Photo by Samuel Regan-Asante

The current buzzword is affordability. “‘Affordability’ mantra helps Democrats turn tide” the New York Times headlined. “Democrats used ‘affordability’ to harness worries about the cost of living and sweep to victory in this November’s [2025] election. And once that happened, references to ‘affordability’ as a stand-alone term skyrocketed,” Lisa Lerer and Jonah Smith wrote on December 20, 2025. Beyond the 2026 midterms, what about long-term planning? If Democrats dominate the 2026 midterms, are they ready to present a sustainable alternative to MAGA besides the slogan affordability? After all, long-term planning is exactly what the Right constructed, and that’s exactly why we are where we are today.

The Right succeeded in building a durable political project over decades. It built an entire ecosystem through courts, think tanks, media, state legislatures, and donor networks. MAGA has deep roots from the John Birch Society (1958) to the Tea Party (2009), from the Heritage Foundation (1973) to the Federalist Society (1982). There was an agenda, there was a strategy, there were institutions deliberately created to advance a coherent ideology.

By contrast, the Left’s major programs have emerged as reactions to crises rather than building enduring strategies. Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal was a response to the Great Depression of the 1930s. The Port Huron Statement and the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) emerged in 1962 amid the turmoil of the Vietnam War and civil rights movement. (SDS’s last national convention was in 1969.) Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society (1964) followed in the........

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