Assuming the DNC actually wants to implement policy in the future instead of being a permanent minority party (which os a big assumption), they need to start planning now for the next presidential election. Meek statements about preserving the status quo didn’t work and reaching out to mythical Reagan Democrats who have either gone maga or died off didn’t work either. What the party needs to do, IMO, is put forth an equivalent to Project 2025 - a detailed agenda for what they intend to do if they control the government in the future, with an emphasis on helping the working class and preserving civil liberties - and get candidates to pledge to upholding it if elected. Not all of it needs to be achievable right away - a lot of P25 is pie-in-the-sky stuff that Republicans have no chance of making real - but there needs to be a strong message that Democrats stand for something and will fight for it, whether that be legislatively, through the courts, or by pursuing constitutional amendments. It needs to be something that any Democratic candidate can point to and say “This is what we stand for and this is what we’ll do if you elect us”.
Slme proposals that might be included could include;
An initiative to build millions of new affordable homes, coupled with legislation to limit or prohibit corporate ownership of SFH, limitations on how many units a single company can own, requirements that a certain number of units be affordable, and limitations on when and by how much rent can be increased
A livable minimum wage that is tied to the rate of inflation and increases automatically (a la WA’s model), along with annual inflation adjustments to wages for all employees and a requirement that most employers provide some form of employer-paid retirement plan
Make it easier for service workers to unionize and provide incentives to employers with unionized workforces
Require most employers to prioritize employees and customers equally to shareholders, limit stock buybacks and incentivize employers to keep employees on payroll during lean times instead of layoffs
An opt-in public healthcare option, mostly subsidized by the government, with patient cost on a sliding scale depending on income
Tax reform that ensures the rich pay their fair share by redefining “income” to prevent them from claiming poverty by paying themselves a token wage, and a common-sense estate tax to prevent the accumulation of dynastic wealth
Address staffing shortages in professional fields by offering full scholarships to students who major in needed fields and pledge to work a certain length of time in that field after graduation a la the service academies, and establish new publicly-funded national universities to fulfill the needs of these students
Filibuster reform that stops short of eliminating it entirely, such as limiting the number of times it can be used per term
Reduce the number of non-political federal jobs that are presidential appointments and assign them to the civil service
Create a nonpartisan board with the power to censure or fire presidential appointees for misconduct, malfeasance, or corruption
Legislatively legalize abortion, SSM, and marijuana at the federal level, incorporate LGBT status into the Civil Right Act, and establish a board to review gender issues in sport on a case-by-case or sport-by-sport basis
Empower the CFPB to regulate the price of most consumer goods and limit arbitrary price increases
A campaign reform amendment to nullify Citizens United, strongly limit corporate and non-campaign-affiliated political spending and lobbying,and restrict campaign spending to a certain period prior to elections to end the perpetual campaign season
A ban on convicted felons holding federal office, subject to a two-thirds Congressional override on an individual basis
Reform the Voting Rights Act to make voter registration automatic, no-excuse-needed mail-in voting nationwide, remove obstacles to voting, and incentivize voting by providing a tax credit to anyone who votes
Ban or strongly limit civil asset forfeiture and use of eminent domain for non-government uses (e.g. stadiums)
These are just suggestions. Some of them would be harder to implement than others, but feasibility isn’t necessarily the point. Democrats need to think big and be willing to fight for big things if they want to earn votes.
These all seem like decent ideas to me, but I don’t think that “ideas” were the big problem this election. It doesn’t matter how good your ideas are if the voters never hear about them, and instead believe lots of lies.
My P2029 would include something dedicated to getting through to people. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to do that.
Which is why I’m proposing something more than a document that gets a procedural vote two months before the election and which nobody reads. Democrats need to put out a bold agenda NOW and they need to saturate the media with it for four years and they need to get anyone who runs in a primary onboard with it. Hearken back to agendas like the New Deal and the Great Society. Address it to the people, not to Goldman Sachs and the billionaire class.
Comparing the OP bullet items and the Democratic Party platform, the first difference I notice is that the OP is un-woke except for one bullet item that mentions LGBT (just the old-time four letters!).
By contrast, the entire first page of the 2024 Democratic Platform concerns Native Americans (land acknowledgement). That did not work.
This would be a tremendous gift to Republicans, since more of their voters are low propensity. But since, like so much else, it wouldn’t get 60 votes in the Senate, there’s no problem putting it in the platform. I think it would play better than anything to do with group identity.
There’s no law that says Democrats have to support anyone who files to run in a primary. There’s nothing stopping the party from extending funds and support only to candidates who pledge to adhere to the agenda.
Agreed. It assumes the Rs have gotten control of all three branches in more or less normal fashion, then proceeds from there to bliltzkrieg what we think of as normalcy.
The problem is that unlike the Republicans, the Democrats are a diverse big tent party. This means that there are a whole lot of different special interests all of whom get very upset if their particular interest is not given top priority.
Is slavery reparations on the list? Cutting weapons to Israel? Defunding the police? Third trimester abortions on demand?
Its always a balancing act between the strongly progressive interests of certain groups who are feeling ignored and underappreciated, and others who might oppose such aggressive moves.
Democratic party policy has always been a balancing act between hard progressive policies and
I agree with the spirit of what the OP is proposing. Unlike Project 2025 (which Trump pretended to not support), I think a Dem version, a P29, would be something that Dem politicians could proudly support.
I do think the Dems have a lot of good policy that they can cobble together into an organized document that’s more easily sold to the public (party platforms also exist, as mentioned above, but not the same thing).
Most importantly though, as Dems put together a P29, they also need to create an alternative to the right-wing media ecosystem. Republicans have locked Dems out of large sub-populations in this country with their flooding the zone with bullshit. For P29 to make a difference, there has to be a Democratic alternative to the right-wing propaganda that can REACH voters.
I don’t see it. For one thing, Project 2025 didn’t exactly help the Republicans in the last election; there’s a reason why the Democrats were the ones trying to raise awareness about it, and why Trump disclaimed any knowledge of it. For another, even if the ideas in such a document were all reasonable proposals that were popular with the public at the time they were written down (which is a big IF), the Republicans would still find some way to demonize them and make them unpopular by the time the election rolled around.
I think the usefulness of a “Project” document will boil down to Democrats’ ability to wage the propaganda war. We seem to have a communication issue with broad swaths of the country. To make any set of proposals “helpful” to a campaign, they’ve got to be able to get it in front of voters.
To that, you can have a long document that’s hundreds of pages. But in the end, it will need to be culled down into about half a dozen repeatable bullet points. Hit those points over and over, and that will turn a Project 2029 into a political winner.
But that’s not because it was a project, and laid out plans for a new Republican government. It was because so many of those plans were objectively awful, so awful that even the awful candidates had enough self-awareness to know they had to lie about supporting them.
A Democratic Party version of such a plan would not be so toxic as to drive away even the Democratic candidates.
Plans don’t win elections. Elizabeth Warren had plans, I agreed with most of them and would have happily voted for her. But she tanked in the primaries. Every time you tell the voters what you’re going to do, you piss off a percentage of them. The days are past when the voters would weigh the issues, now it’s all on personality and how much of your misery they can blame on the other guy. What the Democrats need is a charismatic candidate who can make the voters believe that he can solve the problems in their own lives. For all his stupidity, corruption, and eviless, DJT was masterful in conning the rubes. Democrats need to find someone who can not only do the same but also be an agent of good and actually help people
The right wing would have a field day excoriating and exaggerating whatever Democrats put into a Project 2029. Some of the ideas in the OP are reasonable; price controls doubtfully being one of them.
No reason for Dems to put another big target on their backs.
If recent history is any indicator, the overriding message that voters need to hear is “Not only will I make you personally richer than you currently are, I’ll also make you richer than everyone you hate.” From there it’s just a matter of developing the exact rhetoric that convinces a majority of voters. Make sure voters understand who to hate and why, and build an economic plan out of that.
For better or worse, voters see the President as an economic Santa Claus. So you just need to present them a morality play where the good kids get shiny gifts and the bad ones get nothing.
It’s a nice idea that would merely require the Democrats to win the Presidency, House and Senate and possibly altering a few constitutional amendments.
I think the Dems would be better served by remaining a moderate party more central than left-wing, and pushing single payer health care, but it is not like that worked for policy wonks like the Clintons. Some of these suggestions are more good than popular or feasible.