Democrats don’t need our own Project 2025. We need a winning ideas agenda.

As the policy director for Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign and a senior policy advisor during his presidency, I know how policy agendas are designed and executed. I learned from what we got right, including a historic legislative record. I also learned from what we got wrong, ultimately leading to Donald Trump’s 2024 victory. Based on these lessons, I am concerned when I see Democrats call for someone to write Project 2029, our version of Project 2025. That would be a mistake.

Project 2025, developed by the conservative Heritage Foundation, is a plan for dismantling the administrative state. It is wonky and, during the 2024 campaign, it was very unpopular. While he distanced himself from Project 2025 during the election, Trump is governing on this agenda and his approval rate is falling.

Trump and Project 2025 accurately diagnosed the problem: most Americans do not believe the federal government is making their lives better. But Trump and Project 2025 picked the wrong treatment. The conservative think tank American Compass found that even Republicans cannot identify major government programs they want to eliminate. People do not want to dismantle the government; they want it to do a better job at improving their lives.

So, no, Democrats do not need an unpopular, wonky policy plan that caters to the interests of ideological and advocacy groups. To win in 2026 and 2028, Democrats need big ideas that convince most Americans that we will rebuild government to make them safer, healthier, and able to afford a good quality of life. Then, to win the next election, we need to successfully govern on these ideas.

Soon, many 2026 and 2028 Democratic candidates will craft their own agendas. I urge them to consider five principles.

First, build an agenda that can earn the support of the vast majority of Americans. Our conservative courts make it increasingly important that a president govern as much as possible through legislation, not executive action. To govern through legislation, we need to win back the House and the Senate. Given factors like gerrymandering, this reality means we need ideas that win over a supermajority of Americans.

How do we win their support? We recognize that Americans, not the so-called D.C. elites or technocrats, best understand the problems they are facing. We listen to Americans, not interest groups claiming to represent them, about what they care about most. We seek the advice of people who have never worked a day in Washington, including industry leaders, entrepreneurs, health care providers, parents, young people, and other hard-working Americans. As we develop ideas, not after we are done, we engage in a back-and-forth dialogue with Americans to see what resonates. We bring the conversation to where people are, including social media.

Most importantly, we cannot presume that one faction of the Democratic party holds a monopoly on winning ideas. This is a moment to put all creative ideas on the table and let the American people, not intraparty politics, decide what is common sense.

We also cannot shy away from ideas proposed by Republicans if those ideas align with our values. One of Biden’s biggest accomplishments was the creation of ARPA-H, which invests in transformative health breakthrough technologies. ARPA-H is based on an idea first proposed by the Suzanne Wright Foundation, which was started by a friend of Trump. Biden did not let the idea’s origin stop him from saving lives.

Second, your agenda must tell a compelling story. The easiest way to make the case that an idea will make Americans’ lives better is to tell a story of how it has already made life better in one state or one town. Now is the time to propose ideas at the state and local levels and see how they perform in the real world before bringing them to the national stage. Increasing worker power and lowering housing, childcare, and elder care costs are areas ready for action and desperately needed in blue states where we have terrific Democratic governors.

Third, build an agenda that delivers results in the near-term, not in a couple of election cycles. When we retake the White House, we need to prioritize the execution of ideas that provide near-instant proof that government is back in the business of making Americans lives better. The Biden Administration was hurt by the fact that the benefits of many of our major accomplishments – especially those related to infrastructure, high-speed Internet, clean energy, and lowering prescription drugs costs – started to kick in at the end of Biden’s term. The book Abundance correctly identifies this problem but fails to recognize the political and structural reasons government ends up delivering with a delay. For example, in the Biden Administration, some of the delay was the result of concessions we made to secure necessary Republican votes in Congress. We also sometimes hesitated to reform existing programs or agencies out of fear that opening the statutes for amendment would give congressional Republicans the chance to demolish what we had, which was better than nothing.

Fourth, your agenda should be forward-looking and agile. In retrospect, the Biden Administration pivoted too slowly from job creation to lowering costs. Now, we need to identify what issues may be top of mind for Americans in 2026 and 2028 and be prepared for those priorities to suddenly shift. The important issues in two or four years could be job loss due to artificial intelligence, recovery from natural disasters, the rising rate of cancers in young people, or some other challenge not on our radar today.

Lastly, craft an agenda that does not simply build our government institutions back to the way they were. Because of Trump and Elon Musk’s actions, we are free at the federal level to build a new agency that relies on science to ensure that we have safe and healthy food and drugs without ceding power to industry. We can reorient our entire health care system to focus on health outcomes and lengthen healthspan. We can shake up the Justice Department to effectively execute a comprehensive public safety agenda that combines law enforcement and prevention instead of siloing these efforts. We can transform how the federal government serves rural communities, something we have completely failed at in the modern era.

Out of the ashes left by Trump and Musk, we have an opportunity to propose ideas that will empower us to win elections and then rebuild government to make life better for Americans. We need a winning ideas agenda that comes from mayors, governors, and the American people, not Washington. Democrats, do not waste this opportunity by writing Project 2029.

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