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The Real Democratic Civil War
No American ever did more to create an abundant economy that benefited the working class, or more to regulate the economy in ways that constrained capital and benefited the working class, than Franklin Roosevelt. So, forgive me if I think that the real divisions within today’s Democratic Party aren’t fundamentally those separating the “abundance” crowd and the pro-regulatory crowd. Those divisions are real enough, but I think they are largely stand-ins for a more fundamental set of differences about what the Democrats should do to regain the support of the American working and middle classes.
The measure of a first-class mind, as F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, is the ability to hold two conflicting beliefs and not be paralyzed by the contradictions. In this instance, I don’t even think that the tenets of abundance-ism and those of a critique of American capitalism are necessarily or invariably counterposed. Jon Chait in The Atlantic and Molly Ball in The Wall Street Journal have both written that these differences have led to an intra-Democratic civil war. But that’s only because they’re proxies for the real internecine conflict.
After all, it should be clear that it’s the economically powerful—whether you call that homeowners associations opposed to apartments in their neighborhoods or corporate giants opposed to the emergence of new corporate rivals—that disproportionately invoke regulations to stop the intruders, whoever they may be. An entrenched economic power will often use whatever power it can access to thwart the emergence of newcomers who may threaten its power.
Just because abundance advocates may attack restrictive zoning regulations doesn’t mean they necessarily support repealing the laws restricting what banks can do with depositors’ savings, or consumer product safety standards. By the same token, a pro-regulation (or even pro–public ownership) critic of capitalism doesn’t necessarily support keeping every regulation in place, particularly in times when the public interest requires public initiatives. As the Obama administration struggled to generate job-producing projects during the much-too-slow recovery from the 2008 crash, the regulatory obstacles to getting those projects off the ground condemned millions of Americans to unemployment or part-time gig work, as I documented at the time in Prospect pieces. The contrast with FDR’s success at putting more than 10 percent of the nation’s workforce to work on public projects within a mere two months was instructive, and sobering.
The measure of a first-class mind, as F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, is the ability to hold two conflicting beliefs and not be paralyzed by the contradictions. In this instance, I don’t even think that the tenets of abundance-ism and those of a critique of American capitalism are necessarily or invariably counterposed. Jon Chait in The Atlantic and Molly Ball in The Wall Street Journal have both written that these differences have led to an intra-Democratic civil war. But that’s only because they’re proxies for the real internecine conflict.
After all, it should be clear that it’s the economically powerful—whether you call that homeowners associations opposed to apartments in their neighborhoods or corporate giants opposed to the emergence of new corporate rivals—that disproportionately invoke regulations to stop the intruders, whoever they may be. An entrenched economic power will often use whatever power it can access to thwart the emergence of newcomers who may threaten its power.
Just because abundance advocates may attack restrictive zoning regulations doesn’t mean they necessarily support repealing the laws restricting what banks can do with depositors’ savings, or consumer product safety standards. By the same token, a pro-regulation (or even pro–public ownership) critic of capitalism doesn’t necessarily support keeping every regulation in place, particularly in times when the public interest requires public initiatives. As the Obama administration struggled to generate job-producing projects during the much-too-slow recovery from the 2008 crash, the regulatory obstacles to getting those projects off the ground condemned millions of Americans to unemployment or part-time gig work, as I documented at the time in Prospect pieces. The contrast with FDR’s success at putting more than 10 percent of the nation’s workforce to work on public projects within a mere two months was instructive, and sobering.
https://prospect.org/politics/2025-06-15-scenes-from-revolution-no-kings-protests-chicago-philadelphia-los-angeles-brooklyn/