The new Democratic policy group Project 2029 sees itself as an answer to Project 2025 — the radical MAGA policy blueprint President Donald Trump has embraced during his second term to transform the government. But Project 2029’s shockingly timid first policy roll out this week suggests the group isn’t up to fulfilling its own mandate.
The people behind Project 2029 exclusively releasing their initial set of proposals to The Bulwark in and of itself signals moderation: The Bulwark, home of many Never Trump Republicans, is a conservative sector of the Democratic coalition. The group’s apparent view of The Bulwark as friendly turf suggests its outlook on social change is going to be restrained.
It’s hard to imagine these proposals animating large groups of voters.
The preview Project 2029 shared with The Bulwark includes four proposals that are described in broad terms and allude to policy documents that apparently have yet to be released. Some main points include:
- Breaking up utility monopolies: “Our proposal outlines how the next President should break these monopolies open, letting competition drive down bills, speed up delivery, and unleash a new wave of cleaner, cheaper energy for families and businesses.”
- Childcare changes: “Our proposal outlines how the next President can ensure that every family has the time, financial support, and high-quality care options they want, giving parents back the power of choice on how to support their young children.”
- Protecting kids from the internet: “Our proposal would protect children from the most harmful features of social media and AI, give parents stronger tools, and dismantle the surveillance advertising model that drives much of the harm.”
- Cutting down on “The Annoyance Economy”: Tackling the “enormous amounts of time, money, and patience to the small, daily hassles corporations deliberately design into modern life: spam calls, useless chatbots, surprise fees, impossible cancellations, endless paperwork.”
This isn’t a promising first impression. These items aren’t objectionable, but Project 2029 promised an agenda “bigger and bolder than what people have been offered before,” and this looks like establishment-friendly technocratic reform. And there’s a conspicuous absence: namely the big-ticket items that prompt national debates and polling about America’s affordability crisis, such as housing, education and healthcare.
The pledge to break up utility monopolies to cut down energy costs is worthwhile and a nice nod to the growing anti-monopoly current of the Democratic party, but it’s relatively small potatoes. People tend to think more about how hard it is to make rent than it is to pay for electricity.
Childcare reform is badly needed, but the language of “options” that Project 2029 offers up in this preview seems to suggest more means-tested tax credits or other policies that depend on income. If you want to go “bigger and bolder” than before, then you would want to talk about childcare as a social right and use language of universalism — and address the reality that even many middle-class people find childcare costs financially ruinous.
A promise to protect children from the harms of the internet is … fine. More robust measures are overdue, certainly, although we would need specifics to weigh in on how judicious these reforms are. But in any case, that’s hardly the kind of thing that draws out huge crowds or fires people up.
And lastly, the “annoyance economy” proposal is undoubtedly not the kind of policy you want to center political campaigns around. Cutting down on needless paperwork and the “time tax” is a good idea and can be a policy layup, but the very name of the term insinuates frivolity. And it gets at none of the fundamental dynamics that make the economy work for tech billionaires but not working people. People are depressed and anxious about the economy, not merely irked. This is precisely the kind of policy that should not be part of an opening salvo for a group trying to stand out as a generator of big policy swings.
Project 2025 proposed a radical right-wing transformation of the government with ideas such as eliminating entire federal departments, gutting abortion access and overturning the immigration system. There is no progressive equivalent of that here, either through procedural or policy proposals. There is no agenda-defining idea like Medicare for All or a Green New Deal. And, interestingly, the proposals don’t tap into the buzz and momentum surrounding either New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s social democratic commitments (such as fast and free buses for the city) or the build-big-things-fast ethos of the Democratic abundance agenda.
Remarkably, Project 2029 seems to consider its proposals to be moonshot goals. The Bulwark reports that the Project 2029 policy advisers it interviewed said “they were less concerned with calculating how programs would be paid for or whether their plans could be realistically shepherded through Congress than with animating their base.” Whom do they consider their base? It’s hard to imagine these proposals animating large groups of voters. If this is just their vision board, then why are they playing it so safe?
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He primarily writes about politics and foreign policy.