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Guest Essay

Feb. 3, 2026, 5:04 a.m. ET

Credit...Thalassa Raasch for The New York Times

Thomas B. Edsall

Mr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington on politics, demographics and inequality.

This column is an experiment of sorts: an outline of items in a hypothetical 2028 Democratic Party platform designed to restore the party’s appeal to centrist working- and middle-class voters.

My suggestions are subject to challenge and dispute, and as usual, I have sought out comments from strategists and political experts. In the expectation that this will turn out to be a more-than-one-column project, I welcome comments, critiques and suggestions from readers. What did I miss? What did I overemphasize?

Here we go.

Mission Statement

The Democratic Party is committed to equality of opportunity and to democratic, competitive markets in which discrimination by race, creed, sex or ethnicity is prohibited and the chance to get ahead is broadly shared.

The party’s focus will be on supporting the aspirations of working men and women rather than privileging the interests of those who have accumulated extraordinary wealth through market power, inheritance or political influence.

The Democratic Party believes government has a substantial obligation to secure this equality through access to education, housing, public safety and protection from poverty, especially in childhood.

The party rejects a politics that seeks to guarantee equality of outcomes, which risks undermining growth, productivity, innovation and beneficial competition.

The party believes that economic growth is essential to the maintenance of public support for policies promoting fairness, equality, better schools and more housing.

The party is committed to ensuring an equal chance for all people to succeed to the best of their ability while making sure everyone who wants to work can get a job that pays enough to live a secure, middle-class life.

The Democratic Party welcomes proposals to better the lives and opportunities of Americans, particularly the working and middle classes, from all sources, regardless of ideology or party affiliation, including Republicans.

Foreign Policy

The Democratic Party holds that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was an unjustifiable act of war and aggression. The United States should stand firmly with Ukraine — militarily, economically and diplomatically — until Russia withdraws its forces and Ukraine’s sovereignty is secured.

The Democratic Party supports American participation in NATO and the obligation under Article 5 to treat an attack on any member as an attack on all members.

A basic premise of Democratic foreign policy is support for democracies when they are in conflict with dictatorships.

Government Commitments

The Democratic Party believes the government has an obligation to ensure equality of opportunity through the provision of education, housing, safety and security from poverty. This is a very substantial obligation.

Sex and Gender

The Democratic Party recognizes the legal and policy precedence of biological sex in certain contexts. Transgender Americans should not, however, face discrimination in employment, education, housing or public life, and they should be free to live in accordance with their gender identity, including their choice of names, dress and pronouns.

At the same time, in settings where physical differences materially affect fairness, safety or privacy — such as competitive sports and certain custodial settings — the party believes policy should be grounded in biological sex.

Corruption

The Democratic Party will do everything it can to halt corrupt profiteering by those in public office, including reforms of the presidential power to pardon and prohibitions on presidential ownership of businesses that allow special interests and foreign countries to channel cash to the ruling family. The party will pursue constitutional, legislative and judicial avenues to limit the effects of Supreme Court decisions — including Citizens United v. F.E.C. and Trump v. United States — that have weakened anticorruption safeguards and accountability for public officials.

The Democratic Party will restore the independence and integrity of the Department of Justice, reject the use of law enforcement to harass political opponents and ensure that investigations and prosecutions are initiated without regard to partisan interest.

Immigration

The Democratic Party supports a lawful, orderly and humane immigration system. The United States must control its borders, enforce immigration law consistently and rapidly adjudicate asylum claims. The party supports the deportation of those illegally entering this country.

The millions of long-settled, law-abiding undocumented immigrants should have a conditional path to legal status, while employers who exploit unauthorized labor must face serious penalties.

Labor

Unions are essential to leveling the playing field in the contest between workers and management over pay and fringe benefits.

Cancel Culture, D.E.I., Diversity Statements

The Democratic Party rejects ideological conformity, performative diversity statements and institutional practices that reduce individuals to group identity or encourage a culture of grievance and victimhood.

Equality should be pursued through fair rules, vigorous enforcement of civil rights law and investment in human capital, not through compelled speech, loyalty oaths or bureaucratic box checking.

The Democratic Party affirms freedom of inquiry, open debate and academic freedom. The pursuit of truth must not be subordinated to ideological protectionism or fear of offense. A democratic society depends on the ability to question orthodoxies, test evidence and revise beliefs. An excessive emphasis on harm cannot be allowed to constrain open discussion and open inquiry.

Risk Taking

The Democratic Party believes a fundamental principle of American exceptionalism is the freedom to take risks. The party embraces responsible risk taking in science, technology, entrepreneurship and regulation. Excessive risk aversion — in permitting, litigation and public administration — has slowed innovation, infrastructure and growth.

Government should enable experimentation, accept the possibility of failure and focus on results rather than process while maintaining essential safeguards for health, safety and the environment.

The Free Market

The Democratic Party recognizes the crucial role played by the free market in the nation’s growth, productivity gains and continuing prosperity. Market competition has been a major factor in the reduction of discriminatory policies by giving nondiscriminatory businesses and institutions a competitive advantage.

The Democratic Party believes that if a needed reform can be accomplished through government intervention or market policies, it’s preferable to choose the market.

Government must be able to build, administer and deliver. Permit reform, procurement reform and civil service modernization are essential to restoring public trust. Parallel reforms are needed in the regulation of the private sector to accelerate building and reduce the costs of housing and infrastructure.

Crime and Public Safety

Public safety is a civil right. The party supports evidence-based policing, accountability for misconduct and adequate staffing to protect communities from violent crime.

Health Care

Access to affordable health care is a civil right.

Education

Schools should emphasize literacy, numeracy, civic knowledge and career readiness, not ideological instruction.

Fiscal Responsibility

Long-term deficits threaten economic stability and intergenerational fairness.

Image

Credit...Thalassa Raasch for The New York Times

Needless to say, when I sent these proposals around, they provoked some strong reactions, both negative and positive. Let’s start with a critique.

Paul Starr, a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton and a founder, with Robert Kuttner and Robert Reich, of the liberal American Prospect magazine, responded to my inquiry by email:

The Democratic Party could use an inspirational statement of its principles, but it doesn’t need to itemize its policy stances and renounce positions that most of its national leaders have never taken.

Least of all does it need to highlight the culture-war priorities of its opponents in backward-looking pledges about such issues as cancel culture after Trump has shown us what serious threats to freedom look like.

The new leaders the party chooses in 2028 will have to spell out a new agenda. They will have their work cut out for them explaining how they are going to save our republic, make lives better for ordinary people and pull the United States back from blowing up our alliances and embroiling ourselves in a new era of imperialism.

Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University’s Stern School of Business, stood in direct opposition to Starr. In an email, Haidt wrote:

I think the Dems need to undergo a truth and reconciliation process for all the harm, the cruelty that the activist wing perpetrated during the cancel culture era; they need to firmly renounce identitarianism.

Until they do that, disaffected moderates and Trump voters won’t come to the Democrats.

Haidt proposed one major addition:

Schools should be as free of distractions as possible. That means removing cellphone access from the school day and limiting the use of technologies associated with distraction.

The evidence of severe harm to children from social media and A.I. chatbots is mounting; parents struggle to keep their children away. The Democrats would help parents by enacting an Australia-style age minimum for opening accounts on social media platforms and for other addictive and harmful technologies.

Neera Tanden, the president and chief executive of the Center for American Progress and a former domestic policy adviser to President Joe Biden, wrote by email that she thought “much of this works,” but, she added,

no administration in my lifetime has done more to hurt working-class people. Trump is doing that through tariffs, taking away health care, taking away SNAP, etc. He has a policy of making some things like housing more expensive.

That creates an opportunity for Democrats to make inroads among working-class people — say, get to Obama’s 44 percent in 2012, while maintaining their current coalition. But they have to offer people something. And that, to me, is an agenda that is about opportunity and security: opportunity as an economic agenda, security on crime and immigration.

Opportunity can also be about more than making ends meet — lowering costs for things.

Working-class people care about both of these things. Fundamentally it is about making the Democratic Party the party of the underdog — which has been its unifying theme for a long time but perhaps less so in recent years.

Jim Kessler, the executive vice president for policy at Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank, proposed a broad set of additions, all generally supportive of the goals laid out in the platform.

The Kessler amendments are too long to be included in their entirety, but here are some highlights:

We acknowledge that the Democratic Party has veered off course and has lost the confidence of the American people on the economy, the border, crime, social issues and free speech. It is not enough to be able to win because Donald Trump and the Republican Party have performed so poorly.

And:

We will make sure that the benefits of a growing and dynamic American economy extend to more people and more places, particularly those without a college degree and the regions of the country where opportunity has become scarce.

On transgender policy: “In instances where transgender health care involves minors, parents will be in the driver’s seat on all decisions.”

Regarding immigration:

Democrats will not repeat the mistakes of the last two presidents: We will control our border and ensure that we are enforcing the law. And we will immediately halt the unconstitutional, illegal and immoral behavior the Trump administration encouraged and countenanced in our immigration enforcement agencies, root out those responsible and see they are held to account.

No one brought to America as a child and who has grown to adulthood here should face deportation.

As for health care:

Democrats are committed to achieving affordable universal health coverage through the Affordable Care Act. We will fight for a Health Care Bill of Rights that lowers costs by taking on price gouging throughout the health care system, hospitals that overcharge, out-of-network care that is too expensive, junk insurance that rip off consumers and doctors who overprescribe.

William Galston, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution and a former deputy assistant to President Bill Clinton for domestic policy, outlined in an email the proposed goals of Democratic foreign and domestic policy.

On foreign policy:

Democrats believe that our alliances have made us stronger, not weaker. At the same time, we welcome recent steps by the allies of the United States to assume more of the burden for their own defense.

Along with the vast majority of Americans, Democrats believe that international trade, suitably regulated, promotes the well-being of the United States and its citizens. We reject policies that would leave us cowering behind protectionist walls that raise prices and reduce economic dynamism.

Democrats favor the maintenance of the status quo in relations between Taiwan and China and reject any attempt to alter this situation by force.

Democrats reject any understanding of the Monroe Doctrine that would allow the United States to use force against its hemispheric neighbors without adequate legal justification.

Concerning domestic policy:

While every American should have access to quality, affordable health care as a matter of right, Democrats understand that achieving this goal will require major changes in the current health care system, including increasing the number of pediatricians, gerontologists and primary care doctors while expanding access to community-based clinics.

We encourage all large businesses to make on-site health care available to their employees. We will attack all aspects of the current system — including excessive concentration, counterproductive regulations and distorted government payment schedules — that raise costs and diminish access to basic care.

To achieve the goal of high-quality K-12 education for every child, we cannot keep pouring money into the status quo. Instead, Democrats favor reforms — such as Mississippi’s successful K-4 program — that boost the acquisition of basic reading and math skills for all students. While we reject an excessive focus on testing, we believe that outcomes must be measured and that success cannot be sustained without accountability for results.

Our current fiscal course is unsustainable and, if left uncorrected, will lead to long-term erosion in our standard of living. Interest payments on the federal debt will soon be the largest single item in the federal budget, squeezing vital services and public investments. As a first step, we must act to secure the solvency of Social Security and Medicare, whose trust funds will be exhausted by the end of the next president’s first term.

Bob Bauer, a law professor at N.Y.U. who served as White House counsel and represented many Democratic candidates and committees, focused his comments on the rule of law and presidential power parts of the draft platform and wrote that he

would have the party commit overall to a restoration of the constitutional dimension, which means limits, to the presidency. The president is not an elected monarch but a constitutional officer whose obligation to see that the laws are faithfully executed apply to the president, as well as to all others.

This vision approach to the presidency, Bauer contended, is premised on

a core proposition that the office is a public trust and that fidelity to this public trust precludes the uses and, for too long, the abuses of power, including but not limited to the pardon power, for personal and partisan political ends.

The public trust also entails the expectation that the presidency is a full-time job exclusive of any others, including the pursuit of private business interests or the use of the office’s prestige and power to advance any such interests of the president’s family, friends or political associates.

Perhaps the most serious threat to what Bauer called a “constitutional presidency" is the “weaponization of federal law enforcement against political opposition and dissent or to serve programs of political vengeance”:

The damage done by an aggressively weaponized department has contributed to a crisis of confidence in the rule of law. All potential pathways out of this crisis must be considered and implemented, such as specifying in clear terms that presidents are liable for obstruction of justice and revitalizing and protecting the Office of Inspector General as part of a program of muscular internal controls and congressional oversight.

One critically important subject absent from this document is a Democratic policy on artificial intelligence and data centers, but I need to learn more about this before commenting.

I could end this column with some kind of pithy comment, but I would prefer that this be the start of an ongoing project, open to criticism and suggestion from anyone who wants to weigh in. So have at it.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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Thomas B. Edsall has been a contributor to the Times Opinion section since 2011. His column on strategic and demographic trends in American politics appears every Tuesday. He previously covered politics for The Washington Post.

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