The Billionaires Backing the Neoliberal 'Abundance Coachella' Gathering Draw Ire From Progressives

Days after a national poll showed that the vast majority of Democratic voters want their party to focus on fighting corporate power and promoting policies that help working people instead of adopting the "Abundance" agenda pushed by centrist pundits and conservative Democrats, a watchdog revealed a new reason many voters may be unconvinced by the "Abundance universe."

According to an analysis by Revolving Door Project, the Abundance movement's political action committee counts a number of conservative, corporate-friendly billionaires among its funders, including members of the Walton family, former New York City billionaire Michael Bloomberg, and Wall Street executives Rob Granieri and Mark Heising.

The analysis was released the day before the centrist Welcome Party is set to host its annual event, WelcomeFest, featuring a lineup of speakers including U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), who has slammed progressives' use of the term "oligarchy," conservative Blue Dog Caucus chair Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.), and Derek Thompson, co-author of the book Abundance, which has been adopted in recent months a seminal text for politicians and commentators who reject progressives' demands for a true populist agenda.

The book argues partially that regulations and other bureaucratic "bottlenecks" make it harder to produce new housing and infrastructure.

"Given the WelcomeFest lineup, it's clear that the donor class views Abundance as key to carrying out this self-serving crusade against populism," said Henry Burke and Vishal Shankar of the Revolving Door Project.

Even more telling, said the group, is the list of donors to WelcomePAC, the Welcome Party's political action committee.

The PAC has received:

• More than $1.8 million since 2021 from LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, who opposed the Biden administration's antitrust policies and bankrolled campaigns to defeat progressives including former Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) and former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner;
• $625,000 from Samuel R. Walton, grandson of Walmart founder Sam Walton and owner of natural resources holding company;
• $150,000 from Carrie Walton Penner, granddaughter of Sam Walton and a donor to the anti-public education charter school movement; and
• $2.5 million from James Murdoch, estranged son of News Corp founder Rupert Murdoch, and his wife Kathryn.

"The 'Abundance' movement is funded by GOP mega-donors," said Turner.

As Burke and Shankar wrote, organizers of WelcomeFest—or "Abundance Coachella"—are seeking to juxtapose their event with "the purportedly left-wing" Democratic National Convention, rejecting so-called "purity tests" but failing to offer "a compelling explanation for why swing and red state voters are flocking to the progressive-populist fight against oligarchy."

As it promises to offer "a vision for a depolarized United States, WelcomeFest "proudly touts the label of 'centrist insurgency.'"

The Welcome Party attempted to convince five House Republicans to caucus with Democrats in its push for depolarization, but "failed spectacularly," wrote Burke and Shankar—suggesting that the party and its agenda are now really focused only on moderation in one of the major political parties.

In a column at Common Dreams on Sunday, Aaron Regunberg of Public Citizen noted that proponents of the Abundance agenda like Adam Jentleson, former chief of staff to Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.), have taken pains to dismiss comparisons between "populist and abundance messaging."

The recent poll by Demand Progress made the comparisons impossible to ignore, Regunberg argued, showing that 81.6% of respondents said they'd be much more likely to vote for a candidate who wanted to "get money out of politics, break up corporate monopolies, and fight corruption."

Just 47.7% said they would prefer a candidate who promised to reduce "regulations that hold back the government and private sector from taking action" for working and middle-class Americans.

"At a moment when Democrats' efficacy in defeating Trumpism carries such existential stakes, these survey results demonstrate why many of us on the left have found the campaign to make abundance the new face of the Democratic Party so deeply concerning," wrote Regunberg. "If abundance isn't going to help Democrats defeat MAGA, then abundance advocates—or at least the ones who care about ending Trumpism—should stop trying to 'define the future of the Democratic Party.' Let's leave that work to the Democrats who are trying to orient our party around a vision that voters actually do find compelling."