Democrats Have a Majority. We Have Some Ideas

Three days after the 2024 election, when many liberals were still catatonic over the reelection of Donald Trump, I wrote an email to our readers. I acknowledged how bleak the situation was. But I also predicted that Trump and his MAGA colleagues would govern in ways that would “horrify the same public that elected them.” And I promised that the Washington Monthly would do everything in its power to help “get the American people ready with ideas they can use when the opportunity arises.”  

Well, the opportunity has arisen. Last week, voters told MAGA Republicans “you’re fired!” and handed Democrats an historic chance to address the country’s mounting crises—especially the eroding living standards of average Americans. To fulfill that obligation, the new Congressional majority might want to consider, and maybe hold hearings on, some of the new policy ideas the Washington Monthly, as promised, has spent the last two years proposing. These include giving the federal government the same power as states to fight price gouging; creating a new deal between Washington and universities to make tuition free for moderate-income students; having government set prices in the highly consolidated commercial health care market to control soaring costs; providing the growing ranks of the self-employed with portable benefits and relief from monopoly predation; and making ICE raids unnecessary by combining tough restraints on companies that hire undocumented migrants with generous opportunities for those migrants to become legal.   

Of course, none of these proposals are likely to go anywhere while Trump is in the White House. For that, we’ll need a new president. So, for the next two years, the Washington Monthly will continue writing about these ideas, surfacing new ones, and scrutinizing the men and women who seek to replace Trump so that the country is ready when the next opportunity arises. 

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All the best, 

Paul Glastris 

Editor-in-Chief 

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