Picking up the Pieces from the Smoldering Ruins: What do Dems do when we take power again?

Politics & Elections
1

Admittedly this post is looking ahead at least 4 years, maybe 8, maybe even 12. I’m going to make the wild assumption that we still have elections, and that a peaceful transfer of power will occur.

But imagine what we will be inheriting from MAGA world when we come back into the White House, or get a Majority in both houses again. If it’s like 2009 and 2021, the last two times, we’ll be walking into a government & a nation that is a smoldering pile of ashes. We’ll be forced - once again - to clean up the mess that the GOP/MAGA is leaving. And this mess, won’t just be in the broader economy or in the health arena. It will be inside our government as well. We all know the next time the Dems are in power, we’ll be inheriting a country that has fallen to pieces.

What should we be building today that is ready to govern on Day One when that happens? What should we be prepared to do when we take power again? In addition to fixing whatever has been destroyed, we need to have our own “Project 2029” or something like it.

I would lump our “platform” into two things: 1) Regular Policy; 2) Structure of Government

For 1), I would be ready to do the following:

Medical for All in some form
Housing affordability reform in a huge way
Immigration Reform in a huge way
Small Business assistance all over the country
Infrastructure targeted at our voters & our areas: Investing in red areas was Biden’s tactic. This time, we should focus on areas that helped us out.
Nationwide Abortion Access: This should be available like it was during the RoeVWade days.

For 2) Government Structure:

Statehood for PR, DC, and the Pacific Islands that we “own”.
Reducing the Power of the Executive - There should be a raft of laws that are ready to be voted on in the first year that curtail executive power in our government. It’s gone too far, and needs to be pared back.
Pack SCOTUS with enough justices to bring the balance back to something a more liberal view.
Reform the Filibuster to make it harder to use, and easier to break.
Gerrymandering Reform
Political Reform to address the corrosive effects of the Oligarchs.
Nationwide Voting Reform - to make it easier to vote & harder for states/local government to throw out legal votes.

To supplement the above, we should enter 2029 or 2033, whenever our time comes, we should have our own Project 2029 or Project 2033. And our focus, in addition to good policy, should be to make it easier for our power to become more entrenched. I’m not talking about getting rid of speech rights, or jailing political opponents. I’m talking about doing things that help give more people a real voice in our Democracy, and that stops this cycle of putting all our hopes in one person in the executive branch.

The next time we’re in charge, we can’t just come in with the view of “hey, let’s get back to normal”. Normal flew the coop years ago. There isn’t anything to go back to, or there won’t be.

The next time we’re in charge, we will need an overall government reform agenda.

2

What the Democrats do will depend a lot on whether the Republicans can adjust to a government that actually tries to help people and a political party that isn’t built almost entirely on hatred and spite. Can they adjust to a government that doesn’t tell them that being white and Christian isn’t enough to be a “winner”? Can they be made to understand that being different isn’t automatically a sin, and what the rest of the world thinks of us might actually matter? The Democrats cannot operate in a vacuum, so a lot of what they want to do depends on Republicans not wanting to totally destroy all that is to the left of them, not to admire people just because the “enemies” dislike them. To not have “enemies”, but to have political opponents.

3

Y’all are putting the cart before the horse. 30% of voters are unabashed racists and homophobes, and 21% are idiots who couldn’t empty piss out of a boot with the instructions on the bottom. You aren’t going to change the votes of the hateful bigots, so winning elections depends on manipulating the idiots. You can’t reason an idiot out of a position they didn’t use reason to get to in the first place. They have demonstrated they only respond to greed, fear and intimidation. If Democrats aren’t willing to do what it takes to do that, making plans to fix the damage Trump will inflict is pointless. I am pessimistic about our chances, but hope to be pleasantly surprised.

4

There you go.
Absolutely no recognition of the international good faith lost, the costs incurred and imposed, the infrastructure burned, the lives lost and the humanitarian projects set back from a decade of indolence and self-indulgence. And that’s assuming there is no military backed extension of US territory and hegemony.

At the end of this, which only occurs when the majority of the MAGA apostles concede “Yup we done fucked that up real good”, there will be some version of Versailles, not an initiative on small business assistance.

5

I should’ve spelled it out a little better. But part of the premise of the post is that Dems win a national election again. To do that, we’ll need a propaganda outfit that can effectively counter the right-wing bullshit machine. I’m focusing this post on what we do AFTER we get elected.

Yeah, and we’ll have to allocate some time obviously to rebuilding some agencies & departments that have been effectively destroyed by MAGA (DOJ for instance). However, I think the Dems need to come back with an eye to MAGA-proofing the government. Make it harder for them to get elected, and make it harder for them to destroy stuff in the future.

6

I think the Democrats may have to appeal to greed. Donald Trump was shown once during the 24 campaign buying Dairy Queen Blizzards for his loyal supporters. I can’t figure what voters’ reward the Democrats could offer that would be more weighty but also still legal.

7

Knowing how unoriginal Democrats are, it will be “…a healthy low-fat or non-fat, um…healthy…Blizzard.”

Stranger

8

The “Dems” are not The Squad. They lack initiative. For 45 years, the Republicans have been pounding on the government, and when the Democrats get back in power, they leave most of the Republican rubble lying there. Bill Clinton was barely more than Reagan-lite. Obama left most of W’s worse policies in place. After Individual-ONE left the Dems in in full control, they did almost nothing to prevent him from causing more problems, even while he was out of office.

The Democrats are not going to be able to fix a government that has been tolchocked, kneecapped and julienned. They keep trying to work within the system that the Republicans are steadfast in their efforts to raze. It is time to realign to a movement capable of actually unworsening the country.

9

AOC’s former chief of staff is primarying Pelosi. Hopefully that’s a start.

10

People are absolutely sick of the deadlock in Washington the last several decades. There is a reason Trump is actually popular right now, he is actually doing shit. Or giving the appearance of doing shit. What should Dems do when they take power? ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING, LITERALLY ANYTHING. By any means necessary, that is the important part. If we don’t run roughshod over the GOP we are never going to win again, and winning won’t mean anything.

11

What will the Democrats do when they get back into power?

Start rebuilding the government, then get blamed when it’s not done the first week. Just like every other time.

12

What do Dems do when they get back in power?

Since that isn’t likely to happen in my lifetime I’m not sure what to say that would fit in P&E.

Start over maybe?

(And I’m 62 and totally in good health.)

13

There was a recent meeting of Democratic moderates which produced a paper which listed a few pages of suggestions:

Third Way Comeback Retreat:

In early February 2025, Third Way gathered a group of highly experienced and passionate political professionals over 1.5 days to begin to chart the Democratic comeback. As part of this retreat, attendees participated in breakout sessions to deliberate on why Democrats are struggling with working-class voters around cultural issues, the nature of the economic trust gap with this critical group, and ideas for how to address both problems.
Below are the takeaways summarizing what was discussed. While not every insight is earth shattering to those who work in politics, they do point the way forward on some fundamental issues.
NOTE: The statements below are not necessarily endorsed by all those attending the Comeback Retreat and, as agreed to, are not attributed to any individual who participated.

https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000195-5511-d4a2-afbf-dd7121940000

So while I quite agree on:

  1. Overemphasis on Identity Politics
    Many working-class voters feel Democrats prioritize niche identity-based groups with overbroad, unifying messages, making them feel excluded rather than included.

On the other hand:

  1. Climate Policy Viewed as Anti-Growth
    The emphasis on climate change is seen as harming job opportunities and economic growth, especially in working-class communities.

Lots of see climate change as resulting in a great deal of crazy weather (hurricanes, floods, droughts, wildfires, etc) and think it essential we push full steam ahead on dealing with climate change.

14

What they mean by this is “throw trans people under the bus”.

15

They mean “throw everyone who isn’t a cishet white Christian male” under the bus.

And fail to get anything from it except even less support, because them trying to appeal to the bigots never works. It just drives away their own base.

16

A politician can not get too far ahead of the electorate. Lincoln was against abolitionism in 1860. When running for President in 2008, Barack Obama repeatedly said he was against same-sex marriage. Whether, trans women in school sports, or some other trans-related issue, is in that category, I’m not sure. But, for me, trans issues pale in insignificance compared to defeating MAGA.

HOWEVER, defeating MAGA requires a unified Democratic Party. And on January 15, 2025, 98.5 percent of House of Representatives voted against the bill to ban tranwomen from women’s sports. Deeply dividing the party to move some portion of it over to a policy position that polls better would probably be a mistake.

This is probably too dark a thought, but I do not know that you can defeat MAGA while throwing zero people under the bus.

17

Well, that’s 1.6 million votes you’re writing off in your effort.
Imagine if LBJ had decided that “race issues” weren’t as important as beating Goldwater.

18

This doesn’t seem borne out by Trump’s poll numbers. For one thing, he’s only popular in the very narrow sense of having a slightly higher number of people approve of him than disapprove of him, which is true for virtually all presidents at the very beginning of their term; for another, his approval rating started dropping as soon as he began doing shit. (Which also happens to almost all presidents eventually, but in Trump’s case the decline has been faster and more precipitous than most.)

19

It was more true his first couple weeks when I posted that.

20

Smapti, regarding your last post, and mine, I should bring this back to what the Democrats should do when they take power again, because I was slipping into discussing the separate subject of how to get back into power.

I think that, like always, Democrats will need to go in the direction of their principles, while also avoiding measures which at that time poll the most poorly. Attempted repeal of the so-called “Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2025” (awaiting Senate action but likely to before law) would poll too poorly today for it to be a wise move. But by the time Democrats get back in power, the MAGA threat may have mostly gone away, so the risk would be low. Or maybe divisive trans issues will have lost electoral salience, as mostly happened with same-sex marriage, so acting on principle will be an electoral benefit.
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