The morning after the midterm elections—November 4—marks the unofficial start of the 2028 presidential campaign. Over the next two years, candidates and the Democratic Party will grapple with one big question: What is the message and agenda that can successfully win the White House?
Progressive groups have long prepared for this moment, and it’s safe to say that candidates will be awash in competing proposals from organizations old and new.
Among established players, the Congressional Progressive Caucus has offered a “New Affordability Agenda,” while the Center for American Progress recently launched its “Path Forward” series. Newer efforts include Project 2029, led by White House veterans Chad Maisel and Andrei Chernei; Inclusive Abundance, based on the framework championed by journalists Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson; and the “American Security Guarantee,” forthcoming from Senate veteran Adam Jentleson’s Searchlight Institute.
Over the coming months, I’ll be talking to many of the people competing in this “ideas primary” so you can hear their pitches yourself.
First up is Third Way’s Executive Vice President for Policy, Jim Kessler, the subject of this week’s interview and a principal author of the organization’s “New Economic Bargain: 20 Ideas to Change the Lives of Working America.” (You can also watch the video on our Substack.)
Big disclosure: I was the director of Third Way’s economic program in the organization’s infancy (longer ago than I want to admit), and among my first tasks with Jim was to develop an agenda for the middle class, which we called a “New Middle Class Compact.” The purpose of this set of ideas was to help Americans cope with what we called a “New Rules Economy,” where the rules for achieving success were being upended in a dramatically changing economy. (And this was waaaay before AI.)
What you’ll hear in this discussion with Jim is how the fortunes and aspirations of middle-class Americans have shifted over the last decade, as has the need for government intervention. We also talk about something that hasn’t changed: voters’ skepticism of Democrats as stewards of middle-class prosperity. Jim argues this new agenda can help overcome this obstacle. Key to that, he says, is this plain-language promise he hopes Democrats will make: “If you’re busting your butt, you should be able to get ahead.”
“If you’re busting your butt, you should be able to get ahead.”
Jim Kessler, Third Way
Among the specific ideas he offers is a proposal for cheaper used car loans (auto debt is an increasing driver of financial precarity, so to speak) and a plan for universal pensions, which would be a boon for gig workers in particular.
Jim also argues that Third Way’s agenda offers “ruthless pragmatism,” rather than ideas he says are politically infeasible. “If you look at our ideas one through 20… you could see it happening in a functioning government,” he said. “I can’t imagine, under any scenario, Medicare for All passing Congress and being signed into law. I see no scenario where that that could happen.”
I hope you’ll watch and then let us know what you think.
Come meet us in person!
I’ll be moderating a midterms preview with Executive Editor Digital Matt Cooper and veteran pollster Stefan Hankin of Lincoln Park Strategies on Sunday, November 1, at Sixty Vines in Foggy Bottom, D.C.
Don’t miss at the Monthly…
Why a red wave of cash can’t stop a Blue Wave. Republicans have been hoping that their formidable cash advantage heading into this fall’s elections will insulate them from the wrath of voters and a humiliating wave of defeats. Yet all this GOP spending hasn’t seemed to make much of a difference so far, writes Politics Editor Bill Scher. First, he argues, money can’t make up for crappy candidates. Second, says Bill, “Republican ad buyers are learning the hard way that millions in dark money funneled to super PACs don’t go as far as money sent directly to candidates.” Read here.
What the life of Hannah Arendt can—and can’t—teach us. The late German theorist Hannah Arendt has become fashionable of late, not least because her seminal work, The Origins of Totalitarianism, has become frighteningly relevant. Some of her adherents argue that we have as much to learn from Arendt’s life and ecumenical friendships as we do from her work. But as Features Editor Gillen Tener Martin writes in her review of Roger Berkowitz’s new biography, “Arendt’s relationships were unique, by both the standards of her day and modern metrics.” As a portrait of Arendt, Berkowitz’s work is an important contribution to the scholarship around her legacy. But as a model for how to heal a fractured world, Arendt herself might fall short. Read here.
Don’t weaken antitrust in the name of AI safety. Big AI is asking Congress and regulators for an exemption from antitrust enforcement, on the grounds that the industry needs to work together in the name of AI safety and protecting the rest of us from their products. Don’t fall for it, argue Daniel Hanley and Arnav Rao of the Open Markets Institute. “Skeptics note that privately set safety standards, enabled by an antitrust waiver, may aim to shore up these corporations’ dominant market position and reduce spending on new model development ahead of their planned IPOs,” they write. Hanley and Rao propose a better alternative. Read here.
Les enfants noble? Hundreds of thousands of student protesters have taken to the streets of France in recent weeks to condemn poor conditions in the nation’s schools and uneven opportunities for jobs and education. “But as the protests have grown and diversified, what began as a call for better conditions has become something bigger: a denouncement of France’s centrist government and its proposed austerity budget about six months before a presidential election; a nebulous demand for a brighter, more just tomorrow; or “an exercise in nihilistic resentment” that’s costing France tens of millions in damages, depending on the observer’s interpretation, and on which particular protest (of thousands) they observed,” reports our Paris-based Features Editor Gillen Tener Martin. Read her dispatch here.
Plus…
- Contributing Editor Steve Waldman lauds the passage of California’s Community NEWS Act, landmark legislation that could revitalize local news.
- Contributing Editor Jonathan Alter condemns misguided “celebrations” of the October 7 massacre.
- Ralph Nader ponders whether the thought of a miserable lame-duck presidency could be enough to persuade Donald Trump to resign.
- Richard Kahlenberg and Lief Lin make the case for three years of high school civic education.
- Bill Scher argues in his second column for the week that the Blue Wave could be big. Really big.
- Paul Glastris hosted our annual College Guide webinar with the New America Foundation, featuring Kevin Carey, Debra Humphreys, Paul LeBlanc, and yours truly.
Parting Note
“Brad” is not the problem
MAGA got its knickers into a twist last week over a campaign ad posted by Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders touting the state’s new work requirements for Medicaid recipients.
The video featured a clownish young white man named “Brad,” chomping cheeseballs and playing video games instead of contributing meaningfully to society. Right-wing commentator Jack Posobiec called the ad “Antiwhite,” while commentator Matt Walsh complained that “Republicans don’t have the balls to do this ad with ‘Shaniqua’ as the villain.” (The irony kills me.)
Let’s set aside for a moment the racism and hypocrisy animating the backlash against Sanders’ ad, as well as the fact that a large majority of Medicaid recipients in Arkansas are, in fact, white. Sanders’ ad points to a genuine crisis among young people in America: “disconnection” from work and school.
When I wrote a book about this topic in 2020, 4.5 million young adults ages 16 to 24—or more than 1 in 10—were neither in school nor working. That was before the pandemic. New research from RAND now estimates that nearly one in four young adults experiences disconnection, and often for periods lasting six months or more.
The mental toll is especially high for disconnected young men, two-thirds of whom reported “no in-person time with friends in the prior week”—a shocking sign of their social isolation. These young men are not “Brad,” living it up online and “choosing” not to work, as Sanders so blithely puts it.
Rather, they’ve been failed by the institutions charged with helping them make a meaningful transition to adulthood: High schools that don’t prepare them for the world after graduation; colleges that are out of reach; and employers and policymakers who don’t create opportunities for young people in their communities.
According to the nonprofit Measure of America, Arkansas has one of the highest rates of youth disconnection in the country. That’s the real objection to Sanders’ record as governor—not that she’s created an ad that “villainizes” men but that she’s done too little to help disconnected young adults find a path forward in her state.
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Have a great week!
Anne Kim, Senior Editor
