Democrats don’t need a Project 2029

The party needs fewer big ideas, not more.

A mascot promotes the Build Back Better bill outside the Capitol in 2021. (Photo by Paul Morigi)

Andrei Cherny, the co-founder of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, and Chad Maisel, of the Biden Domestic Policy Council, are working on a “Project 2029 initiative.” What I hear in informal conversations is that many policy wonks are skeptical of the project, but have elected to participate because they think non-participation won’t stop its momentum and they don’t want other, dumber people writing the papers.

I am free to operate with no such reservations, so I’ll just say that this project is a bad idea.

For starters, Project 2025 was a political disaster for Donald Trump. One of the boldest moves he made during his campaign was to strongly and forcefully disavow it.

Of course, in practice, he has implemented a lot from Project 2025. But that’s just to say that Project 2025 was written by the Heritage Foundation and the Trump administration is heavily influenced by Heritage Foundation staffers. Heritage was founded in 1973 and has been influential in staffing every Republican Party administration since its inception, with or without that kind of splashy rollout. I don’t know who will win the Democratic nomination in 2028, and I don’t know if that person will win the general election. But I promise you that whoever the next Democratic Party president is, their administration will be staffed by a lot of progressive think tankers and heavily influenced by their ideas. You don’t need a secret project to achieve that; it’s just the nature of governance.

Of course, the architects of Project 2029 are aware that Project 2025 was a political fiasco. The sound reaction to that would be to not do something modeled on Project 2025. Their idea, instead, is that they want to write a book of ideas that aren’t a political fiasco. The Trump “policy” that they see as a model is “no tax on tips,” a zippy promise that they believe captured the public’s imagination and helped Trump win the election.

Which is fine, but: