Dems 'Project 2029' plan met with mixed reactions, concern over upsetting left's 'interest-group Borg': Report

Fox News

04-07-2025

New York Times political correspondent Shane Goldmacher detailed the mixed opinions among political strategists on the Democratic Party's plan for Project 2029 — a ready-made agenda for the party's next presidential nominee.
Goldmacher revealed on Monday that while many Democratic strategists are on board with the project's vision, some are skeptical that the agenda set forth could upset the left's "interest-group Borg" and deepen the divide within the party.
The creator of Project 2029, former Chair of the Arizona Democratic Party Andrei Cherny, is working on organizing Democratic thought leaders to ensure there is a set-in-stone agenda ready.
"The title is an unsubtle play on Project 2025, the independently produced right-wing agenda that Mr. Trump spent much of last year's campaign distancing himself from, and much of his first few months back in power executing," Goldmacher noted in the piece.
Cherny's plan takes more inspiration from the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 than just its name. Similar to Project 2025, the goal of Project 2029 is to turn Cherny's publication, "Democracy: A Journal of Ideas," into a book — and rally the party's presidential candidates behind those ideas during the 2028 primary election season.
"The undertaking, which has not previously been reported, strikes at the heart of a raging debate consuming Democratic lawmakers, strategists and policymakers: whether the root of the party's problems is its ideas or its difficulty in persuading people to embrace them," Goldmacher stated.
According to Celinda Lake, a prominent Democratic pollster quoted in the story, the party "didn't lack policies," but rather "lacked a functioning narrative to communicate those policies." She criticized the Democratic Party for offering voters "agencies and acronyms and statistics" rather than presenting a clear story about "what we're going to fight for."
On the other hand, some Democrats contend that the party has been faltering due to stale ideas that fail to inspire voters to get behind them.
Neera Tanden, CEO of the Center for American Progress and advisor to Project 2029, argued that liberals "underestimate the power of Trump's ideas" and that the focus has been his personality.
"We get wrapped up in his personality. But he puts forward an idea like 'No tax on tips,' and that's an important signifier that he is championing working-class people," Tanden told the New York Times.
Cherny's plan to assemble "the Avengers of public policy" — a coalition of Democrats aiming to set the agenda for their party's next presidential candidate — did not sit well with some who believe that coalitions are to blame for the party's current predicament.
"Developing policies by checking every coalitional box is how we got in this mess in the first place," stated Adam Jentleson in the piece, the former chief of staff for Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa. "There is no way to propose the kind of policies the Democratic Party needs to adopt without pissing off some part of the interest-group Borg. And if you're too afraid to do that, you don't have what it takes to steer the party in the right direction."
Even though Democrats were successful in rallying their base against Project 2025, Michael Tomasky, editor of The New Republic, claimed that those efforts will not have a negative effect on Project 2029 because — unlike the Heritage Foundation — their "ideas aren't radical or extreme."
Tomasky stated that he hoped the project would help rejuvenate the public's view of the Democratic Party among the less fortunate.