To win in 2028, progressives need a New Consensus — and a Mission for America

MAGA II will self-destruct and give progressives a chance at power in 2028. The Mission for America is a key to seizing that opportunity.

A brand new Right has conquered all. This isn’t 2016. Resistance feels not only futile but impossible to imagine. It’s not that Trump won with a huge majority. It’s that he won by swinging the voters that Democrats, progressives, and leftist believe they exist to protect: women, Blacks, Latinos, and immigrants.

And there’s so much damn momentum. Business leaders and an assortment of not-so-woke progressives who scoffed at Trump in 2016 are enthusiastically jumping on the bandwagon. “The entire country 🇺🇸 feels like it’s being powered back up. Do you feel it?” Tweeted Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, with a retweet by Elon Musk to his 200 million followers. Both men supported Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020.

This new right is like no other that’s gotten anywhere near power in American history. It’s reckless, mischievous, shameless, kleptocratic, and vengeful. On January 20th, we will be ruled by a cast of random, unrelated, and unqualified political figures: Elon, Vivek, Kristi, Pete, RFK, Tulsi and thousands of others whose names you’ll never hear — assembled by the MOST random and the GREATEST of all random political figures of all time, Donald Trump.

Unless they go full Handmaid’s Tale and truly end democracy — which they could do if Trump learned how to focus — they’ll probably be out of power soon. This new right is first of all doomed for the reasons the right in power is always doomed: In the end, they will prioritize tax cuts and quick cheats to raise profits, and therefore will not enact programs that actually make life better for voters. They will probably not even deliver on policies with shock and entertainment value, like mass deportations, because they would hurt business.

On top of that, this new reckless right is doomed for several additional reasons: Their leader is erratic, paranoid, and has the attention span of a gerbil; the clowns in his clown car are going to fight each other like crazy — due to personality conflicts and real conflicts of financial and political interest; they’re probably going to crash the economy — which is due for a crash anyways; and they look pretty determined to crash it in a whole lot of different ways.

But here’s the most powerful reason that they’ll almost certainly lose power in 2028: They believe that “going too far” is what got them to the White House and so, in power, they’re going to go even farther. This new reckless right thinks that they won thanks to their recklessness — by pushing boundaries way farther than anyone imagined they could go. And they’re right — at least in the context of a race against a Democratic Party that stood proudly and doggedly for continued gradual decline. Trump made a game of it in the last month of the election, acting more and more wildly, and less and less presidentially with each passing day right up until the election. Elon lied and broke laws. RFK declared he’d end vaccinations as head of HHS. Trump leaned into it all.

Reckless authoritarians only come to power thanks to large doses of luck. But they don’t believe in luck. They always attribute their success to the strength of their instincts and the allure of their personalities. That’s why they will always push their luck until it runs out. They can’t help it. Behaving more and more wildly and irresponsibly is the only thing they know how to do. Their small but loud fan base and the right wing media machine eggs them on. And when they look back they see it was only recklessness that got them to where they are today.

Maybe they do crash the economy. Or maybe Trump’s tariffs, trade wars, ballooning deficit, and massive tax cuts all drive up inflation. As his base starts abandoning him like at the end of his marathon rallies, then Trump and his cabinet of crazies will try to think up even more reckless and shocking twists to stay in power. It won’t work.

This will give Democrats and progressives their opportunity in 2028. They could blow it. If they pitch the American people on nothing but “hope and change” (fool me once), or “back to normal” (had enough of that), or “save democracy” (but why?) then JD Vance will bring MAGA into its third term and maybe reform and stabilize it.

We need at least one able progressive candidate who will have a pitch that includes the ingredients of MAGA that the vast majority of Americans want: A promise to really turn America around, to reverse decline for working people, to deliver real generational progress again. That was implicit in the MAGA promise. Some voted for that promise plus mass deportation and misogyny. Others liked the promise but voted against it because of the hate that came attached.

A progressive running for president in 2028 in the wake of a collapsing MAGA movement will win if they can articulate a plan to truly make life better for people by building up America’s means of making a living. That’s what we’re working on at New Consensus with the Mission for America — a detailed and comprehensive plan to deliver prosperity for all through a great national mission to build a new economy. We’d love you to check it out and give us your thoughts.