Yesterday The Bulwark’s Lauren Egan ran an “exclusive” with an advance look at Project 2029 and its policy recommendations going into the 2028 election. TPM Alum Brian Beutler looks at it and concludes, in so many words, this ain’t it. I read the piece last night and that was exactly my conclusion.
First, a few points of context. Attitudinally and analytically I blanche at most things Egan writes. That’s not a criticism precisely. There’s nothing wrong with not sharing my viewpoints or outlook. I think it’s fair for me to share that background. I would also say that there’s a lot of hunger for a Project 2029. I had someone pitch me a few days ago on leading one up. But there doesn’t need to be just one. At least for now, we should be in a let 100 Flowers Bloom mode. There can also be different kinds. With that said though, what Egan published didn’t seem like anything like what I and I imagine others are talking about. It seems like a mix of positioning statement and policy portfolio. And some of those policies are good ones. It talks about affordability; it talks about breaking up monopolies, etc. That may have some role. But that’s an entirely different exercise.
If you look at the challenges faced today by Democrats, their reputational problems, lack of trust not only by unattached voters but by their own partisans, the biggest problem is that people think they are weak, their espousal of values doesn’t match their willingness to fight for those values and goals. At the most basic level, they don’t have a strong understanding of political power and how to use it. A Project 2029 should be mostly a blueprint for how to use trifecta power to the maximum extent possible by law and constitution to make thoroughgoing structural changes to the federal government to buttress against authoritarian fascist attack. Reinforcing the structures of civic democracy is a central part of that. To use a sports analogy, that doesn’t mean running good plays. It means reshaping the entire playing field. They’re not the same thing. That means starting as the sine qua non with things like ending the Senate filibuster and reforming the Supreme Court. But those are only the start. Those are the ones that make all the other reform and structural changes possible. They are also the talismans of seriousness. Because if you’re not willing to tackle those, you’re not any kind of player or even on the field.
The reason to do this is, above all, because it needs to be done. The country managed for a long time with a very imperfect system because none of its presidents actively wanted to govern as dictators or as though they owned the country. We don’t have that luxury any more. But there are secondary importances too. It is a demonstration that Democrats have become comfortable using political power to its maximal extent and are willing to do so. So it’s a demonstration of ability and willingness. The biggest reason for the Democrats’ unpopularity is the idea that they are weak and essentially useless. You can’t contest elections effectively, over time, without changing that perception. And you change the perception by changing the reality.
There is also a critical lesson about political accountability and consequences. For a couple of generations we have had a dynamic in which Republicans and the right more generally have busted norms, violated the law and used power to the greatest extent possible with the confident knowledge that Democrats would not require individual accountability or react in kind. That created a deep structural imbalance in American politics. That’s the story of the corrupted Supreme Court. Republicans packed the Court, and the Court descended into ever greater levels of corruption and abuses of power because of the confident and correct knowledge that there would be no consequences, that Democrats would act as though it were still 1985, 1995 or even 2005.
In the culture of payback and retaliation that currently informs a lot of our politics there is a really good question: where is this all going? A constant and perhaps escalating cycle of bad actions and retaliation perhaps descending into state breakdown or even civil war? That is a very real concern and danger. But there is a goal here beyond being on the top of the heap every few election cycles.
America is a big, big country. It’s filled with lots of different kinds of people. For partisans there is a persistent fantasy that one of the other sides will be comprehensively defeated in some big showdown. That’s not how it works. None of these different sub-communities are going anywhere. What we’ve seen under Trump is a kind of logical conclusion of his warlordist view of government. He wins a national election — quite narrowly — and he uses that power over the federal government to prey on the parts of the country that don’t support him. The end state you are looking for is what amounts to a truce. Because in fact civic society is based on a series of truces, the realization that there are no permanent victories or defeats and that decision to operate within a common set of rules on how to arbitrate differences.
The American right built the current corrupt Supreme Court because they were confident that the center-left had no appetite or ability to fight back or require accountability and reform in response. They were mostly right. Supreme Court reform is important because you can’t have democratic self-government in this country with this Court’s corruption. That’s the main reason to do it. It also teaches a lesson. Don’t spend too much time creating a big corrupt shiny object. Because the Constitution creates the tools to break it. And we’ll break it. Say goodbye to your constitutional golden calf. Sucks to be you. It’s critical for Democrats to demonstrate that they’re just as able to use political power as Republicans, ready to be just as audacious, not just because it’s critical that they do so but because it’s the only real path back toward some kind of constitutional equilibrium.
