Project 2028 for Dems, yes. 1) Excellent ideas on childcare. BUT....2) Utility monopolies are not the big bear. Tech oligopolies are. Data centers drive up utility costs by creating energy and water shortages, while subscription models have replaced "own your own software" models for users. 3) Agriculture monopolies make farmers pay over $300,000 for a tractor. Where were the rest of us when farmers asked for help with: a) "Right to repair" legislation. b) Getting internet service to all. c) Restoring the metal shops and wood shops that teach money-saving skills, said shops closed down in schools? d) Averaging loss years with gain years, on an average income that is $30,000/yr, how to handle fertilizer costs that are now also up due to Hormuz blockage?
Worth a second read but sounds as if put together by elites without consulting the majority of us. Yes, its points are better than the rabid 10% served by Project 2025...BUT... Needs townhalls, needs family dinner table discussions, needs share-a-pizza sessions. How to be sure a Project 2025-2029 serves 60-70% of us and not just some anonymous 30%-40%? We need big-time a preservation of democracy, which needs conversations across occupation lines, talking to people who are different from ourselves in some way, ages, jobs, religious views, for this to serv a true majority.
Begin with what we share, "we all want the world to be a bit better because we were here."
Thanks to L Egan at TheBulwark.com for article of May 27.
Right to Repair is good for all of us. As to special help for the farmers who got nailed by fertilizer costs and market disruptions ... NOT A CHANCE IN HELL. Most of them voted for Trump. They got what they asked for. No reason the rest of us should save them from the consequences of their own stupidity.
Daivd, I grew up urban. The only farmers I knew were some cousins many states distant. Marriage to an ex-farmer exposed me to more views. (You might be like me. pre-marriage) I was surprised to find my wife's rural county voted Democrat from FDR on, voted for Carter, voted for Obama. They resisted the takeover of unbiased local radio stations, by biased Texas company, outsider ClearChannel,
They voted Democrat, again and again. They did so UNTIL the decades-long denial of internet to many rural areas continued during covid, then went tosmething like 52% for T.
One in-law, a teacher, watched her rural school closed. Her kids' parents were told they had to drive in to work late (no internet, could not work remotely), because they had to drive to a parked school bus that somehow was fitted with internet for student use only.
They have jobs in town, in order to farm on weekends. They work 70 hr. weeks. They are exhausted. They have to listen to random people disparage them.
FOOD INSECURITY. They grow stuff, but they do not have cows anymore for milk protein. Their climate never allowed orange trees for vitamin C, and they have to sell everything they grow to make payments on equipment and land.
Did you know farmers are not eligible for food stamps? No matter how hungry their kids, no matter how poor, in the year they need them? My wife has a photo at the end of a drought year. Her and her sister's legs were "like sticks", but they smiled as they'd finally had a harvest post-drought.
Food stamps rules are so wicked, that any vehicle or property must be sold before being eligible. That "no property" rule was true before the "southern strategy" Repubs took over Congress and made things worse.
Don't give up on them please. If the 52% of farmers that voted for T have regrets, I'd expect a bunch to switch back to voting Democrat again, easily pushing the 48% that did not vote for T back above 50%. We have to not "sink low", the way the R's do. They were not stupid, they were exhausted, there's a difference
1 > secure Social Security for a secure retirement
2 > enact single payer universal healthcare for a healthier country
3 > pass a livable minimum wage to reduce poverty
4 > facilitate unionization to improve working conditions, wages, benefits 5 > enact publicly-fund childcare & pre-K to facilitate employment
6 > guarantee paid family& medical leave to assure families take care of families
7 > enact effective drug price controls and access to drugs from affordable foreign sources
8 > publicly-fund higher education & higher skills training to facilitate career & economic development
9> accelerate transition to renewable fuel for less expensive transportation & cleaner environment
10 > fund these through taxes on corporations & truly progressive taxes on all sources of income & wealth plus inheritance tax.
11 > redirect funding from meaningless and perpetual wars, eg the Israeli genocide, Venezuela invasion, invasion of America homeland by federal agents, to items 1-10.
Why don’t the Democrats prioritize these measures? Answer that question and you will have answered the question: Why Americans men do not trust the Democratic Party.
With congrats for your scoop, I strongly recommend that you follow up to report on who the proponents of this Project 2029 are and why its recommendations are so lame. They are so weak and off-point from the core issues driving resistance to MAGA-- and Bulwark commenters so aptly describe every day -- that suspicion arises that these Project 2029 advocates are near amateurs (or at best those without significant recent successes -- and perhaps even some kind of plant. I don't know but they're wish list is clearly nothing that will every be enacted without such other tools as voting rights, campaign finance reform, civil service protections, court reform and a far more effective strategic effort by what we might call, using your term, "The Opposition."
This, from the same guys who ran on MAGA as an existential threat to democracy but were caught completely flat-footed when they lost and had no "Plan B". The Heritage Foundation guys knew where the cracks in our constitutional order were and drove Hummers through every one. Job #1 - fix the freaking system that has allowed this carnage. Do we really need to tell them to think BIGLY? At this point, the best thing the Dems have going for them is that they aren't Republicans. We need more.
This is milk toast and not a strong policy proposal. But even more, it fails to even acknowledge the hellish nightmare we are currently living through where SCOTUS is ripping up constitutional rights and beholden to a billionaire conservative class and has greenlit the most corrupt presidency in our history, the president is destroying the White House before our eyes, ICE goons are killing Americans without even losing their jobs, people are leaving the country, housing and energy costs are skyrocketing with no wage growth and AI apparently threatens all our jobs, Trump is spending money like water without even pretending to want to spend it to benefit the country, and generations will be paying the debt. This isn’t even “universal childcare.” Come on. Say what you mean, say it clearly, and for heaven’s sake respond to the actual moment. This isn’t even not a winning - or even persuasive - set of proposals. E.g. “tax the rich.” Boom, done, say what you will do with the money. End gerrymandering. End Citizens United. Why is this so hard for democrats? Go big or go home.
Washington needs to get out of Washington. I’ve heard that piece on utilities before - we have supply choice right here in Ohio. Our local/regional utility companies have sold out to the big corporations, who have no incentive to fix the grid. We have to sign up for contracts from any multitude of supply companies, while the distribution piece can increase its rate when you’ve got a really low rate. Use less electricity to save money? You still pay that delivery fee regardless. Our statehouse members have been convicted of crimes related to the industry.
Increases continue to happen because we have to build additional substations to support to data centers. Cost of doing business isn’t a thing anymore, I guess.
Just my initial thoughts. At least they put something down. If we don’t get the big $$ out of politics, I don’t know how it’s going to change. I believe that they need to address the ways in which we do business. Make it so we don’t have to have subsidies. Certain industries need strong regulation so that we don’t end up with basic needs going unmet for someone with a good job. It’s a travesty what’s happened to our news industry and tv, in general. We shouldn’t be in a position where some of these basic things can just go away because “it’s no longer profitable”.
The two major parties are abject failures. I would say it's a tragedy, but it's not. Neither should have had this much power to begin with and both of them are completely transfigured from where they originated. It's time to reconfigure completely away from both of them. The Democrats constantly and consistently thinking they need to create some kinda mirror world version of everything the Republicans do and every person of influence they wield is just the most pathetically embarrassing charade to witness. Our entire political landscape is shamefully embarrassing. Aiyaiyai. I think it might just be time to try some real democracy instead of this oligarchic mudslinging personality contest representative nightmare. We elect less than 600 people to represent 350 million plus of us, and most of us don't like more than 10% of them, if any, and don't know who more than half of them even are.
Here's a big idea: tax reform to vastly simplify the code and effectively increase taxes on those with the money in this country. Put the new funds to the debt, letting the rich pay the country back for the tax cuts they enjoyed since Reagan, tax cuts adding to the national debt.
Project 2029 is a Terrible idea. It will become the litmus test for candidates who find themselves defending or rejecting its content. It will turn the focus to a document most voters won’t read and don’t care about. Most Voters who supported Trump didn’t read Project 2025. They voted on perceived hope of improved economy. The publication should have scared everyone but alas only politically interested geeks read it. But Dems will argue points of a difficult to explain publication and divert from speaking simply and directly over and over about what matters to voters.
It's truly hard to tell just what will happen in the next few years, but I'm praying we end up going in a better direction. It's going to be tough for Dems because so much of government has been decimated by the MAGA's on behalf of all their supporters. But things need to be righted some how.
A version of the proposal to break up electric utility monopolies was tried in Massachusetts. It was an abject failure, resulting in many people being conned into buying electricity from companies which in turn had to buy it from other providers. Consumers ended up paying more than they would have from legacy providers. Breaking up ownership of the grid would just create inefficiencies. Utilities work best as well regulated monopolies. Check out Texas for a good lesson in how decentralized and poorly regulated utilities cause havoc and often higher prices.
Yes, regulating utilities is done for a reason. We froze in under-regulated Texas a few years ago, big freeze, no natural gas or electricity for heat for something like seven days. The rich went to hotels in select strips with hospitals, thus in a select area allowed to be served with the suddenly limited supply. The rest of us? Local hospitals saw something like 70 pairs of feet needing amputation. Wondered about the mix, how many homeless, how many with old-style homes (floors with cracks to let cooler air in, in the summertime, no normal foundation to stop frigid air flow wintertime).
This Democrat thinks that it sounds like an excellent idea. If for no other reason than people running for office will have some kind of blueprint to work from that narrows our message into something coherent. Even if they disagree (Democrats are full of nay-sayers) at least the can hopefully come up with a message that explains why. Hopefully in regular people talk!
Lauren, Thanks for your work on keeping us informed on the behind the scenes thinking of the Democratic party. The next Presidential hopeful will have to be both comfortable and confident in his own vision of the country's future. After all, they're the one that has to sell it to the voters. Having forums, debates and discussions is fine, formulating proposals is good and making them available for critique is all well and good too, but bickering, infighting and emotional reactions are just not helpful. Let the people who want the job and are highly qualified to execute it, the freedom to act unencumbered by these silly, debilitating barriers.
I like the general concept of a project 2029. But a contrasting title would be better: Beyond Trumpism(?) Opportuniy 2029 (?) Democracy First (?) Etc.
Also, could there be a National Peace Corps proposal--a federal program to bring young people having trouble getting an entry level job into the workforce? And let's stop falling for the deficit bogeyman and talk more about a more productive allocation of ressorces and equitable fiscal reform, whether taxation of income or both.
Project 2028 for Dems, yes. 1) Excellent ideas on childcare. BUT....2) Utility monopolies are not the big bear. Tech oligopolies are. Data centers drive up utility costs by creating energy and water shortages, while subscription models have replaced "own your own software" models for users. 3) Agriculture monopolies make farmers pay over $300,000 for a tractor. Where were the rest of us when farmers asked for help with: a) "Right to repair" legislation. b) Getting internet service to all. c) Restoring the metal shops and wood shops that teach money-saving skills, said shops closed down in schools? d) Averaging loss years with gain years, on an average income that is $30,000/yr, how to handle fertilizer costs that are now also up due to Hormuz blockage?
Worth a second read but sounds as if put together by elites without consulting the majority of us. Yes, its points are better than the rabid 10% served by Project 2025...BUT... Needs townhalls, needs family dinner table discussions, needs share-a-pizza sessions. How to be sure a Project 2025-2029 serves 60-70% of us and not just some anonymous 30%-40%? We need big-time a preservation of democracy, which needs conversations across occupation lines, talking to people who are different from ourselves in some way, ages, jobs, religious views, for this to serv a true majority.
Begin with what we share, "we all want the world to be a bit better because we were here."
Thanks to L Egan at TheBulwark.com for article of May 27.
Right to Repair is good for all of us. As to special help for the farmers who got nailed by fertilizer costs and market disruptions ... NOT A CHANCE IN HELL. Most of them voted for Trump. They got what they asked for. No reason the rest of us should save them from the consequences of their own stupidity.
Daivd, I grew up urban. The only farmers I knew were some cousins many states distant. Marriage to an ex-farmer exposed me to more views. (You might be like me. pre-marriage) I was surprised to find my wife's rural county voted Democrat from FDR on, voted for Carter, voted for Obama. They resisted the takeover of unbiased local radio stations, by biased Texas company, outsider ClearChannel,
They voted Democrat, again and again. They did so UNTIL the decades-long denial of internet to many rural areas continued during covid, then went tosmething like 52% for T.
One in-law, a teacher, watched her rural school closed. Her kids' parents were told they had to drive in to work late (no internet, could not work remotely), because they had to drive to a parked school bus that somehow was fitted with internet for student use only.
They have jobs in town, in order to farm on weekends. They work 70 hr. weeks. They are exhausted. They have to listen to random people disparage them.
FOOD INSECURITY. They grow stuff, but they do not have cows anymore for milk protein. Their climate never allowed orange trees for vitamin C, and they have to sell everything they grow to make payments on equipment and land.
Did you know farmers are not eligible for food stamps? No matter how hungry their kids, no matter how poor, in the year they need them? My wife has a photo at the end of a drought year. Her and her sister's legs were "like sticks", but they smiled as they'd finally had a harvest post-drought.
Food stamps rules are so wicked, that any vehicle or property must be sold before being eligible. That "no property" rule was true before the "southern strategy" Repubs took over Congress and made things worse.
Don't give up on them please. If the 52% of farmers that voted for T have regrets, I'd expect a bunch to switch back to voting Democrat again, easily pushing the 48% that did not vote for T back above 50%. We have to not "sink low", the way the R's do. They were not stupid, they were exhausted, there's a difference
Look…this not difficult::
1 > secure Social Security for a secure retirement
2 > enact single payer universal healthcare for a healthier country
3 > pass a livable minimum wage to reduce poverty
4 > facilitate unionization to improve working conditions, wages, benefits 5 > enact publicly-fund childcare & pre-K to facilitate employment
6 > guarantee paid family& medical leave to assure families take care of families
7 > enact effective drug price controls and access to drugs from affordable foreign sources
8 > publicly-fund higher education & higher skills training to facilitate career & economic development
9> accelerate transition to renewable fuel for less expensive transportation & cleaner environment
10 > fund these through taxes on corporations & truly progressive taxes on all sources of income & wealth plus inheritance tax.
11 > redirect funding from meaningless and perpetual wars, eg the Israeli genocide, Venezuela invasion, invasion of America homeland by federal agents, to items 1-10.
Why don’t the Democrats prioritize these measures? Answer that question and you will have answered the question: Why Americans men do not trust the Democratic Party.
With congrats for your scoop, I strongly recommend that you follow up to report on who the proponents of this Project 2029 are and why its recommendations are so lame. They are so weak and off-point from the core issues driving resistance to MAGA-- and Bulwark commenters so aptly describe every day -- that suspicion arises that these Project 2029 advocates are near amateurs (or at best those without significant recent successes -- and perhaps even some kind of plant. I don't know but they're wish list is clearly nothing that will every be enacted without such other tools as voting rights, campaign finance reform, civil service protections, court reform and a far more effective strategic effort by what we might call, using your term, "The Opposition."
,
This, from the same guys who ran on MAGA as an existential threat to democracy but were caught completely flat-footed when they lost and had no "Plan B". The Heritage Foundation guys knew where the cracks in our constitutional order were and drove Hummers through every one. Job #1 - fix the freaking system that has allowed this carnage. Do we really need to tell them to think BIGLY? At this point, the best thing the Dems have going for them is that they aren't Republicans. We need more.
This is milk toast and not a strong policy proposal. But even more, it fails to even acknowledge the hellish nightmare we are currently living through where SCOTUS is ripping up constitutional rights and beholden to a billionaire conservative class and has greenlit the most corrupt presidency in our history, the president is destroying the White House before our eyes, ICE goons are killing Americans without even losing their jobs, people are leaving the country, housing and energy costs are skyrocketing with no wage growth and AI apparently threatens all our jobs, Trump is spending money like water without even pretending to want to spend it to benefit the country, and generations will be paying the debt. This isn’t even “universal childcare.” Come on. Say what you mean, say it clearly, and for heaven’s sake respond to the actual moment. This isn’t even not a winning - or even persuasive - set of proposals. E.g. “tax the rich.” Boom, done, say what you will do with the money. End gerrymandering. End Citizens United. Why is this so hard for democrats? Go big or go home.
Washington needs to get out of Washington. I’ve heard that piece on utilities before - we have supply choice right here in Ohio. Our local/regional utility companies have sold out to the big corporations, who have no incentive to fix the grid. We have to sign up for contracts from any multitude of supply companies, while the distribution piece can increase its rate when you’ve got a really low rate. Use less electricity to save money? You still pay that delivery fee regardless. Our statehouse members have been convicted of crimes related to the industry.
Increases continue to happen because we have to build additional substations to support to data centers. Cost of doing business isn’t a thing anymore, I guess.
Just my initial thoughts. At least they put something down. If we don’t get the big $$ out of politics, I don’t know how it’s going to change. I believe that they need to address the ways in which we do business. Make it so we don’t have to have subsidies. Certain industries need strong regulation so that we don’t end up with basic needs going unmet for someone with a good job. It’s a travesty what’s happened to our news industry and tv, in general. We shouldn’t be in a position where some of these basic things can just go away because “it’s no longer profitable”.
The two major parties are abject failures. I would say it's a tragedy, but it's not. Neither should have had this much power to begin with and both of them are completely transfigured from where they originated. It's time to reconfigure completely away from both of them. The Democrats constantly and consistently thinking they need to create some kinda mirror world version of everything the Republicans do and every person of influence they wield is just the most pathetically embarrassing charade to witness. Our entire political landscape is shamefully embarrassing. Aiyaiyai. I think it might just be time to try some real democracy instead of this oligarchic mudslinging personality contest representative nightmare. We elect less than 600 people to represent 350 million plus of us, and most of us don't like more than 10% of them, if any, and don't know who more than half of them even are.
Here's a big idea: tax reform to vastly simplify the code and effectively increase taxes on those with the money in this country. Put the new funds to the debt, letting the rich pay the country back for the tax cuts they enjoyed since Reagan, tax cuts adding to the national debt.
Project 2029 is a Terrible idea. It will become the litmus test for candidates who find themselves defending or rejecting its content. It will turn the focus to a document most voters won’t read and don’t care about. Most Voters who supported Trump didn’t read Project 2025. They voted on perceived hope of improved economy. The publication should have scared everyone but alas only politically interested geeks read it. But Dems will argue points of a difficult to explain publication and divert from speaking simply and directly over and over about what matters to voters.
It's truly hard to tell just what will happen in the next few years, but I'm praying we end up going in a better direction. It's going to be tough for Dems because so much of government has been decimated by the MAGA's on behalf of all their supporters. But things need to be righted some how.
A version of the proposal to break up electric utility monopolies was tried in Massachusetts. It was an abject failure, resulting in many people being conned into buying electricity from companies which in turn had to buy it from other providers. Consumers ended up paying more than they would have from legacy providers. Breaking up ownership of the grid would just create inefficiencies. Utilities work best as well regulated monopolies. Check out Texas for a good lesson in how decentralized and poorly regulated utilities cause havoc and often higher prices.
Yes, regulating utilities is done for a reason. We froze in under-regulated Texas a few years ago, big freeze, no natural gas or electricity for heat for something like seven days. The rich went to hotels in select strips with hospitals, thus in a select area allowed to be served with the suddenly limited supply. The rest of us? Local hospitals saw something like 70 pairs of feet needing amputation. Wondered about the mix, how many homeless, how many with old-style homes (floors with cracks to let cooler air in, in the summertime, no normal foundation to stop frigid air flow wintertime).
Are there any examples of successful public ownership of utilities? (AI chatbot, here I come!)
Flaccid.
This Democrat thinks that it sounds like an excellent idea. If for no other reason than people running for office will have some kind of blueprint to work from that narrows our message into something coherent. Even if they disagree (Democrats are full of nay-sayers) at least the can hopefully come up with a message that explains why. Hopefully in regular people talk!
Democrats can create all the policy papers they want, BUT NOTHING CHANGES WITH THE CURRENT SCrOTUmS.
The court is the first priority, then get rid of all the election denier judges.
Lauren, Thanks for your work on keeping us informed on the behind the scenes thinking of the Democratic party. The next Presidential hopeful will have to be both comfortable and confident in his own vision of the country's future. After all, they're the one that has to sell it to the voters. Having forums, debates and discussions is fine, formulating proposals is good and making them available for critique is all well and good too, but bickering, infighting and emotional reactions are just not helpful. Let the people who want the job and are highly qualified to execute it, the freedom to act unencumbered by these silly, debilitating barriers.
I like the general concept of a project 2029. But a contrasting title would be better: Beyond Trumpism(?) Opportuniy 2029 (?) Democracy First (?) Etc.
Also, could there be a National Peace Corps proposal--a federal program to bring young people having trouble getting an entry level job into the workforce? And let's stop falling for the deficit bogeyman and talk more about a more productive allocation of ressorces and equitable fiscal reform, whether taxation of income or both.