Hello, I’m Eve. Project 2025 is a mess. Lambert says it feels like it was put together by committee, with different factions bringing their own ideas and no one bothering to discuss whether there was at least some coherence.
But that doesn’t mean Team R can’t find areas they want to lift and push hard, so it’s worth noting.
Matt Stoller has long pointed out that Democrats have no interest in governing at all, but Neuberger emphasizes it here: I’ve always thought Democrats are primarily interested in the opportunities for cronyism and personal personnel changes that come with control of the executive branch.
By Thomas Neuburger. Originally published in God’s Spy
I would like to add a few notes to the discussion about Project 2025 that I hope will go away forever. Some of these notes may seem trivial or obvious to you, but I guarantee some of them are not. Read on.
What is Project 2025?
Firstly, what is Project 2025? Project 2025 websitethis is what I want to achieve:
The actions of liberal politicians in Washington have created both a desperate need and a unique opportunity for conservatives to undo the damage the left has done and build a better country for all Americans in 2025.
It’s not enough for conservatives to win the election. Saving the country from radical left rule requires both a governing plan and the right people ready to implement the next conservative government’s policies from day one.
That is the goal of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project, which will be built on four pillars that will pave the way for a holistically effective conservative administration: policy agenda, personnel, training, and a 180-day playbook.
Ignore the fact that much of this project is a mess, at least according to the website. Right-wing fantasies, unserious plans, and contradictions.
(Fantasy: “The entire CISA Cybersecurity Advisory Committee should be fired on day one.” Non-serious plans: “The DNI and CIA director should use their authority under the National Security Act of 1947 to remove IC officials who abuse their positions of trust.” Contradiction: “Liberal democracy” is praised, but “liberals” are engaged in a “ruthless pursuit of absolute power.” hereMoreover, the document contains as much thought as any Republican propagandist about what constitutes the “left” or the “hard left.” Read the lengthy quotation above again:
Every government wants to achieve its goals.
But setting aside the document’s problems, consider what it recommends to the next administration: “the governance agenda and proper staffing.”
This is being proposed by enemies of the “left” (I assume they just mean Democrats), but how is their plan different from what an actual leftist, like a Sanders administration or, as we imagine it, a non-Manchin administration, would do or would try to do?
thanks to this Thread by Cory Doctorowhistorian Rich Pearlstein’s contextualization of the project points out that Doctorow (emphasis added):
As Pearlstein points out, Project 2025 is nothing new. The Heritage Foundation and its allies have produced such documents filled with similar policy proposals in the run-up to many presidential elections. Pearlstein argues that Warren G. Harding’s 1921 inaugural address captures much of its spirit, as does the Nixon campaign’s 1973 vow to “shift the country ‘imperceptibly’ to the right.”
Threats to democracy and its institutions are not new. The right has been bent on their destruction for over a century. As Pearlstein says, the purpose of paying attention to this is not to downplay the danger, but rather to put it into context. Since the founding of the republic, the American right has been bent on creating hereditary aristocracies that would rule without “interference” from democratic institutions, so that their power to extract wealth from indigenous peoples, workers, and the land itself would be checked only by competition with other aristocracies.
Pearlstein Identify similar “project” declarations 1921 (Harding administration), 1973 (second Nixon administration), and 1981 (Reagan).
There is nothing new in this. It is standard fare for any regime, left or right (and by “left” I mean the actual left), that wants to shake things up. If you don’t like predatory neoliberalism, liberally seasoned with Christian-Fascist ideology and toxic misogyny, then of course you have to fight it.
But we must fight. Not because of the way it changes, but because of the mindset.
Examples of Project 2025 methods
Consider the Obama administration in 2009. Progressives were calling him Clean your house thoroughlyFired the veterans and remnants of the Bush-Cheney Administration. He did not. There was no 2009 Plan and we were a complete failure.
Or consider the “Sanders Mindset Administration” we hoped for: how much neoliberal garbage should he have thrown out? What if he just threw it all out? Including Joe Manchin (Also here).
So noContrary to the ideas of Project 2025, the civil service system should be preserved, but…
yesRebels and Left Behind Must That government needs to be replaced if the new administration is to achieve its goals.
If you win, you have to dominate.
If you gain power and don’t use it, you lose. Unless the goal was to change nothing (looking at you Biden in 2020), then the goal was unfulfilled.
Ian Welsh is a stark reminder of this in several posts on the subject: One He says (correctly in my opinion):
You can’t play the game by the rules if your opponent is determined to cheat and thinks you shouldn’t be on the field.
The title of this work is “Why the Left Keeps Losing and What It Must Do to Win(By “left” I mean the actual left.) The background to this is what was happening in Latin America in the late 2010s, and what happened to Corbyn in the UK.
The (real) enemies of the Left will break all the rules to ensure that the Left can never win. For example, in the UK: “Labour staff actively worked to defeat us in the 2017 and 2020 elections. We have the emails and we have the evidence.”
And here at home: “The US has overthrown multiple elected governments abroad that were perceived as left-wing. Coincidentally, at home, JFK, RFK, MLK and Malcolm X (sic) were assassinated within a decade, yet we are asked to believe that our national security agencies had nothing to do with it. (This is no laughing matter.)”
The lesson here is that when the real left gets power, it has to use it, which is what every good pro-change movement tries to do.
In that sense, Method Project 2025 is not entirely new. the goal It’s very unpleasant. If we reject those methods, our By failing to achieve our goals, we deny ourselves future victories.
Law of Purge
This leads to an obvious conclusion: the Law of Purges. If you do not remove your enemies from power, they will fight you forever.
As Welsh points out, Another work It aims to advise new left governments in Latin America (emphasis added):
Don’t be shy: the first step is to break the power of the current economic and political elites who will not persuade you to join them, or at least not let them govern without trying to thwart you.
This must be done all at once. When it happens, it must happen to everyone it should happen to. This was Machiavelli’s maxim, and he was right. After that happens, those who weren’t broken know they’re safe as long as they stay out of your way.
If the destruction continues indefinitely, everyone who still has something to lose (i.e., still has power) will live in fear: they must destroy you before you can destroy them.
His example is the North American one, the Barack Obama, the “Yes, we can” figure we all hoped for in 2009. Welsh developed the basic idea as follows:
Let’s take a concrete example: Let’s assume that Obama was a real leftist, he came to power in 2009, and he really wants to change things. He needs to get rid of the financial elite, i.e. Wall Street and the big banks.
They gave him a chance, and here’s some of how he would do it: He would declare all the banks involved in the subprime fraud ring (all the big banks and most of the smaller banks) as co-conspirators under the RICO Act.
He will then confiscate all of the executives’ personal money, claiming it is the proceeds of crime (which is 100% legal under current law), and he will prosecute the executives, forcing them to have public defenders.
They are now powerless. This is the second law of purging: those who harm you must be destroyed utterly. If you take away half their power and leave the other half, they will hate you forever and use their remaining power to destroy you.
Let them be or ruin them. The financial executives are ruined and, whether they win or lose in court, will have a personal legal nightmare for the next five to ten years of their lives.
If Obama were truly a leftist, he would have done all of this… and we would have applauded it, despite the Machiavellian means.
Sanders implied that if he had won in 2016, he would have run a hard-fought campaign — and we would have applauded him for it. Indeed, his core supporters would have been left miserable without his courage to use the power he won.
So let’s not criticize Project 2025 too harshly. MethodThe reason is that in the future, when Jupiter aligns with Mars, we on the left may be in power. Will we squander our power or use it?
If you use it, these are the very methods you will employ.
