[UncleMeat]

> That just reads like a Trump-like ideological power grab: "we need to make sure our opponents can never win again." But what does that do for people who aren't partisan Democrats? They want Trump to lock in his power, but they don't want Democrats to, either.

No. The goal is to make sure that presidents who commit crimes or direct the executive branch to commit crimes are prevented from doing so or held responsible for doing so. For example, legislation that expands Section 1983 to include federal agents and legislation that limits the availability of qualified immunity would go a long way in mitigating lawless action by federal law enforcement.

> The first step to that is saying no to the technocrats, and taking some pages out of Trump's economic playbook (and Sanders's). The second steps is saying no to the activists, and stop alienating large fractions of the electorate by pushing too hard and too fast on a lot of issues.

These two things are opposites, in my mind. Things don't become less big or fast when they are focused on economic policy. Heck, even Biden's cancellation of student loan debt (something I consider to be on the technocratic side) was considered a Major Question by the supreme court to justify their reversal of the policy.

[palmotea]

> These two things are opposites, in my mind.

Not as I had in mind. By "social issues" I meant the non-economic stuff. That stuff has been key to pushing a lot of people to the Republican side.

> Things don't become less big or fast when they are focused on economic policy. Heck, even Biden's cancellation of student loan debt (something I consider to be on the technocratic side) was considered a Major Question by the supreme court to justify their reversal of the policy.

I think they should go big and fast on economic policy, especially on the kind of goals Trump campaigned on. For instance: tariff the heck out of China, figure out how to tax offshoring, plow the money made into re-industrialization, cultivate a trade-bloc of established high-income democracies.

But you know, Trump was for tariffs, so they had to be against them. All the sudden they sounded like the re-animated corpse of Milton Friedman.

The student loan debt thing was dumb because it came off as elitist, and it was to some extent. The Democrats need to listen to and serve people they don't like talking to anymore, instead of their staffers with student loan debt.

[UncleMeat]

"Social issues" does not appear in the text of your comment.

I do not understand how one can do economic things that are substantially larger than cancelling student loan debt while also not "pushing too hard and too fast on a lot of issues."

[palmotea]

That was my mistake. I wrote "issues" when I could have been more specific and said "social issues."

I don't think addressing economic issues can be very alienating, except when they signal messed up priorities that exclude you. I don't think student loan forgiveness would have been that controversial if it were a smaller part of a larger package that overall addressed higher priorities or a broader base of people (e.g. a bunch of tariffs and programs to re-industrialize).

[UncleMeat]

The Inflation Reduction Act was a large piece of legislation that had huge programs for re-industrialization, which produced measurable improvements in employment in these sectors.

Zero GOP legislators voted for it. It was pilloried on right wing media constantly.

I do not believe that there is any large scale economically-focused legislation that the democrats could push that would not be controversial.