Dems borrow GOP playbook with sweeping ‘Project 2029’ agenda

So Democrats finally noticed that Project 2025 worked. That's basically the whole story here. After two years of describing the Heritage Foundation's blueprint as a fascist blueprint for the end of democracy, the same people are now sitting down to build their own version, right down to the branding. Project 2029. Not exactly a subtle homage.

We'd actually call this progress, if a little late. A party that spends four years reacting to headlines instead of governing off a plan ends up looking exactly like the last several cycles of Democratic politics: improvisational, reactive, allergic to saying what it actually wants until a reporter asks. Having an agenda ready to go on day one, instead of finding out what the base wants via TikTok trends, is how governing parties are supposed to operate. Credit where it's due.

But borrowing the format doesn't mean borrowing the substance, and that's where this gets interesting. Project 2025 was controversial because of what was in it, not because a think tank dared to write things down in advance. If Project 2029 turns out to be the same collection of policies Democrats have been pushing since 2021, dressed up with a new binder and a catchy name, nobody's going to be fooled by the packaging. The real question isn't whether the party has a plan. It's whether voters who rejected these ideas at the ballot box are suddenly going to like them better because they came with a title.

There's also something a little rich about the same people who spent a year warning that a detailed governing document was an authoritarian threat now producing their own. We're not shocked by the hypocrisy, we've stopped counting at this point, but it does undercut the moral panic retroactively. Turns out having a plan isn't dangerous. It's just what parties that intend to govern actually do.