then frames that as confirming the hypothesis about compartmentalized minds.
The piece closes by arguing that at least some of America in 2026 looks like this: not necessarily a representative slice of all conservatives. the text allows. but a group with “a large presence in thinly populated states or heavily gerrymandered states” that makes it an “outsized electoral force for the foreseeable future.” It concludes that these voters are “no more likely to be bribed by ‘Abundance Liberalism’ than Afghan tribesmen were going to lay down their weapons because of international development aid.”.
For the reader. the takeaway is less about whether “abundance” policies are economically plausible and more about what kind of persuasion is even being attempted. If democracy itself is rejected—or treated as a demonic threat rather than a civic bargain—then offering more deregulated growth may not be a bridge so much as a mismatch.
MISRYOUM noted this story as a stark warning about the limits of policy messaging when belief systems are on trial.
Abundance Liberalism Ezra Klein Derek Thompson conservative Christian voters democracy ethnographic study Johns Hopkins Agora Institute ReD Associates Michigan South Carolina Wyoming deregulation National Environmental Policy Act Endangered Species Act