There is a moment in every family crisis when the responsible sibling realizes that being responsible is not the same thing as being effective. You can tidy while the kitchen burns. You can organize receipts while the roof caves in. You can stand there with your binder of excellent plans and watch a cousin rewire the fuse box with a fork. At some point, the grown up stops folding towels and pulls the fire alarm. That is where Democrats live right now. The country is inside a second Trump term that treats norms as speed bumps, process as a suggestion, and law as a set of tools for friends. The question is not whether to stay dignified. The question is whether dignity can carry a hose.
This is not a poem about the good plans everyone already agrees with. Voters like abortion rights with Roe level protections, they like cheaper insulin and Medicare negotiation, they like universal background checks and red flag laws, they like the Child Tax Credit and paid leave, they like DACA stability and humane immigration policy, they like voting rights and clean energy jobs that pay union wages. The policies are popular. The problem is that popularity does not vote in a filibuster. Popularity does not seat judges. Popularity does not hold a subpoena in its hand and enforce it when the cameras are off. The other party learned a long time ago that rules are meant to be treated like furniture, dragged wherever the set designer needs them. It is time to stop being the museum docent who whispers please do not touch.
What follows is not a fantasy list. It is a toolbox inside the boundaries of the Constitution and the law. It is also a dare. Stop pretending that norms are a sacrament. They are choices dressed as etiquette. In a world where a president can take a literal bulldozer to the people’s house, you do not win by asking the staff to put the velvet rope back. You win by using every lawful lever, every lawful delay, every lawful acceleration, and every lawful enforcement power the voters gave you. Then you win again by making the benefits visible in human time, not think tank time.
Start by ending your favorite excuse
The filibuster is a vibe that pretends to be a rule. It is not in the Constitution. It is a Senate choice about debate that has been weaponized into minority veto. The carve outs already exist for budget reconciliation and judicial confirmations because power decided those things mattered more than your kitchen table. If you want to protect voting rights, reproductive freedom, labor power, and the climate your grandchildren will breathe, create a democracy carve out. Better, create a standing carve out for fundamental rights and the structural rules that govern elections. If you can confirm a Supreme Court justice with a majority, you can pass a Voting Rights Act with a majority. If you will not, then say out loud that you are choosing the etiquette of the chamber over the people who sent you there. This is not cruelty. This is clarity.
While you are at it, retire the superstition that every Senate rule is a rosary bead. The blue slip tradition has become a one way ratchet. If Republicans will not honor it in practice, stop letting it block the judges who will decide whether a teenager in your state has control over their own body. Committee holds that function as performance art should be treated like what they are, not like sacred ritual. Use discharge petitions where possible. Use calendar control to make obstruction expensive. Force around the clock sessions when a handful of senators want to play filibuster cosplay. Make them stand there and read, and make sure the country is watching.
Use time as a weapon, not a courtesy
When the other side holds the White House and the Senate, break out the slow cookers. The Constitution gives the Senate the power to advise and consent. Consent requires advice, which requires time. If they nominate an ideologue who will kneecap public health, worker safety, or voting rights, do not shrug and hope the inspector general will fix it later. Flood the zone with hearings that build a record. Demand full document productions. Subpoena emails when necessary. Elongate the markup calendar. Make cloture votes multiply. Use the quorum rules aggressively and lawfully. They have treated confirmation like a conveyor belt when it served them. Treat it like a quality control lab when it serves the public.
When you hold the White House and the Senate, invert the play. Move judges and agency heads at a sprint. Keep floor time stacked. If a handful of members threaten to tank a must pass bill unless you amputate worker protections or voting safeguards, split the vehicle and dare them to vote against the part their district needs. Do not stare at the scoreboard like a stunned coach. Use schedule, sequencing, and whip counts like instruments, not superstitions.
Make reconciliation carry more than numbers
Budget reconciliation is not just for deficit figures and tax tables. It is a vehicle for policy if you write with discipline. Design programs to fit the Byrd Rule instead of designing excuses. If you want climate jobs, structure the credits so they are visible and local. If you want child poverty to fall again, draft the Child Tax Credit so that checks hit bank accounts on a schedule children can feel. If you want to raise wages, pair wage standards with procurement and tax leverage. Federal dollars buy a lot of asphalt and a lot of software. Attach labor and equity conditions to those dollars. The Supreme Court can frown at your verbs. They cannot erase contract terms that are lawful and specific.
Run the executive branch like you mean it
Republicans have taught the country that the presidency is not just a desk, it is a switchboard. Use it. Write executive orders that stand on firm statutory ground, then defend them with a communications plan that connects the signature to a person’s life within days. If an agency has latent authority to set stronger standards on methane, on silica dust, on overtime thresholds, on junk fees, on medical debt reporting, use it and then go on local television and say exactly what changed. Do not hide your own wins inside PDF files. When opponents sue, fight fast and fight in courts where facts still matter. Use interim final rules where the statute allows. Use emergency rulemaking when the record justifies it. Publish compliance toolkits that make it easy for honest actors to comply and hard for corporate lawyers to feign confusion.
Procurement is policy with a purchase order. Federal contracts are leverage for living wages, fair scheduling, project labor agreements, domestic sourcing that includes real apprenticeships, and bias free hiring. If a contractor wants billions in taxpayer work, they can meet the country’s standards. If they do not, someone else will. This is not punishment. This is the market, but with a moral memory.
Treat antitrust and consumer law like kitchen table issues, because they are
You cannot out message a monopoly and you cannot out organize a junk fee. Enforcers need green lights and budgets, not press releases. Staff up DOJ Antitrust, FTC, CFPB, and the agriculture cops at USDA. Tell them the goal is simple. End the scams, end the price fixing, end the wage suppression, end the private equity strip mining of hospitals and nursing homes. Sue when the facts warrant it. Settle only when the settlement changes behavior that people can see. You will be called radical by executives who think a 25 billion dollar buyback is normal and a 25 dollar wage is chaos. Smile politely and win the case.
Pair voting rights with hardball
Do not bring a lemon scone to a knife fight. If the House and Senate are in Democratic hands, pass the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and a national baseline for ballot access with teeth. If the Senate cannot stomach a full filibuster repeal, carve the exception and take the vote. If you lack the votes, use the Justice Department like it was built to be used. Reopen Section 2 cases. Challenge racial gerrymanders. File consent decree enforcement actions against jurisdictions that refuse to fix known violations. Support state level litigation funds so secretaries of state are not outgunned by partisan law firms. When a state legislature plays games with certification machinery, seek injunctive relief before the calendar turns into a weapon. You are not helpless. You are out of practice.
Expand the map by governing where people live
National messaging does not fill a refrigerator. Deliver local. When you pass a program, assign cabinet officials and regional teams to a county by county blitz. Ribbon cut the broadband trench, the grid upgrade, the school kitchen that serves free breakfast, the clinic that now has a full time nurse, the factory that installed heat pumps because the credit was generous and the apprenticeship rules were real. Cut sixty second spots that show the worker, the parent, the small business owner, the farmer, not the podium. Then buy time in places Democrats usually ignore. Rural radio. Church newsletters where the church actually feeds people. Local papers kept alive by their last three reporters. Stop pretending that a national fact sheet is a conversation.
Use subpoenas like you believe in them
When Democrats hold committees, they often hold hearings that feel like book clubs. Save the book club for after hours. In the daylight, issue subpoenas that map the pipelines of corruption and influence. Do not hold a performance panel. Hold a document production. Build a record that can be handed to prosecutors when the cameras go home. If witnesses ignore you, seek contempt referrals and enforce them. The public thinks congressional oversight is kayfabe because it has been treated like kayfabe. Make at least one hearing a month unbearable for someone who has been comfortable for too long. That is not vengeance. That is what the separation of powers looks like in practice.
Let the Justice Department do justice, not nostalgia
This is the line everyone is afraid to read. Utilize the Justice Department to go after the entire Trump administration after their term is over. Not as a vendetta. As accountability. A government that cannot enforce its own laws against its own officers is not a democracy, it is a club. The path is clean and lawful. Insulate prosecutors from political direction, appoint special counsels where conflicts exist, fund inspectors general to complete referrals, and push those referrals to their legal conclusion. The charge is not get even. The charge is equal justice. If statutes were broken, bring cases and prove them beyond a reasonable doubt. If they were not, say so. The alternative is a two tier system that teaches future administrations that power is a temporary license to loot.
Pair criminal accountability with civil clawbacks. If contracts were steered, recover money. If donor deals corrupted process, cancel them. If appointees violated the Hatch Act or the Federal Records Act or ethics pledges, publish the findings and recommendations in plain language and seek the statutory remedies that exist. None of this requires inventing new law. It requires using the law we pretend to respect.
Reform the Court while obeying the Court
The Supreme Court has made itself an actor in politics, often with opinions that read like short stories about a country that does not exist. You do not have to accept its current posture as the end of the story. You need an ethics code with enforcement and disclosures that are not a punchline. You need jurisdiction and docket reforms that are constitutional and sober, for example mandatory disclosure of shadow docket reasoning and a clear standard for emergency relief. You need to grow the lower courts to reduce backlogs and diversify viewpoints, which Congress can do because Congress has done it multiple times. You need to consider Supreme Court expansion as a policy tool if the other branches are routinely being nullified. That is not a fever dream. That is a legislative choice with a constitutional pedigree. If you are not ready to make it, then stop performing outrage when a decision lands. Outrage without a bill number is branding.
Treat state power like the engine it is
Democrats love federal gravity. They forget the states are where gravity begins. Fund state legislative races at every level, not only the cute ones that fit into a viral video. Write model bills for statehouses that protect clinics, workers, school meals, renters, and voting lines. Build AG coalitions that sue when the federal government tramples rights. Use state procurement the same way you plan to use federal procurement. When a county board passes a book ban, send lawyers and librarians together and make the fight public. When a sheriff behaves like a warlord, use the tools that already exist to remove or restrain them. Too many leaders treat states as consolation prizes. Treat them as factories of democracy and the ground will shift under the national press without asking for permission.
Call things by their name and reward the people who do
Language is not decoration. It is strategy. If a program is a tax cut for families, say tax cut for families every time you speak. If the other party is criminalizing pregnancy, say criminalizing pregnancy. If a corporation is price gouging, say price gouging and show the margin graph. If a social media platform is selling your data to brokers who sell it to the government, say selling and not partnering. Policy will always lose to vibes if the policy speaks in acronyms. You do not need to be rude. You need to be plain.
Then build a habit of rewarding backbone. When a member takes a hard vote for workers or for democracy protections in a hostile district, invest in them like you mean it. When a mayor stands up to a predatory landlord, send attention and staff help. When an agency head ends a scam that donors love, give them a microphone. Parties become what they celebrate. If you celebrate calm hands while the house burns, you will get ash.
Be willing to break norms that were designed to break you
Norms are not moral law. Many were built to protect a Senate that excluded women and people of color, to protect a Court that pretends money is speech and corporations are people, to protect a press culture that flattens cruelty into both sides. You are allowed to say no. You are allowed to use every lawful pressure point that exists. Hold up nominations when you must. Fast track confirmations when you can. Write reconciliation in ways that carry policy. Write executive action that stands on statutes. Flood the courts with facts and real plaintiffs who have real harm. Make the filibuster a relic. Make the carve outs a baseline. Make oversight tedious for corrupt people again.
The objection will come, as it always does. If you do these things, the other side will do worse when they return to power. Here is the reply. They already do worse. They do it with a smile and a camera ready line about tradition while they bulldoze the lawn. What you are being asked to do is not to match their contempt. You are being asked to meet their aggression with lawful counter aggression on behalf of the many. The country does not need a different flavor of performance. It needs a different standard of courage.
Concrete plays, no poetry
Here is a non exhaustive list you can run the next time you control levers, or the next time you need to slow an oncoming train.
- Democracy carve out for the filibuster, narrowly tailored to voting rights, election administration, and fundamental rights legislation. Write it now. Whip it now.
- Expand the lower federal courts by a fixed number tied to caseloads, and pair expansion with a transparent merit process that names professional diversity as a qualification.
- Pass a Supreme Court ethics statute with enforceable recusal and financial disclosure rules. If the Court throws a fit, enjoy the sunlight.
- Create a permanent White House office for delivery that publishes monthly dashboards of program benefits at the county level. If a benefit cannot be plotted on a map, why is it in the bill.
- Direct DOJ to prioritize public corruption, civil rights, and corporate crime with focused strike teams that work with independent IGs. Publish annual reports with case outcomes in plain English.
- Use procurement to set a federal floor for wages, scheduling predictability, apprenticeship, domestic content with realistic phase ins, and anti union busting rules. Enforce with audits, not vibes.
- Instruct FTC, DOJ, and CFPB to treat chronic price gouging and wage suppression as serious harms. Build a pipeline of cases that cover groceries, health care, housing, and gig markets. Bring them and explain them.
- Write an omnibus child and family policy that restores the fully refundable Child Tax Credit, funds universal school meals, expands child care supply with wage floors, and reforms foster care incentives that currently pay for removal rather than support.
- Restore a muscular Voting Rights Act, update the Electoral Count Act wherever ambiguity remains, and create a national standard for ballot access that includes mail voting, early voting, and drop boxes with real security instead of pretend scandal.
- Protect medical privacy at the federal level. Harden HIPAA to block bulk data sharing to law enforcement for the purpose of criminalizing pregnancy or migration status. Clarify penalties. Fund enforcement.
- Target judicial venues strategically. Stop bringing nationwide regulatory fights in circuits that cheer for sabotage. Build records that survive appeal. Move quickly when states criminalize care or protest.
- On defense, when out of power, grind the calendar. Use hearings to surface harm. Use minority rights to force votes that make distinctions clear. Use the Senate floor to keep cameras on policies, not personalities.
- On offense, when in power, run a consent agenda that moves smaller wins every single week. Let the public feel a steady metronome of progress while the big fights continue.
- Invest in local news, public media, and community information hubs through grant programs tied to independence and labor standards. A democracy without local fact patterns is a conspiracy machine with a flag.
- Fund a permanent voter protection and election administration corps that supports state officials of any party who commit to free and fair administration. Reward boring, heroic public service.
The point is not to become them. The point is to finally become useful.
Being the adult in the room is not a plan. It is a posture. The country did not elect posture. It elected outcomes. If the other side will happily drive a bulldozer through the Rose Garden to stage a gala for donors, the least you can do is drive a school bus full of children to a cafeteria with hot meals paid for by a bill you forced through without asking Mitch McConnell for his blessing. If they will strap GPS monitors on families and call it compassion, the least you can do is strap enforcement on corporations that stole wages and call it restitution. If they will use the Justice Department to shield friends and threaten enemies, the least you can do is use it to charge crimes in a way that restores faith that the law still belongs to the public.
There is a reason voters sometimes roll their eyes at Democrats who say we have a plan. They do not doubt the plan. They doubt the willingness to fight for it. They doubt the appetite to bend process within the law in order to protect lives within the law. They doubt that the party that believes in government will actually govern when the cost is comfort. Prove them wrong. Break the glass that is meant to be broken. Pull the alarm that was installed for this exact moment. Then walk outside with the people you serve and show them that the water worked.
The house is not doomed. It is simply in the custody of people who treat it like a stage. If you want it back, you will need to act like owners, not guests. Owners fix things. Owners set rules and enforce them. Owners do not ask people who ripped out the banister for permission to install a handrail. Owners hire inspectors, call contractors, and make sure the invoices are honest. Owners bring the neighbors in and say this is yours, too.
Stop setting the table for a dinner party that never starts. Start cooking. Start serving. Start clearing the plates while the music from the other room gets loud. People remember who fed them. They remember who fought. They remember who made the building feel like home again.