May 28, 2025 14 min read

Rant on the Press: The Atlantic Agenda

An alligator eating a fellow resident of Everglades National Park. Copyright Philip Cardella 2024.

Going in my weekly newsletter this week is the following: "Jonathan Chait, the guy who wrote a piece called, "Why Liberals Should Support a Trump Republican Nomination" and successfully got liberals to tear into each other over "political correctness" now wants the opposition party to have a "civil war" over...regulations? Here's 4500 words by him misrepresenting Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's book, Abundance (link to a review that seems to actually represent Klein and Thompson's book– which to be fair, I haven't read), to try and start that civil war or something."

I elaborate just a little bit, but as I dug into it deeper for context, as historical scholars are taught to do (investigative journalists as well– but are columnists taught this?) I realized there was a whole as rant just waiting to happen.

But first, what is the Abundance Agenda and who is into it and who is upset by it?

Well, to be blunt, the term abundance agenda, as Chait helpfully points out in one of the few truly fully accurate statements of his 4500 novella, was coined in 2022 by...wait for it, his colleague at The Atlantic, Derek Thompson. It's basically an economic theory that liberals have trouble getting things done because liberals way back in the before times, like the 1970s, overregulated things and make it too hard for real estate developers and others to get things done.

Chait refers to Mr. Thompson as a policy wonk, suggesting that, as Paul Krugman is an economic policy wonk, so too is Mr. Thompson, at least in the policy wonkishness, it's unclear what Mr. Chait field Chait thinks Thompson is a policy wonk in. I suspect he is saying Mr. Thompson is an economic policy wonk.

But...what is a wonk? Merriam-Webster defines it as "a person preoccupied with arcane details or procedures in a specialized field. Broadly a nerd." The Cambridge Dictionary defines it "a person who works or studies too much, especially someone who learns and knows all the details about something."

A nerd? I guess, but an expert, yes. An expert who "knows all the details about something." Got it.

Ok, so let's set this up, Paul Krugman, or Dr. Krugman, as those who acknowledge advanced degrees from M.I.T. might call him, is a professor of economics, a Nobel Prize winner in economics along with 16 other major awards in economics, and author of dozens of books, 16 of which are academic books, another 11 are literally textbooks on the topic of economics and another 11 books for a general audience. Oh, and he was a columnist for The New York Times for a quarter of a century.

Krugman published 9 books before turning 39. Put a pin in that.

This is an economics policy wonk. An expert. An economic policy nerd. A person who knows all the details about economics. Of course, Krugman would deny that. The thing about actual experts is they understand the more they know about anything the more they realize how little they know. Anyway. Moving on.

Derek Thompson is a podcaster as well as a staff member of The Atlantic. He has a BA degree in journalism, political science and legal studies– an impressive triple major. He is much younger than fellow wonk, Krugman, so it is understandable that he has published fewer books. His 2018 book Hitmakers: How to succeed in an age of distraction now mentions that he is a New York Times Bestseller, thanks to Abundance, which came out seven years later. So, he has two books by major publishers under his belt before the age of 39 (I have zero, to be clear), none of them are academic in nature, only one is on the topic addressed in "Abundance" a field he is a policy wonk in, now. He also published a book in 2023 called On Work: Money, Meaning and Identity.

This is a policy wonk, like Dr. Paul Krugman?

I'm not trying to disparage Thompson, by the way. I am actually trying to disparage Chait, for conflating this guy with a perfectly reasonable resume on publishing his thoughts and getting people to listen with a Nobel Laureate. A literal expert in his field who created some of the field he's an expert in.

Krugman receiving the Nobel Prize. Photo Han

What about Ezra Klein. You know Ezra, you may even like him. Let me be upfront, though he's done some stuff I've appreciated, I really think, generally, he's the epitome of "I did my own research," which, as a scholar (a very unpublished scholar) I am not all that impressed by.

As Jacob Pierce of Goodtimes wrote in 2020, "School, [Klein] admits, never felt like a great fit socially or academically." There's absolutely nothing wrong with not being a good fit with school or the academy. I know it must sound like I'm saying the opposite, that only a pile of letters after your name matter. I am not. I am saying, what exactly is Klein an expert in? What thing does he know all the details about? The abundance agenda? I mean, given his friend made it up three years ago, I guess. Perhaps there's simply not much to know.

But if we're talking about the political ramifications of economic policy vis a vis the regulatory state, I just don't see it. He reads a lot? So, Jared Kushner really was a wonk on the Middle East because he read gasp over two dozen books about it? Klein's resume suggests he's an expert, a wonk, a nerd, reading about something and talking in a way that people listen. He's a damn good explainer. But a policy wonk comes up with new ideas, they are more than just a good explainer of other people's ideas.

Maybe Klein is just explaining someone else's ideas in his book with Thompson, which I have not read and am not talking about, to be honest. You know, like the economic policy reporter at The Atlantic he's married to.

Again, I think Klein is great at what he's good at: explaining things. He's great at getting clicks and building an audience. Is he a policy wonk though? Really? He deserves to be in a conversation with Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman?

Am I jealous of what Klein has accomplished in his life professionally? Yes! Am I jealous of Thompson? You betcha! Am I jealous of Chait?

No. **** that.

Ok, so next up in the abundance agenda wonkery we have Yoni Appelbaum, or Dr. Appelbaum to those of us that appreciate advanced degrees from Brandeis University. Good start. He is also the senior Politics Editor for...The Atlantic. For those keeping score, that's three policy wonks on the abundance agenda, which was created by an author at The Atlantic, who are either working for or married to someone working for, The Atlantic. And, um zero policy wonks whose household income is not derived in large part from The Atlantic.

Interesting.

Appelbaum's doctorate is in history and his thesis was on "The Guilded Age: The American Ideal of Association, 1865-1900." This means, upon completing his doctoral studies in history at Brandeis University he was an expert on the history of working guilds during the "Gilded Age". A guild, according Encyclopedia Britannica is "an association of craftsmen or merchants formed for mutual aid and protection and for the furtherance of their professional interests. Guilds flourished in Europe between the 11th and 16th centuries and formed an important part of the economic and social fabric in that era."

So, without reading his dissertation, I think what the title suggests is Applebaum believes that guilds existed during what historians refer to as the "Gilded Age" and played a role in defining the cultural landscape of America during that tumultuous period.

Honestly, I'd read that. I'm sure I'd learn a ton and I wouldn't even be able "yeah but" much if any of it. I'd grant that he is, or was when he was "hooded" with his PhD, a wonk on that topic.

What does it have to do with 21st Century economic and environmental policy in the United States?

He has published...an article for The Atlantic called "How America Ends," in 2019.

I think, if I'm reading my Wikipedia right, "According to Margaret Sullivan writing in The Washington Post, Appelbaum's essay is the article that "moved... impeachment, all-but-taboo in Big Media's coverage of Trump,...., from the margins into the mainstream — across the journalism spectrum."

That's impressive! Move that needle!

But...what does it have to do with economic and environmental policy and the implications of the regulatory state on them?

He has a PhD, in an adjacent field to economics (history is actually a subset of economics in the academic lineage, not that that matters much) but it seems his entire career since then has been making political arguments coherent for a news magazine.

All three of these "wonks" certainly talk a lot about this and that, including politics and the economy, but are they really wonks, as in experts, the way, say Krugman is? I mean, if they talk about lots of this and that how can they, by any definition of the word "wonk" be wonks? Unless, we're solely focused on the word "nerd."

Chait thinks a bunch of nerds he works with are going to start a "civil war" within the Democratic Party?

Hmmm... as an aside, 600,000 soldiers were killed during the American Civil War. Most of them via horrifying bowel diseases and other bacterial infections. Perhaps half a million were killed during the Spanish Civil War. The Sudanese Civil War going on right now has seen over 150,000 combatants killed, 522,000 children starve to death as a result of it, and at least 3.5 million refugees that the United States is declining to help.

Maybe "a Democratic Civil War" is a poor choice of words. Or is it meant to provoke angry rants?

Back to the question at hand, how is that even a question, that Klein, Thompson and Appelbaum have any business being called "wonks". They are nothing of the sort. They did their own research. Yay them. And yet Chait states it like its a self evident claim.

What about the fourth guy mentioned by Chait as a "wonk"? "Why Nothing Works, by the Brown University scholar Marc Dunkelman," is Chait's clincher. The big expert. The actual university scholar.

The Hachett Book description of this book starts off with a rousing endorsement, "A provocative exploration about the architecture of power, the forces that stifle us from getting things done, and how we can restore confidence in democratically elected government—“the best book to date on the biggest political issue that nobody is talking about” (Matthew Yglesias)." (Emphasis mine)

I think it is worth noting the "that nobody is talking about" and that the person making the statement is longtime friend of...Ezra Klein, regular columnist for The Atlantic (did you think that wouldn't show up?) who wrote an essay in 2024 on how he's no longer a liberal.

I'm not going to dig up the receipts, but I had known that for years when he wrote that in 2024, not that I bothered to even notice it.

Anyway, about Marc J Dunkelman (an urban policy expert, not Marc H Dunkelman, a historian)– this guy appears to be the wonk we're looking for. From his days at NYU:

Marc J. Dunkelman is a Marron Fellow at NYU’s Marron Institute of Urban Management where his research focuses on the challenge of developing public infrastructure. He is also a visiting fellow at Brown University’s Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions, where his scholarship focuses on how the evolving architecture of American community has affected the workings of government, the dynamism of the American economy, and the resilience of the American social safety net. In 2014, W.W. Norton published Dunkelman’s first book, The Vanishing Neighbor: The Transformation of American Community.

During more than a dozen years working in Washington, DC, Dunkelman served on the staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee, as legislative director and chief of staff to a member of New York City’s delegation to the House of Representatives, and as the vice president for strategy and communications at the Democratic Leadership Council. He has also been a senior fellow at the Clinton Foundation, a visiting fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center and a fellow at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Advanced Governmental Studies.

He's a PhD, if that's important– I think it matters, but one can do fine without it. He's worked both in the public sector and as an academic. According to his more recent Brown University website:

His work has appeared in the New York Times, Atlantic, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Harvard Business Review, Chronicle of Higher Education, Daily Beast, National Affairs and other publications.

So, Dr. Dunkelman is absolutely a wonk on this. He and Dr. Krugman can have an argument, or whatever.

But how is he connected to The Atlantic, aside from the fact that good friend of The Atlantic, Matt Yglesias, wrote a review of the book? Dunkelman has written three pieces for them, so he's not on their staff. I can't find an obvious familial connection.

Wonk. Winner.

So, how is this causing a "civil war" among Democrats? Matt Yglesias said that this is an issue no one is talking about. Well, The Atlantic is talking about it. But why?

Is it because The Atlantic and its staff stand to benefit financially from all of these books, except, presumably, the one written by an actual expert, and war, or rumors of wars, drive clicks?

And, what about the issue? It's basically saying regulation can strangle innovation and development. This is the platform of one party, The Republicans. The Democrats have no power nationally. Remember, when Republican strategist and, dare I say it, policy wonk, Grover Norquist said, "I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub"? Is now the time to argue about this for Democrats? Granted, Klein and Thompson's book was written in 2024 when it was unclear who would control Washington DC, but most states were controlled by Republicans and Klein was going on ad nauseum about how Joe Biden was older than the solar system and that would bring about the Second Coming of 45.

Chait and these folks argue that Democratically controlled states are also strangled by these regulations. But most of the books (from the reviews I've seen) and certainly Chait skip the entire reality that 80% of the funding from the Infrastructure Law went to Republican controlled states. Never mind that the notoriously not liberal The Economist ran a magazine cover story in October of 2024, "The American Economy: The Envy of the World."

The whole point of The Abundance Agenda is that Democrats didn't get anything done with the economy, so far as I can tell from Chait. And yet, the Democrats led the United States to an economy that was the envy of the world. Make it make sense.

Again, I'm not beefing with the Abundance Agenda–I don't know it well enough to beef with it yet, if ever. Vox, Klein's former company, has a fair review of his book that contrasts with much of what Chait says and seems to me, without having read the book, to capture the book's arguments better without ever mentioning an internal civil war (though it states "the left hates it"). The Guardian has another fair take.

So, why is The Atlantic spending forty-five hundred words on "the coming Democratic civil war"? The only answers I can come up with spun up this rant.

By the way, who hates it exactly? The liberals at The Wall Street Journal?

From Wikipedia. To get to those links click on the photo. Screen shot shows 2 rave reviews, one positive, three mixed and one "Pan" written by The Wall Street Journal.

There are "liberal" individuals taking shots at it like Bernie Sanders' speech writer David Sirota (who unironically calls the champions of this "abundance bros"), but, the big press seems to, dare I say, like it? Including those hardcore conservatives at Slate (sarcasm) who "rave" (fact) about the book by Klein and Thompson.

Like I said, is it simply to sell books? To wag the dog to create a controversy so they can sell a few books and generate a few clicks? Is that it? **** that. I have no time or respect for The Atlantic if that's what is going on.

Or is Chait intentionally tossing fuel on to a bunch of kindling his coworkers stacked up because he wants to watch the world burn? I'm not so cynical to think that Chait is that cynical, but if he is, **** that.

Is it that these "wonks" are so self absorbed as to think that they really have an important idea that must be pressed right now, everything else be damned? Frankly, I'm willing to accept this. That's Yglesias, who likely is at least reading drafts of this stuff for the abundance bros, whole thing. That's why I can't stand him.

Klein too, seems to suffer from this delusion. Again, not something I respect.

So, the elephant in the room. Did this issue deserve 2400 words from me?

Who cares? This isn't a well respected, 150 year old, publication known for publishing leading writers' work.

It is fine that Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson aren't actually policy wonks. They get to have opinions and if people want to read their book, good for them.

It's also fine that while Appelbaum has, perhaps, a more traditionally wonky resume, isn't really a policy wonk.

It's great that Chait is promoting the ideas of an actual policy wonk on this by Dr. Marc Dunkelman. I bought his book so I can read up on what an actual expert on American urban policy thinks (though, it appears his book opens with a depressingly stupid analogy about New York City's rat problem).

What gets this rant is pushing the notion that it is a foregone conclusion that some sort of civil war brewing within the Democratic Party without bothering to mention that the entire notion of abundance agenda appears to be a creation of The Atlantic and that when anybody talks about it its to mildly mock it and move on. The civil war notion appears to be an outright lie by Chait, presumably accepted by his colleagues at The Atlantic who stand to benefit from sales of all but one of these books. **** that.