This is the highest-engagement theme in the study. Of the 290 quotes across 30 voices and 41 videos, the audience is enormous — 229M views, 4.0M likes, the largest reach of any theme. The quote distribution is bimodal: the authoritarian-left and libertarian-right register the largest shares, with the partisan-right contribution close behind. The substance of the critique is identical even when the politics aren’t: the party’s model of governance has become so burdened by self-imposed bureaucracy, litigation, and process that it consistently fails to produce the outcomes it promises. The “abundance” frame popularized by Ezra Klein is, in this dataset, no longer a niche heterodox argument — it is an organizing critique that reaches across the political spectrum.
290 quotes drove 229M views — the highest engagement in the entire dataset. The audience is paying attention to governance failure specifically.
The bimodal distribution is the tell: left and right register the same complaint about housing not getting built, transit projects not getting finished, infrastructure dollars not reaching the ground.
The “abundance” critique — that progressive governance has become the defender of the status quo because it cannot build — is a left-of-center argument now. The study catches it crossing over.
The most cited prescription in the study is not deregulation. It is de-proceduralization — fewer mandatory consultations, fewer veto points, more legislative cycles that come back to ask whether the thing actually got built.
The party of process becomes the party of nothing
The 290 quotes here describe an institution that has confused procedural elegance with outcomes. The study catalogs the symptoms across multiple registers: housing that does not get built in cities the party controls, infrastructure dollars that take half a decade to deploy, regulatory regimes that turn allies into plaintiffs. The reach — 229M views — suggests the audience has noticed.
The deeper finding is that the process critique is no longer a right-wing argument. The Ezra Klein–style “abundance” frame, the supply-side liberalism conversation, the YIMBY housing argument — these are all left-of-center voices making a structural critique of how the modern Democratic state actually functions. The study reads the cross-spectrum agreement as a watershed: when 30 voices across the political spectrum agree that the model is broken, the model is the message.
The twin instincts I have watching this happen with Trump and DOGE is, A, a little bit of jealousy — like, god, it would be nice to have some fewer lawyers in the Obama administration. God bless the lawyers in the Obama administration, including my wife, who would have asked for forgiveness instead of permission on stuff, and just moved more quickly and not been so process.
It's not about deregulation, it's about de-proceduralization. You are asking people to do the wrong job because you don't have confidence in their intelligence or their care. You do not legislate care or diligence. You trust, and you build more reflective legislative cycles that come back and say, how was this implemented?
It's too damn hard to build stuff in this country, and right now Republicans kind of own that stick. Good Lord, the Democrats — if you want your city governed well, is the first thing you think, I want to hire a Democrat? I don't think so. If you want a project done fast, what's the first thing you do, hire a Democrat? No, I don't think so.
