This is critical. It has to be job one. I don't see any reason to belief that either: 1) we'll have free and fair elections by 2028, or 2) that this GOP will leave the executive office willingly. I think it's imperative that non-Trumpists start now, shoring up the election infrastructure and support in the military for protecting the transfer of power.
Not unless there’s some drastic reversals of the Trump regime’s course. I don’t mean court orders that he and his henchmen obviously have no intention of obeying. It’s going to take a big enough financial and social catastrophe to wake up the majority of the population to rise up and demand they stop. Doing the right thing is hard. Doing good is hard. Doing evil is easy.
Yes to all of this. If the Democrats don't move swiftly and strategically, none of this will matter because we won't have a country or a government left. Things are going to get that bad. And may the 77 million marks who fell for the orange traitor's con all rot in hell for what they have done to my beloved nation. There is a price to be paid for stupidity, and now everyone (except the billionaires) is going to have to pay that price.
I have been a great admirer of Lincoln all my life. I would not have been had I be en alive in his time. But I have regarded Lincoln as my moral superior because he was able to do a hard thing in order to achieve a much greater thing, That is, fight a war to stop secession,to preserve the last hope on earth of government by the people for the people. But today it occcurs to me that if he had just let the South go, it would have collapsed of its own stupidity and inefficiency in a few years and begged for readmission. Meanwhile, as foreigners they would have found it imposible to force their planned expansion of slavery into the free states. And without their votes in Congress it would have been easier to abolish slavery in the remaining slave states.
this might look out of place here. i wrote it to remind myself that war which appears necessary may not be the best answer after all. on the other hand, I think Lincoln was probably smarter than I am...and may have understood that sometimes it is necessary to fight...really fight, not just talk loud...for freedom and decency. If this sounds wobbly I don't mean it to be. It just means be ready, really ready,, morally ready to fight, but don't rush into it.make sure you know what you are doing.
Dems are too beholding to wealthy elites to do this right. We're f'd until we get money out of politics. Project 2029 should just do that. Period. If they add more bells and whistles we'll get bells and whistles funded by wealthy elites.
yeah, i agree with this, but the question is still 'how''? (who will bell the cat?)
money has always been "the mother's milk of politics" even before citizens united.
i think there are "wealthy elites" who are not criminals and want good government, but unless they put their money into a conspiracy to gain power..by telling the people what the people want to hear..they are going to get beat by those they do. and of course if the win...meet the new boss...
i was very unhappy with Shumer this morning because I thought he had caved to the R's.
but he says default would be even worse for the people. I don't know enough to even guess if he is right. i was even more unhappy with the "media" who thought it was all about politics... that is, democrats trying to save their seats. i think we have reached the point where "saving our seats"may be cowardice amounting to treason in both R and D
politicians. meanwhile I wonder if D's can't find "creative" ways to get around the law just as well as the R's. may be too late for that, since they have no actual power...or they just lost the least shred of that by not risking the perils of default. we don't have until 2029 to stop the destruction by the current government.
"Democrats have to cast off their instinctive modesty and caution."
And their old-school corporatist, slightly-right-of-center, everybody-play-nice, this-is-the-way-we've-always-done-it world view. Acknowledge that it's a new world now, for better or worse, and has been since Newt Gingrich took the term "cutthroat politics" to new depths, and start fighting fire with fire. Stop blocking the up-and-coming young talent with fresh approaches and better views of what voters need and want.
With a party-wide attitudinal reset and plenty of new energy and new thinking, hell yeah, get going _now_ on a statement that says, "Here's where we're heading, here's why it's better for you than what you're getting today, and here's how we're going to get to that better place." The roster of contributors could start with Mayor Pete, Bernie, AOC, Maxwell Frost, Ben Wikler, Gretchen Whitmer, Andy Kim, Elizabeth Warren, Pramila Jayapal, Tammy Duckworth, and build from there.
It's past time for big change among Dems and their approach to governing; there's no better time to start rebuilding than now, not 1.5 years or 3.5 years from now.
Buttigieg is too centrist. He doesn't support M4A, for example.
Under him, we'd extend 45 harmful years of so-called centrist Dems rolling over for every neoliberal whim of the GOP -- and those neoliberal policies have already transferred $50 TRILLION from the bottom 50% to the top 10%, immiserating about 180 mil Americans and radicalizing many of them, such that they were easy pickings for scum-p.
I don't know what M4A is. don't confuse "centrist" with complicit. super liberal "plans" are a huge turnoff to the 70 million voters you need to reach. there are less aggressive ways to make progress. real progress. i don't think much of "neo liberal" myself, but what we have here is a coup with intent to destroy everything America has built since 1932, 1860, 1788, 1776....and probably 1620.
I am part of a group that is devoting some serious effort to preparing a Project 2029 paper and we would love to collaborate with others who are doing the same.
I like the idea of a Democratic (or rather, democratic) Project 2029. But I don't think Biden was wrong when it came to planning/timing. ALL bold projects are decade-long projects. That doesn't mean they cannot succeed. As Obamacare has proven too, it simply means that you need a bill that is truly bipartisan and that benefits Republican Reps. too, so that they themselves will WANT to fight for it (or their constituents). And that's exactly what the big pieces of legislation under Biden were.
Until Project 2025 was written, no one could have predicted that Trump 2.0 would be chainsaw Trump, with MAGA taken over by policy nerds who are also neofascists.
Merely restoring a well-functioning government will already require a Project 2029, today, but restoring democracy will require more than that. A democracy can only thrive when "we the people" understand the fact that real change takes time, and stop evaluating and then punishing/rewarding presidents by looking at how MY life changed in the last four years. If we want to preserve democracy, we need a much higher political literacy among not just ordinary citizens but also the legacy media or, if that's impossible, independent media.
Priorities would facilitate speed . Dems have a tendency to have a zillion little hobby horses and while each is important, some have greater appeal. Focusing on those first, channeling the resources on those would expedite change.
my priority would be to fix Social Securty by raising the payroll tax one tenth of one percent (about a dollar per week) per year, now. This would save SS forever and show the people that Dems can accomplish something meaningful.
Instead the Dems are calling for 'tax the rich' which will not happen and would be bad if it did. And they recently voted to give SS money to people who did not need it and did not pay for it, bringing the end of the Trust Fund six months closer, which means people who cannot survive on reduced benefits will be hurt badly.
I am all in with this. There is as much frustration and anger at the Democrats as there is for the Republicans. They just don't listen and keep telling us that we don't want radical reform, what we really want is centrist policies. And I am sick to death of it. And I think that not only do we have to develop this vital plan for our unsure future, but we must develop a plan to change how our society operates, from one based on consumerism, capitalism and selfishness to one based on sharing, cooperation and true equity. There must be a million ideas on how we can completely side step the Republican way of life to one that is much better for our society. We can live as we would choose to, with kindness and peace and cooperation, and not be forced to do things their way, with greed and victimization and want.
Right. The right had a plan; the left had none. They didn’t notice Project 2025 until a few months before the election. And after 40,000 lies from Drumpf, they didn’t even notice that his claim of knowing nothing about Project 2025 was lie number 40,001. You have to be prepared. But what is your authority or power against ruthless authoritarian totalitarianism?
Donald Trump denied any knowledge of Project 2025. Right before stating that he disagreed with much of it. Apparently, he disagrees with many things he knows nothing about.
Perhaps before the Dems move forward with a future plan they could spend some of those vast resources on understanding how they so missed the mark in 2024. Any honest assessment would have to start, I argue, from Biden’s arbitrary and ill informed decision to run for a second term rather than be the one term caretaker he was elected to be. His decision to rerun sent two clear messages; no one on the democratic bench can win, and we can run on the same platform that worked in 2020. Understanding that misstep as well as decoding why democratic senate candidates in contested elections generally performed better than Kamala Harris would go a long way in setting the contours for future elections and future strategies.
The cycle: The GOP (under Bush) causes harm. Dem (Obama) gets elected, cleans up the staggering mess. GOP comes in (scum-p), breaks even more than the previous GOP did. Dem gets elected (Biden), cleans up the huge mess. GOP gets elected (scum-p2), makes a mess we might never recover from.
It's almost lather-rinse-repeat, except for this latest iteration.
You said "by the next election". Do you really believe we're going to have that freedom in 2028?
This is critical. It has to be job one. I don't see any reason to belief that either: 1) we'll have free and fair elections by 2028, or 2) that this GOP will leave the executive office willingly. I think it's imperative that non-Trumpists start now, shoring up the election infrastructure and support in the military for protecting the transfer of power.
Not unless there’s some drastic reversals of the Trump regime’s course. I don’t mean court orders that he and his henchmen obviously have no intention of obeying. It’s going to take a big enough financial and social catastrophe to wake up the majority of the population to rise up and demand they stop. Doing the right thing is hard. Doing good is hard. Doing evil is easy.
Yes to all of this. If the Democrats don't move swiftly and strategically, none of this will matter because we won't have a country or a government left. Things are going to get that bad. And may the 77 million marks who fell for the orange traitor's con all rot in hell for what they have done to my beloved nation. There is a price to be paid for stupidity, and now everyone (except the billionaires) is going to have to pay that price.
Just a thought
I have been a great admirer of Lincoln all my life. I would not have been had I be en alive in his time. But I have regarded Lincoln as my moral superior because he was able to do a hard thing in order to achieve a much greater thing, That is, fight a war to stop secession,to preserve the last hope on earth of government by the people for the people. But today it occcurs to me that if he had just let the South go, it would have collapsed of its own stupidity and inefficiency in a few years and begged for readmission. Meanwhile, as foreigners they would have found it imposible to force their planned expansion of slavery into the free states. And without their votes in Congress it would have been easier to abolish slavery in the remaining slave states.
this might look out of place here. i wrote it to remind myself that war which appears necessary may not be the best answer after all. on the other hand, I think Lincoln was probably smarter than I am...and may have understood that sometimes it is necessary to fight...really fight, not just talk loud...for freedom and decency. If this sounds wobbly I don't mean it to be. It just means be ready, really ready,, morally ready to fight, but don't rush into it.make sure you know what you are doing.
Dems are too beholding to wealthy elites to do this right. We're f'd until we get money out of politics. Project 2029 should just do that. Period. If they add more bells and whistles we'll get bells and whistles funded by wealthy elites.
yeah, i agree with this, but the question is still 'how''? (who will bell the cat?)
money has always been "the mother's milk of politics" even before citizens united.
i think there are "wealthy elites" who are not criminals and want good government, but unless they put their money into a conspiracy to gain power..by telling the people what the people want to hear..they are going to get beat by those they do. and of course if the win...meet the new boss...
i was very unhappy with Shumer this morning because I thought he had caved to the R's.
but he says default would be even worse for the people. I don't know enough to even guess if he is right. i was even more unhappy with the "media" who thought it was all about politics... that is, democrats trying to save their seats. i think we have reached the point where "saving our seats"may be cowardice amounting to treason in both R and D
politicians. meanwhile I wonder if D's can't find "creative" ways to get around the law just as well as the R's. may be too late for that, since they have no actual power...or they just lost the least shred of that by not risking the perils of default. we don't have until 2029 to stop the destruction by the current government.
this.
yes yes yes...Pete Buttigieg for President!!! NOW!!!
"Democrats have to cast off their instinctive modesty and caution."
And their old-school corporatist, slightly-right-of-center, everybody-play-nice, this-is-the-way-we've-always-done-it world view. Acknowledge that it's a new world now, for better or worse, and has been since Newt Gingrich took the term "cutthroat politics" to new depths, and start fighting fire with fire. Stop blocking the up-and-coming young talent with fresh approaches and better views of what voters need and want.
With a party-wide attitudinal reset and plenty of new energy and new thinking, hell yeah, get going _now_ on a statement that says, "Here's where we're heading, here's why it's better for you than what you're getting today, and here's how we're going to get to that better place." The roster of contributors could start with Mayor Pete, Bernie, AOC, Maxwell Frost, Ben Wikler, Gretchen Whitmer, Andy Kim, Elizabeth Warren, Pramila Jayapal, Tammy Duckworth, and build from there.
It's past time for big change among Dems and their approach to governing; there's no better time to start rebuilding than now, not 1.5 years or 3.5 years from now.
its
i am not so sure about "up and coming young talent. the young are just as stupid as the old. witness Musk's raiders. and they are "geniuses."
I misread “Fems and their approach to governing “ as “their approach to groveling”. Freudian slip?
Dems not Dems dammit. Fat fingers 😡
Buttigieg is too centrist. He doesn't support M4A, for example.
Under him, we'd extend 45 harmful years of so-called centrist Dems rolling over for every neoliberal whim of the GOP -- and those neoliberal policies have already transferred $50 TRILLION from the bottom 50% to the top 10%, immiserating about 180 mil Americans and radicalizing many of them, such that they were easy pickings for scum-p.
Dee
I don't know what M4A is. don't confuse "centrist" with complicit. super liberal "plans" are a huge turnoff to the 70 million voters you need to reach. there are less aggressive ways to make progress. real progress. i don't think much of "neo liberal" myself, but what we have here is a coup with intent to destroy everything America has built since 1932, 1860, 1788, 1776....and probably 1620.
Paul,
I am part of a group that is devoting some serious effort to preparing a Project 2029 paper and we would love to collaborate with others who are doing the same.
That's great!
send me information. mynameatpeakdotorg
I like the idea of a Democratic (or rather, democratic) Project 2029. But I don't think Biden was wrong when it came to planning/timing. ALL bold projects are decade-long projects. That doesn't mean they cannot succeed. As Obamacare has proven too, it simply means that you need a bill that is truly bipartisan and that benefits Republican Reps. too, so that they themselves will WANT to fight for it (or their constituents). And that's exactly what the big pieces of legislation under Biden were.
Until Project 2025 was written, no one could have predicted that Trump 2.0 would be chainsaw Trump, with MAGA taken over by policy nerds who are also neofascists.
Merely restoring a well-functioning government will already require a Project 2029, today, but restoring democracy will require more than that. A democracy can only thrive when "we the people" understand the fact that real change takes time, and stop evaluating and then punishing/rewarding presidents by looking at how MY life changed in the last four years. If we want to preserve democracy, we need a much higher political literacy among not just ordinary citizens but also the legacy media or, if that's impossible, independent media.
Oh puleese!!! The last thing we need is to keep things as they are. It failed, didn't you notice?
Failed? Any concrete examples?
Priorities would facilitate speed . Dems have a tendency to have a zillion little hobby horses and while each is important, some have greater appeal. Focusing on those first, channeling the resources on those would expedite change.
my priority would be to fix Social Securty by raising the payroll tax one tenth of one percent (about a dollar per week) per year, now. This would save SS forever and show the people that Dems can accomplish something meaningful.
Instead the Dems are calling for 'tax the rich' which will not happen and would be bad if it did. And they recently voted to give SS money to people who did not need it and did not pay for it, bringing the end of the Trust Fund six months closer, which means people who cannot survive on reduced benefits will be hurt badly.
I am all in with this. There is as much frustration and anger at the Democrats as there is for the Republicans. They just don't listen and keep telling us that we don't want radical reform, what we really want is centrist policies. And I am sick to death of it. And I think that not only do we have to develop this vital plan for our unsure future, but we must develop a plan to change how our society operates, from one based on consumerism, capitalism and selfishness to one based on sharing, cooperation and true equity. There must be a million ideas on how we can completely side step the Republican way of life to one that is much better for our society. We can live as we would choose to, with kindness and peace and cooperation, and not be forced to do things their way, with greed and victimization and want.
I kept seeing calls for this, so I went ahead and got a start on it: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WOqkKDkGBlB58r7uLKgE4wPSXHAkOWlskuY0Xv1WBI0/edit?usp=sharing
Right. The right had a plan; the left had none. They didn’t notice Project 2025 until a few months before the election. And after 40,000 lies from Drumpf, they didn’t even notice that his claim of knowing nothing about Project 2025 was lie number 40,001. You have to be prepared. But what is your authority or power against ruthless authoritarian totalitarianism?
Donald Trump denied any knowledge of Project 2025. Right before stating that he disagreed with much of it. Apparently, he disagrees with many things he knows nothing about.
Perhaps before the Dems move forward with a future plan they could spend some of those vast resources on understanding how they so missed the mark in 2024. Any honest assessment would have to start, I argue, from Biden’s arbitrary and ill informed decision to run for a second term rather than be the one term caretaker he was elected to be. His decision to rerun sent two clear messages; no one on the democratic bench can win, and we can run on the same platform that worked in 2020. Understanding that misstep as well as decoding why democratic senate candidates in contested elections generally performed better than Kamala Harris would go a long way in setting the contours for future elections and future strategies.
The cycle: The GOP (under Bush) causes harm. Dem (Obama) gets elected, cleans up the staggering mess. GOP comes in (scum-p), breaks even more than the previous GOP did. Dem gets elected (Biden), cleans up the huge mess. GOP gets elected (scum-p2), makes a mess we might never recover from.
It's almost lather-rinse-repeat, except for this latest iteration.
Dems not gems. Sheesh!
You can edit your posts to get rid of the typos. Click on the three grey horizontal dots to the right of the post.
thank you. i badly need an editor.
Ther will not be another free and fair election again.
We I’ll be putinized