We need pro-competence, pro-reform Democrats
First party to get a clue wins the White House.
The Democrats have a big problem.
Well, they have a bazillion problems. But the central one in the current moment is this: By pushing back against anything and everything that Trump and Musk do, they come off as defenders of a failed status quo. When a massive majority of Americans hate the current state of our institutions, being the party of "everything is fine, actually!" codes them in the minds of voters as somewhere between blissfully unaware and blatantly corrupt.
I had an interesting conversation the other day with someone who is a fan of DOGE's efforts to cut out fat and waste in government. When I pointed out my issues with DOGE's work (the misrepresentations, the capricious layoffs, firing air traffic controllers amidst planes falling out of the sky, etc), the person gave me a forlorn look and asked, "but isn't it good that they're at least trying? Why would anyone be *against* fixing things?"
What a question. I realized something important right then: Being the opposition party to the government reform effort is a losing position. The key vector isn't reform vs. no reform, because every swing voter in America is in favor of reform right now. Rather, it's competence vs. incompetence.
The correct critique of DOGE is not that it's attempting to the reform the government, but that it's bungling the effort so ridiculously. Unfortunately, it does no use to call out DOGE's incompetence when the alternative party has been branded as the party who cannot get anything right.
Whether they want to hear it or not, the list of Democratic malfeasance is long: Biden's senility cover-up. Harris's suitability as a candidate. Covid-19 policy overreach. Mismanagement of the border. Blue state urban chaos. Over-fixation on identity politics. Pardon hypocrisy. Massive infrastructure spending with barely anything to show for it. You know the list, I can keep going but I won't. This is not a good brand at all! Unfortunately, they have become meme:
There's a reason Trump won re-election despite being one of the most-despised political candidates in American history.
For the Democratic Party to become appealing again, they have no choice but to embrace the following:
They must agree with the premise that government needs to be reformed. This is what the people want!
They must stand against grift and corruption.
They have to be the party of competence over incompetence, and integrity over bullshit. For anyone to take Democrats seriously when they scream that the HHS Secretary shouldn't be an anti-vaccine crank and the FBI Director shouldn't be a crypto grifter, the Democrat’s proposed leadership should be beyond reproach.
They have to shed the gerontocratic tier of ancient party leaders who are too invested in the party machinery to heed the mood of the public.
Finally (and to state the obvious), they need to drop the elements of their platform that non-ideological moderates find weird, off-putting, and confusing.
One enormous but unexploited advantage Democrats have is that many planks of the current GOP platform, from infectious disease policy to speech policing to the treatment of trans adults to our relationship with Canada, are genuinely stupid and offensive. Not to mention unpopular with voters. Trump's White House is fumbling away its mandate at an astonishing pace:
Unfortunately for the Democrats, their performance this decade has been even worse:
This presents an opportunity: The first party to start exercising good judgement in governance becomes the de facto non-incompetent political party in America, and gets to take over government in 2029. The bar is low, people. Who will it be first?
Coincidentally, today happens to be the publication date for Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's Abundance, which stands as good a chance as any other to become the left-wing manifesto of this next election cycle. It’s very aligned with the theme of this post. Anyways, I highly recommend their interview with Bari Weiss which you can find here.