DO DEMOCRATS NEED A PROJECT 2029? MAYBE, BUT NOT THIS ONE.

In The New York Times, Joseph Heath writes:

The Democrats Need a Project 2029. Here’s a Start.

Who is Joseph Heath?

Joseph Heath teaches philosophy at the University of Toronto and the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. He is the author of, most recently, “Ethics for Capitalists: A Systematic Approach to Business Ethics, Competition, and Market Failure” and “The Machinery of Government: Public Administration and the Liberal State” as well as the newsletter In Due Course.

Heath is Canadian. His bio cites two little-known books, one of them self-published. His Substack newsletter has a readership of only around 5,000. Why did the Times choose to publish his piece on America's Democratic Party?

The answer is obvious: The glide path to getting your op-ed published by a major mainstream outlet in America is to say that Democrats are screwing up, or that current events are bad news for the party.

In his first sentence, Heath gets right down to business:

President Trump’s outright war on the administrative state has put Democrats in a difficult position, since their core brand is that they are the pro-government party.

Trump's gutting of government programs that Americans need and want is a problem for Democrats? It should be just the opposite. Programs Americans have taken for granted are now boeing cut or threatened. That should remind Americans what Republican rule will cost them. It's starting to happen already -- parkgoers are protesting cuts to the National Park Service, farmers are despairing as food they sell to USAID programs rots on the docks, and so on.

But no, it's a problem for Democrats, according to Heath:

Faced with the challenge of blocking a tsunami of bad ideas for government reform, Democrats are naturally tempted to hunker down and defend the status quo. This makes them sound like they are comfortable with the existing system. But the system is a mess, desperately in need of reform.

This is a false binary. Saying we were better off before Elon Musk began unilaterally destroying government agencies and programs does not require you to say that everything was perfect before January 20. Musk is burning the house down. Is this the time to say that the kitchen really should have been repainted a couple of years ago?

Heath writes:

The only way for Democrats to break out of this trap is to take a page from the Trump administration, whose attack plan was laid out well in advance in the form of Project 2025. Where is the liberal equivalent?

What Democrats need is a Project 2029. Such a project should be just as ambitious, just as radical and iconoclastic, as Project 2025, yet grounded in a genuine desire to fix the problems of American governance.

We seem to be forgetting that Trump didn't actually run on Project 2025. He ran away from it, claiming it wasn't his plan. He said that Project 2025's architects would be unwelcome in his second administration. We need to remember this when we suggest that having an ambitious government overhaul plan was how Trump won.

A good place to start would be where government is currently under assault: public administration. It’s not enough just to defend the administrative state — it must be strengthened. Right now, liberals and progressives consistently articulate lofty ideals that could improve the lives of millions of Americans — a comprehensive system of public health insurance or a transition to green energy. Yet they are trying to achieve these outcomes with a state apparatus that takes decades to accomplish even simple administrative tasks, like abolishing the penny.

That's a very weird example. We haven't abolished the penny because no one thinks penny abolition should be a government priority. Americans can't agree on much, but I think the vast majority of us, across the politcal spectrum, agree that this is a very unimportant reform. It's not high on any reasonable person's priority list.

And I don't understand this:

Many progressives in America today admire European welfare states, especially of the Scandinavian variety, for their low levels of economic inequality and comprehensive social safety nets. And yet if one were to take a look at the actual powers exercised by state officials in these countries — the powers that allow them to achieve these objectives — most Americans, no matter how liberal, would recoil.

If you are on welfare in Sweden and you encounter a large, unexpected expense, you can apply to your case worker for a supplemental payment. The case worker will then decide whether to give you the money, based on whether the expenditure seems reasonable or not. That’s it. No rules, just judgment.

In America, welfare case workers are limited to ticking boxes on forms. No judgment, just rules.

If the U.S. government increased welfare payments when recipients had unusual expenses, would Americans "recoil" at the intrusiveness of that? They might argue that those bums on welfare don't deserve any more money (or any money at all), but would they say it was because the bureaucrats are too powerful?

Heath sums up his argument:

Too many of the interactions people have with state officials — with border officials, public schoolteachers, post office workers, I.R.S. agents and so on — leave them angry and frustrated. Most people’s attitudes toward government are determined not by abstract political ideology but rather by these interactions — and frustration with them helps drive support for Republican radicalism.

But Americans actually like most government agencies, including the post office, which gets extremely high marks. Here are some numbers from a 2024 Pew poll:

And while Americans are increasingly dissatisfied with the quality of schools in America overall, they regularly express satisfaction with their own children's schools.

Their interactions with public school teachers would seem to be going very well.

Heath goes on to chide Democrats for not doing something they actually did:

Anyone who has tried calling the I.R.S. in recent years can tell you that the organization needs to have more agents, not fewer. Firing thousands of I.R.S. agents, as the Trump administration is doing, will produce an outcome demonstrably worse than the status quo.

This is why Democrats need to step up. A positive program for reform should start with public administration.

But Joe Biden and congressional Democrats addressed that. The Inflation Reduction Act included money for new IRS customer service reps as well as for upgraded technology and improved efforts tro fight tax evasion by the wealthy. Republicans howled in anguish, and began clawing some of the money back even before Donald Trump became president again. But Democrats did what Heath says they failed to do.

I agree with Heath that Democrats need to do a better job of making government work. They need to find ways to get public works projects built faster. They need to do a better job of getting housing built. And, sure, they can improve the delivery of the public services Heath mentions.

But this is not the time for Democratic breast-beating and self-blame. This is when Democrats should be talking about the destructiveness of what Republicans are doing.

That's why I question whether Democrats should focus on developing a Project 2029, even one that's less self-critical:

Apart from the fact that this is wildly ambitious and would be extremely difficult to enact, it takes the focus off the sheer destructiveness of what Republicans are doing now. Republicans are burning America to the ground. We have to focus on making certain that every American sees them pouring gasoline on the foundations and lighting a match. When it's impossible to get help with Social Security problems, when people in the Plains states stop getting tornado warnings, when vaccines aren't available for newly rampant diseases, Democrats need to point out who's to blame. Pre-January 20 government might not have been perfect, but Democrats need to say that it was a hell of a lot better than the DOGEified government we have now.