What If Dems Win the Trifecta?

Being overly optimistic here perhaps, but Dayen notes that if Democrats do win the House and the presidency and hold onto the Senate, they may face a problem of a lack of clear legislative priorities:

On the convention floor last night, I was able to talk to a few members of Congress, and I put to them the idea of what happens if they achieve their goal of a trifecta under a President Kamala Harris in 2025. In particular, I asked what they would prioritize. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) started with the democracy-related bills, the For the People Act and the John Lewis Freedom to Vote Act—“Those are just core Democratic values that we will carry forward.” But then he added that Kamala Harris will add an agenda onto that, including all the care economy measures, and codifying Roe v. Wade.

When I asked Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX), who is on the path to potentially becoming Progressive Caucus chair, he added even more to that agenda. “I think that if we have the ability to really pass legislation, I think day one, restore abortion rights across the county, there’s a clear mandate for that. Day two, address voting rights and civil rights across the country… And I think day three, you do the things that matter to working people. Which are things like the right to unionize in this country with the PRO Act, and taxing the wealthy to pay for things that people really deserve like health care and child care.”

There’s a logic to some of this. The abortion and voting rights measures are things that you would need to be exempted from the filibuster to pass, but there’s pretty broad agreement on the particulars within the party; codifying Roe is fairly straightforward, and Democrats in the House already passed the voting rights bills. Then on the rest, there’s a big tax fight coming in 2025, and there should be some residual money available there for at least some facets of the care economy agenda.

But I don’t see a lot of people thinking about what’s going to take precedence, or looking ahead to when the money is finite and getting programs permanently in place, not temporarily like the Child Tax Credit increase, becomes paramount. Nobody wants to put one program ahead of another, especially during campaign season. But the Democrats need a philosophy that it’s better to actually get something solid and lasting done, rather than mashing everything into a paste just to say that they have a comprehensive agenda.

I don’t have anything particular to add here, except to say that I think he’s probably right. You do need Day One priorities and strategies on how to build toward them. Perhaps Harris will take the lead in setting the specifics of that agenda. But of course there are lots of tricky parts, including filibuster-related issues in the Senate. Luckily, there are now so few conservadems that Dems are more in array than ever. So that would be a lot less of a problem than it was in 2009. But still, thinking through this would do everyone good.