Editor's Notes: Reconstruction or Project 2029?

An earlier version of this piece claimed that Project 2029 was a project by the Center for American Progress. That is not the case, and the piece has been updated accordingly.

Today, our friends at The Bulwark published a preview of something called Project 2029. Last year, one of its co-creators referred to it as "the Avengers of public policy, or the Justice League, depending on your personal persuasion: the best thinkers from across the spectrum." The cast of characters quoted in the article suggests a rather more familiar political set were assembled instead, for a rather familiar version of "bold ideas."

When it comes to our own project, The Reconstruction Papers, we make no claim on originality for the idea. Everyone has watched as The Heritage Foundation planned, right out in public view, a hostile takeover of our country by the next Republican president. The idea of a Democratic Project 2025 was an obvious one from day one of Trump's second term at the latest. Indeed, even casting it in terms of Reconstruction specifically has been something many others have converged on independently, alongside us.

The Bulwark's preview comes the day that we began final editing on the last essay of The Reconstruction Papers, a plan for renewed racial integration policies written by Victor Ray. Once that is complete, our designer will be able to finish up the PDF to prepare it to send to the printer, and we will set up a pre-orders portal.

We are, in short, on the verge of putting this in people's hands, and indeed will be providing digital copies much sooner than that. We have given this project quite a lot of thought and put a lot of work into it. So it is worth asking: given what we have seen so far from Project 2029, will the efforts be redundant? Will they be complementary? What distinguishes what we're doing from what they appear to be doing?

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The Bulwark article refers to the notion of an "ideas primary," somewhat derisively. But without irony or shame I say to you: the ideas primary is exactly what Liberal Currents is seeking to win in the short term.

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