People who are "pushing an agenda" aren't arguing that there should be no cars ever, anywhere. Cars are the smallest-scale form of long-distance transport, they are unavoidable in low-density areas or for services that requires complete flexibility. All the agenda-pushers I've seen in real life are just saying that there's better options within cities, at least for a lot of people. Most of the time, most people only move within their cities, myself included. If transit within my city was in any way adequate, I would choose it over the car. I could cover those rare out-of-city edge cases with rentals or train travel.
Besides, it's not even the same in Europe. In a few countries, maybe, but in the majority the inter-city transit or transit within small towns is not even in the same universe as what's available in most of the US.
A massive chunk (if not majority?) of those top 20 metro areas are largely car dependent for most of their populations. Large areas don't have any public transit at all, and the rest is often designed to be actively hostile to pedestrians.
Try living without a car in these places, all in the 4th largest MSA.
And even in most of those metros (OK. Leave aside Manhattan), not having a car tends to imply a lot of lifestyle choices in terms of activities, visiting friends outside of the metro, etc.
There are certainly people who are OK with living like they did in their urban school for a few years after graduation. But that's not a long-term solution for most people.
