The underlying premise of my column last week outlining a hypothetical 2028 Democratic platform was that the party’s highest priority is to restore the credibility and public respect it lost over the past decade.
The collapse of trust resulted from excesses on the left — including President Joe Biden’s misjudgments on immigration, particularly along the border; some of the more immoderate policies promoted in the wake of the killing of George Floyd; and support for gender policies that alienated millions of voters. And that’s before we get to the willingness of liberal institutions to abandon freedom of speech in favor of the manifestations of cancel culture.
The idea behind the draft platform was that if the Democratic Party is to regain the level of voter confidence and good will essential both for governing and for sustained support on Election Day, it must persuade enough voters that it will not go off the deep end and that it will address crises and problems in a reasonable fashion without resorting to ideological extremes.
In response to my request for reader reactions, some of those who commented recognized and praised this line of argument, often making additional suggestions. Others were sharply critical of that aspect of it, primarily accusing me of pressing outworn New Democrat and Clintonian solutions when far more radical approaches are needed to realistically address the nation’s problems and win back voters who have lost faith in government.
A commenter identified as Majora argued, for example, that
This kind of inept centrism is not what anyone needs, not what anyone wants and is just going to give us another Trump in 2032. It’s also completely blind to the massive structural problems that have underlined the current economic and social crisis.
Instead, Majora continued,
America needs a new deal, a complete reorganization of the economy away from megacorporate dominance, back toward small business and workers. Break up the banks, institute single-payer health care, raise taxes on corporations, lower taxes on small business, increase the minimum wage, prosecute corporate criminality, promote unions, regulate consumer products, build affordable housing, rebuild communities destroyed by deindustrialization, like Appalachia and Detroit.
Majora and other critics from the left may be right, but the Democratic Party at this moment is in no way positioned to promote a drastic set of foundational changes in the social and economic order. It’s like a teenager who just crashed the family sedan asking his parents to give him the key to their BMW.
That said, there were two glaring omissions from the hypothetical platform: There were no planks about climate change and energy or abortion and reproductive rights.
Many readers wrote in about climate change, and its absence is entirely my fault. One of the most generous contributors regarding the platform was Jim Kessler, the executive vice president for policy of Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank, whose earlier suggestions included:
Democrats will champion a common-sense, all-of-the-above approach on energy policy that combats climate change and reduces Americans’ utility bills. We will embrace the full portfolio of resources our nation has — including renewables, nuclear and responsibly managed oil and natural gas — because expanding supply is key to affordability.
In a reflection of my capacity for misjudgment, I deleted them for space reasons last week.
I have no excuse for the failure to include an abortion plank. On this score, the wording of the 2024 Democratic platform could and should have been included:
Democrats are committed to restoring the reproductive rights Trump ripped away. With a Democratic Congress, we will pass national legislation to make Roe the law of the land again. We will strengthen access to contraception so every woman who needs it is able to get and afford it.
One constructive theme voiced by readers was the need for more detailed proposals to reform the courts and the campaign finance system.
Susan from Massachusetts correctly pointed out:
You totally missed giving 50 percent of the voting public the right to control their own bodies. Really. You must be a man.
She then shifted to the judicial system, writing, “We need serious reform for the Supreme Court,” which, she said, “has decided to legislate from the bench. Without reform, this Supreme Court will nullify most of what the Democratic Party tries to do.” She added:
Here are some suggestions: retroactive term limits by making justices rotate off the court, a nonpartisan way of picking justices, limiting the types of cases the court can hear, a serious ethics clause with teeth and elimination of the shadow docket.
Finally, you also missed restoring voting rights. The Supreme Court has gutted this. We need to eliminate gerrymandering, and we need to make it fair for all citizens to vote easily. And while I’m at it, we need to reconstitute the Senate so it is more representative and eliminate the Electoral College.
While meritorious on their face, such Electoral College and Supreme Court reforms would face significant challenges.
Richard Pildes, a law professor at N.Y.U., wrote by email:
States have the power to allocate their presidential electors in proportion to the statewide vote if they want to. The problem is a collective action one: Any state that does this would weaken its influence over the presidential election unless all states did it.
Take Florida, which has 30 electoral votes. Donald Trump won 56 percent of the vote there in 2024. If Florida allocated proportionately, the result would be 17 votes for Trump and 13 for Harris, or a net of four electoral votes for Trump — rather than the 30 he received.
If a small state like New Hampshire, which has four electoral votes, continues to allocate its electors on a winner-take-all basis, Florida would have reduced its influence to that of New Hampshire. So even states that might want to allocate proportionately are unlikely to do so unless all states go this route.
In the case of term limits for Supreme Court justices, Pildes added:
Because the Constitution establishes lifetime tenure for federal judges, there is a significant debate among constitutional scholars over whether there are clever ways by which Congress could impose term limits by statute or whether a constitutional amendment would be required.
On the possibility of expanding the number of justices, Pildes noted, “Most constitutional scholars believe Congress can do this through legislation. The Constitution establishes life tenure, but it does not fix the size of the court.”
There were other significant omissions from my platform proposals.
Tom from Boston pointed to the need for a tough statement on the policies adopted by the Trump administration:
I can’t overemphasize enough how Trump’s dictator-like actions — from cutting off funding, to ICE, to the mess at the F.B.I., to weaponizing the Justice Department — have been just horrific. The empowerment or strengthening of the executive branch needs a big wet blanket ASAP. As a start, lose the presidential pardon ability and go from there.
There is no question that a key function of any Democratic platform in 2028 will be to remind voters of the pervasive corruption, the abuses of power, the barrage of lies, the disregard of court orders and the abuse of prosecutorial powers that have characterized President Trump’s second term.
While some readers voiced hostile criticism of the section in the platform on transgender rights and Jonathan Haidt’s call on the Democrats “to undergo a truth and reconciliation process for all the harm, the cruelty that the activist wing perpetrated during the cancel culture era,” I was surprised by the level of support for Haidt’s proposal.
Middle Aged Man from San Francisco wrote in the comments section:
I really like the comments on truth and reconciliation and repudiation on transgender culture wars and the border. I have had so many discussions with right-wing friends about how “we don’t believe that gender is a social construct” and “I don’t know what Biden was doing on the border.” Just affirming what we believe is not enough when we went off the road so egregiously. We have to admit we made a mistake.
Similarly, Reuben from Australia wrote in to say, “Haidt’s stands out because it names the problem Democrats avoid confronting,” adding that Haidt and his intellectual allies
document how identitarianism and cancel culture migrated from donor-funded activist subcultures into mainstream institutions — especially education and the Democratic Party.
This is why Haidt’s call for a truth-and-reconciliation moment matters. It isn’t about relitigating grievances or appeasing conservatives. It’s about acknowledging institutional harm, intellectual overreach and the moral arrogance that alienated moderate voters. Until Democrats confront that history honestly, they will struggle to persuade voters that they’ve learned from it — or that the excesses won’t recur.
On a related issue, Roy Hoffinger, a lawyer in San Diego, contended in an email that the section in the platform on discrimination needs clarification:
Because I believe that “identity politics” by some Democrats and in academia bears a large share of responsibility for our Trumpian nightmare, I urge you to clarify the platform with a statement that more clearly disavows race and gender-conscious decision making, e.g., “we oppose discrimination against and for any person based on race, gender, national origin or sexual preference.”
The addition is needed, he argued, in order to be sure “that the positions expressed cannot be construed by voters on the fence as supporting discrimination in any direction.”
A number of those who wrote in said that the platform should include a declaration or assertion of patriotism and a favorable statement on religion, both of which are of high importance to key middle-ground voters.
Andy from the Bay Area complained, for example, that there was
no mention of religion and/or Christianity, a huge blind spot for Democrats. If you want to appear to centrist working- and middle-class voters, you should have something to say about what most of those voters consider to be at the core of their lives.
Mike D. from New York City wrote:
The Democratic Party has a unique opening to reclaim the mantle of “patriotism” from the mob of G.O.P. pretenders trashing the flag and the freedom it represents. I would focus more energy on a clear, consistent vision of what those things represent.
Go hard at the un-American language, policy and behavior of the G.O.P. — not just Trump. They have brought us to the brink of Soviet America. Call them on it.
Andy and Mike D. are right. Patriotism and religion belong in the platform, but I have some concerns. The fact is that many Democrats, especially the kinds of activist Democrats who attend conventions, are often not especially religious and embracing patriotism is not high on their list of priorities. The danger in stressing the two is that it will appear to be a phony adherence to obligatory positions instead of an expression of true conviction.
There is one area where, after a week’s consideration, I think I went too far: the platform’s emphasis on markets over government intervention.
While it’s true that Democrats and liberals often fail to recognize the extraordinary benefits of free markets and competition as engines of growth, productivity and the elimination of discrimination, it’s also true that corporate America cannot be trusted to preserve competitive free markets.
What Adam Smith wrote in 1776 — “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public or in some contrivance to raise prices” — is even more applicable today, when the concentration of wealth and corporate political power is exceptionally high.
I think my original approach neglected the crucial role of government in preventing business from corrupting free markets. At a time when unions are weak and corporations are strong, when capital is more powerful than labor, a political party that claims to have the interests of the average voter at heart has to be prepared to use the power of government to protect workers and consumers from exploitation.
In normal times, the functions of a party platform include unifying disparate factions and finding common ground that motivates the loyal while appealing to the skeptical.
These are not normal times. The 2024 election and its aftermath were loud and clear warnings to the Democratic Party that its relationship with the electorate was significantly damaged. (I wrote about this a few weeks ago.)
Trump has done all in his power to turn the House over to Democrats, and he might have gone so far as to lose the Senate as well. But Democrats remain buried in a sand pit, as far as the voters go.
Evidence of the party’s continuing problems can be found in a Wall Street Journal poll published on Jan. 16.
Even with Trump viewed with disapproval on almost every issue tested, the survey found that in many cases voters preferred congressional Republicans over congressional Democrats to deal with those issues.
Voters disapproved of Trump’s handling of the economy. For example, 44 percent approved, and 54 percent disapproved but simultaneously believed Republicans were better equipped than Democrats to deal with the economy, 38 to 32. Or take inflation and rising prices: Trump was negative, 58 to 41, but Republicans were favored over Democrats, 38 to 32. The same pattern emerged on immigration, foreign policy, the Russia-Ukraine war and tariffs.
In other words, Trump is in hot water on a wide range of issues, but that has failed to translate into Democratic ascendance, signaling continued wariness and distrust of the party.
Put still another way: If a doctor had a patient with blood test results equivalent to the Democrats’ unfavorability ratings, the doctor would strongly consider hospitalization.
Equally worrisome for Democrats is that Trump will not be on the ballot in 2028, and public anger at his presidency will not be a reliable force for overcoming voter doubts about their party and its candidates.
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