Yves here. Project 2025 is a dog’s breakfast. Per Lambert, it reads like it was put together by committee, with different sections getting pet ideas and no one bothering to butt heads to make sure it’s at least somewhat coherent.
However, that doesn’t mean that Team R won’t find pieces in it that want to lift it up and push it hard, so it comes with something to watch.
Matt Stoller has long made the point that Democrats don’t really like governing, which Neuburger emphasizes here. I have long believed that the Dems are more interested in the funding and revolving door opportunities that come with controlling the Executive Branch.
Written by Thomas Neuburger. It was first published in the book God’s Spies
I want to add a few notes to the discussion about Project 2025, and hopefully move on to this discussion for good. Some of these notes may seem simple or obvious to you, but I guarantee that others will not. Read on.
What is Project 2025?
First, what is Project 2025? According to the Project 2025 website, here is what it hopes to achieve:
The actions of liberal politicians in Washington have created a great need and a unique opportunity for conservatives to begin repairing the damage done to the left and building a better world for all Americans by 2025.
It is not enough for the Conservatives to win the election. If we are going to rescue the country from the grip of the hard Left, we need both a governing agenda and the right people on the ground, ready to implement this plan on day one of the next administration.
This is the goal of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project. The project will build on four pillars that, together, will pave the way for effective governance: a policy agenda, personnel, training, and a 180-day playbook.
Ignore the fact that much of The Project, at least according to its website, is a jumble of right-wing fiction, illogical programming, and contradictions.
(Dream: “The entire CISA Cybersecurity Advisory Committee should be disbanded on Day One.” Nonsensical editing: “The director of the DNI and the CIA should exercise their authority under the National Security Act of 1947 … remove IC personnel who abuse their positions of trust.” Conflict: “Liberal democracy” is applauded, but “liberals” are engaged in a “cruel pursuit of absolute power.” And here. In addition, the Authority document has as much a view of what constitutes “Left” or “Left” as any professional Republican broadcaster. Read the long quote above again.
All Authorities Want to Achieve Their Goals
Put aside those issues with the document, and just look at what the document advocates for the next administration: “the governing agenda and the right people in place.”
Despite the fact that this was proposed by the enemies of the “left” (I think they just mean the Democrats), how different is their plan from what the left – for example, the Sanders administration, the Manchin impeachment we considered – should. or will you?
For this series by Cory Doctorow, we pointed to Historian Rich Perlstein’s contextualization of the Project. Doctorow (emphasis mine):
As Perlstein points out, Project 2025 is not new. The Heritage Foundation and its partners have prepared documents like this one, with many of the same policy goals, before many presidential elections. Perlstein argues that Warren G Harding’s 1921 inaugural address takes much of its spirit, as does Nixon’s 1973 campaign pledge to “move the country so far to the right ‘you won’t even see it.’
Threats to democracy and its institutions are not new. The right has focused on their destruction for over a century. As Perlstein says, the point of realizing this is not to minimize the risk, but rather, to put it into context. The American right, since the founding of the Republic, has been determined to create a system of elites, who rule without “interfering” with democratic institutions, so that their power can extract wealth from First Nations, working people, and the land itself. only rivals and other nobles are examined.
Perlstein identifies similar “project” announcements in 1921 (Harding administration), 1973 (second Nixon administration), and 1981 (Reagan).
There is nothing new in this. It’s standard fare for any administration that wants to get things right, left or right (by “left” I mean the real left). If you don’t like your neoliberalism liberally filled with Christo-fascist ideology and toxic misogyny, then yes it must be fought.
But it must be fought, not because of its method of change, but because of its ideas.
Examples of 2025 Project Pathways
Consider the Obama administration in 2009. Progressives wanted him to clean house completely, burn down the Bush-Cheney or left-back. He didn’t. There was no Project 2009, which led to our great demise.
Or think about the “Sanders brain power,” which we wanted him to have. How much neoliberal garbage should you have discarded? How about everything, including Joe Manchin (also here).
So NoCivil servants should be kept, contrary to the expectations of Project 2025, but…
Yesthose who deny and leave behind it should changed if any new management will serve your purposes.
When You Win, You Must Rule
If you win power and don’t use it, you lose it. Unless your goal was to change anything (see Biden in 2020), you have failed in your goal.
Ian Welsh provides a strong reminder of this in several posts relevant to this topic. In another he says (correctly, in my opinion):
You can’t play the game by the rules if the other side is willing to cheat and thinks you shouldn’t even be on the field.
The piece is titled, “Why the Left Keeps Losing and What They Need to Do to Win” (by “left” you mean the real left). The context is what was happening in South and Central America in the late 2010s, and what happened to Corbyn in the UK.
The (real) enemy left will break all the rules to make sure the left doesn’t fall. For example, in the UK: “The workers of the party have been working hard to lose the 2017 and 2020 elections. We have the emails, we have the evidence.”
And here at home: “The United States has overthrown many elected governments overseas if they consider them to be left-wing. At home, coincidentally, JFK, RFK, MLK, and Malcom X [sic] they were all killed in less than a decade, and we are expected to believe that the US security services had nothing to do with it. (This doesn’t even pass the laugh test.)”
The lesson here is that, if the real left gets power, it should use it. That is what all positive change agents strive to do.
In that sense, the way of Project 2025 is not new at all; is goals disgusting. If we reject those methods in trying to achieve ours goals, we reject our future victory.
The Law of Purification
This leads to an obvious consistency, the cleaning rule: Purge your enemies from power or they will fight you forever.
As Welsh points out in another piece intended to offer advice to the incoming far-left Latin American administrations (emphasis added):
Let’s dance. Your first step will be to break the power of the current economic and political elite who are unwilling to convince you—or, at least, let you rule without trying to destroy you.
You have to do all this at once. If it happens, it should happen to everyone who will happen to him. This is Macavelli’s statement, and he was right. After it happened, those who weren’t broken know that they are safe as long as they don’t get in your way.
If the break continues, everyone who has a loss (and still, thus, has power) lives in fear. They must destroy you before you destroy them.
His example is North America, which wished Barack Obama in 2009, he of “Yes, we can.” Here is a Welsh expansion of that basic idea:
Let’s give a concrete example. Consider that Obama was actually a leftist. He comes to power in 2009, and he really wants to change things. He needs to take out the financial elite: Wall Street and the big banks.
They have given him a chance. Here’s part of how he does it: He declares all the banks involved in the sub-prime fraud racket (all the big ones and most of the small ones) conspiracies under RICO.
He then says that all the money of each of the officials is found in crime and he confiscates it. (This is 100 percent legal under the laws as they stand). He charges them, and they are forced to use public defenders.
They are not strong now. This is the second law of purification: Whoever you harm, you must destroy him. If you take part of their power, and leave them part, they will hate you forever and use their remaining power to destroy you.
Leave them intact, or destroy them. Financial executives would be doomed, and win or lose in court, the next five to ten years of their lives would be consumed by legal nightmares.
If Obama was a real leftist, he would have done all this … and we would have applauded him for it, except for the Machiavellian nature of things.
If Sanders had won in 2016, he revealed that he would have cleaned house … and we would have applauded him for it. In fact, his main supporters would have been sad if he didn’t have the courage to use the power he had won.
So let’s not be too hard on its Project 2025 methods. The reason: Sometime next year, when Jupiter perhaps aligns with Mars, we, the true leftists, may gain power for ourselves. Are we going to hate it or use it?
If we use it, these are the methods we will use.
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