When the Heritage Foundation published Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership, the volumes were large-sized — around 8.5 x 11 inches, like a textbook.
When Democrats produced oversized pseudo-replicas of the 900-page policy blueprint as visual props to mock Republicans during the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, they made the tomes much, much larger, as if hauled off a monastery shelf.
Why? Michigan State Sen. Mallory McMorrow on August 19, and Pennsylvania Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta on August 20 — and others each night — sought to symbolize its “weighty” and “extreme” nature.
The giant scale of the replicas amplified the visual gag, with McMorrow quipping about it being “heavy” as she dragged it out.
That is how seriously Democrats said they were taking Project 2025.
So when Donald Trump got elected, and the document’s author, Russ Vought, took on his current position as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget on February 7 — sworn in by the left’s very noirest of bêtes noir, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas — you might think that Democrats would be very careful dealing with anything Vought touched.
Like scuttling the Continuing Resolution at the beginning of the month, thereby shutting down the federal government. For lack of funding.
As covered yesterday in a Weekend Update on this site, Vought’s axe, poised to gut the EPA or Treasury, was at the ready, sharpened to make substantial and semi-permanent cuts to many departments.
The Democrats’ nightmare come true.
So, why did they blunder into it?
Smart money has it that the party, made unpopular by its far left, is now running scared of that very same far left. Senator Chuck Schumer (D.-NY), once a dealmaker, now cowers like a schoolboy before a possible 2028 challenge from AOC, the Squad’s top brand and a Bernie bro.
Democratic leadership couldn’t risk containing the political ambitions of the leftist radicals in the party.
A breathtaking moment, especially if Vought truly plies his Project 2025-branded axe. Those monastery-sized tomes, brandished like holy relics to smite Trump, a year ago, now stand as tombstones for the Democrats’ own strategy.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with Krea and Firefly
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts
One reply on “How Massive a Mistake?”
In trying to comment here, I realized that rather a long essay — perhaps even a book — might be written on how the Democratic Party ended-up with the base that it now has. Essentially, though, a base was cultivated with an eye towards a relatively swift political transformation of America. The project began to fail terribly in 2016; but those behind the project then intensified their efforts, further transforming that base.
The rest of America is not especially fond of the Republican Party, nor should they be; and the Democratic Party might be able to present itself as having become the voice of restraint — except that the base will not allow such presentation, even as tactical posture. The base wants to resume the “progressive” transformation of society. And the Democratic Party has no mechanisms for reversing the transformation of its base. The base regard the rest of us as “fascist”, “racist”, and “sexist”, though they no longer acknowledge and often no longer understand the proper meanings of these words.
If candidates for more general election were not selected by primaries, and those more general elections were decided by approval voting or by ranked-choice voting,* then candidates would not have to cater nearly so much to the bases of parties. But, as it is, where the local Democratic bases are most like the national base, candidates must choose between madness and forgoing office.
— — — — — — — — — —
* Approval voting has each voter identify whether each candidate is acceptable, and the candidate who gets the most identifications as acceptable wins. Ranked-choice voting has each voter rank each candidate by acceptability, with various systems used to winnow candidates with lower ranks until some candidate has a majority. In the face of incomplete preferences, ranked-choice voting can cause the second-least popular candidate to win amongst a set of three or more candidates.