1. Government-reform experts say that with control of the House and a slim Democratic majority in the Senate, the Democratic leadership on Capitol Hill should vote on legislation like H.R. 1, the sweeping package of voting-rights protections, campaign-money transparency, and anti-corruption provisions that House Democrats approved in the last Congress. Norm Eisen, who served as Obama’s White House ethics czar, says Biden should immediately sign an executive order that would drastically limit, if not ban, special-interest lobbyists from serving in the Biden administration.
2. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) offers a three-pronged strategy to fight this war.
First, re-establish the independence of the Justice Department. That's being done.
Second, root out possible Trump-era corruption in federal agencies like the EPA or the Commerce Department, Whitehouse says Congress should launch a special legislative committee that could function unrestrained by the typical committee jurisdiction lines to offer support for people who want to come out of the woodwork and say, ‘Hey, here’s a file that I kept or a story that you need to hear.’” Then refer the info to the Biden White House for cleaning house.
Third, President Biden should set up a commission made up of experts to investigate the fossil-fuel industry’s decades-long campaign to undermine climate science and block ambitious action to fight climate change. Haven't heard if that's being done.
3. Get those coattails out. In 2020 the party offered an off-ramp for independents and Republicans to abandon Trump and vote for Biden. It was a choice that maximized the chances Trump would lose but, as you might expect, offered little in the way of support for the rest of the Democratic ticket. In 2022, Joe Biden will have coattails.
The party needs to put its weight behind Biden's “moral capitalism” — the stuff that combines Sanders and Warren's programs. Legalized weed has been big. The polls show Americans are already with them on that, and they won in the ruby-red Republican states of South Dakota, Mississippi, and Montana. Polls have already shown that this government's doing something for them and their wallets. That strategy has worked.
Big supporters like Fetterman promote legal weed as an economic issue (regulating and taxing it could provide much-needed revenue for states), a racial-justice issue (ending the failed War on Drugs and the discriminatory policies that imprisoned tens of thousands of black and brown people), and a veteran issue (marijuana is seen as a much safer option for vets with chronic pain and PTSD). We're winning that battle.
4. Two more reconciliation bills will probably pass. More wins.
Because of the 60-vote supermajority in the U.S. Senate, Democrats can show up the “90 issues” — that have nearly unanimous support among the general public and the Democratic Party. "IF PASSED" is the biggest hurdle, so these can be in reconciliation bills:
-- capping interest rates on payday loans (instead of blanket student-debt cancellation),
-- Medicaid expansion (instead of Medicare for All),
-- expanding the child tax credit (instead of universal child care), and
-- free two-year public college (as opposed to free college, period)
These get media interest, which helps voters see Democrats creating positive change, and support even broader expansion of government in their lives.
5. Organize for 2022 war. Mobilize for midterms like the presidential race.
Mobilize for the presidential like the apocalypse.” Add fear of a Nazi planet.
More than 12 months out, ramp up organizing and turnout machine in the suburbs and college educated for the midterms and next presidential run. Build a local voter base to withstand a Category 5 hurricane because we'll get one. Do what Cornell Belcher advises, and divert chunks of those hundreds of millions of dollars normally reserved for Super PACs, the DNC itself, into state parties and grassroots groups in battleground states -- Georgia, Arizona, Nevada AND Texas.
Amanda Litman of Run for Something, says nothing less than a revival of Howard Dean's 50-state DNC strategy must get done. Biden's next DNC chair should invest in that. Ohio's not the future, according to Belcher.
Organizers and political candidates say year-round organizing is the best shot for Democrats to win back swaths of rural America and not cede the middle of the country to the GOP. When Republicans have the built-in support of local chambers of commerce, farm bureaus, churches, and, of course, conservative TV and talk radio, Democrats have to smash the Fox News caricature of Democrats.
SO, as Rachel Bitecofer says, Democrats have to stay equally as outraged as Fox voters over the next two years if they don't want to be hammered in the midterms.
These aren't all the strategizing there is, but they're some of what I've read.
We might feel down right now but we're far from out. We know the war now.
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