From the article:

The survey of 1,200 registered voters by Demand Progress, a progressive advocacy organization, was designed to supply some hard data for the debate.

• It defined the abundance argument by starting off with this sentence: “The big problem is ‘bottlenecks’ that make it harder to produce housing, expand energy production, or build new roads and bridges.”
• The populist argument was described as “The big problem is that big corporations have way too much power over our economy and our government.”

A review of the book Abundance quotes:

the United States can still blaze the path to progress, but only if progressives get out of the habit of putting obstacles in their own way. “If liberals do not want Americans to turn to the false promise of strongmen,” the authors write, “they need to offer the fruits of effective government.”

(…)

Klein and Thompson rightly argue that conservative politicians aren’t the only ones who have hobbled the government’s essential role in a dynamic and innovative society. In recent decades, Democrats across the country exchanged novelty for NIMBYISM…

Yeah I’ve read enough. Fuck the NYT for adding “rightly” in there.

For anybody who still needs it spelled out:

• “Populism” is meant literally here - for the 99%, against the 1%
• “Abundance” is techbro speak for even fewer regulations and even more corporate power

Why make up terms that no one knows what you’re talking about until you explain them? What they’re calling the “abundance agenda” is just the right-wing conservative agenda. "Regulations are the problem." It is also bundled with the big lie that has already doomed our civilization and a significant percent of the Earth’s biodiversity along with it: that infinite growth is possible on a finite planet. And it probably appeals to those fart-sniffing dipshits who can say the phrase “post-scarcity-society” with a straight face.

What they call the “populist agenda” is that corporate greed, regulatory capture, and concentration of wealth are the real problem. Which is the leftist take, and is also objectively true and pretty obvious to anyone paying attention. It also has nothing to do with what the word ‘populist’ is typically used to describe.

If you [ meaning the Democratic Party leadership ] can’t immediately see that aligning with the latter is the only reasonable path forward, for the one supposed opposition party in a two-party system against the Basically Literally Hitler party, without first polling voter sentiment to determine which side of your mouth to talk out of today, then how about you go commission another focus group on how best to fuck yourselves.

Think of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, trying to dare Republicans to vote against tax cuts for billionaires.

Trying to dare? Is that what it’s called when he opens his mouth to say “we dare you” but the words “we’ll cave at the first threat of a shutdown” spill out?

Man, one thing that kills me is democrats perpetually eating up the rabid opposition to populism. Like, I get it, obviously establishment democrats are gonna push back since it directly affects their status, but it’s like democrats have been falling into this stupid politics as a team sport bullshit real hard in recent years, and you see it with the blanket demonization of something like populism of all things. “Like, akshuallee, the elites are good bro”. They don’t think for themselves anymore.

So Dems are left leaning. Who knew ?

Abundance trails by a wide margin with both Democrats and Independents. I guess the money behind it is gonna have to work hard shilling for it.

Yeah, but Ezra Klein wrote a whole book about it. It would be rude not to use it for a few election cycles, even if we lose!

Will everyone here please read the article and learn that they’re using a completely different definition of “populism” to the one you’re imagining, before you start commenting?

We already knew the US is fucked beyond repair. You don’t have to rub it in.

For voters in a complacent society, projection is so much easier than actually doing something to fix the situation, it seems.