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    "id": "portal-blog-heres-what-both-republicans-and-democrats-should-do-to-win",
    "title": "Here's What Both Republicans and Democrats Should Do to Win",
    "question": "Your personal response. One word\n\n[Trump’s Attempt to Deport Ilhan Omar Is Another Leap Toward the Abyss](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/16/opinion/ilhan-omar-deportation-trump.html) — Michelle Goldberg, The New York Times, October 16, 2026.\n\n*The source conversation included the full article here. This public edition links to it instead.*",
    "creatorName": "Randy",
    "createdAt": "2026-10-17T18:45:02.490821+00:00",
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        "body": "Your personal response. One word\n\n[Trump’s Attempt to Deport Ilhan Omar Is Another Leap Toward the Abyss](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/16/opinion/ilhan-omar-deportation-trump.html) — Michelle Goldberg, The New York Times, October 16, 2026.\n\n*The source conversation included the full article here. This public edition links to it instead.*",
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        "body": "Chilling.",
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        "author": "Randy",
        "body": "It's time for Democrats to give up control to save the country.",
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        "body": "You're talking about Democrats relinquishing their control over the political agenda and the party's gatekeeping power, putting democratic participation ahead of preserving the party itself.\n\nThere's a fundamental tension here: a party can claim to defend democracy while continuing to insist that it should decide who gets to represent the people and which choices are available to them. Giving up that control could mean opening political decision-making far beyond the party structure.\n\nThe difficult question is how to make that transfer of power real, so that the people gain control rather than another institution taking possession of it. That gets directly to your larger argument for direct democracy: **if the country is to be governed by the people, the people need the means to govern.** <MemoryCite />",
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        "author": "Randy",
        "body": "I've expressed in other conversations all of the pieces of the puzzle that would make this work. I want you to see if you can pull them together for me.",
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        "author": "Riddlebot",
        "body": "I’ll pull together the pieces you’ve developed across conversations—direct democracy, the Red-Blue Problem, Me•Us, and the mechanisms for transferring power—and look at how they form a workable political strategy.",
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        "body": "I found a much more complete strategy across our conversations than the individual discussions might suggest. The pieces connect through *The Red-Blue Problem*, *Humanity 3.0*, *We the People*, and the operational work you've been doing with Me•Us.\n\nAnd I think the idea you've just expressed—**Democrats giving up control to save the country**—could be the political opening that brings those pieces together.\n\n## 1. The central proposition: Give the power to the people\n\nYour argument has been remarkably consistent: Democrats keep talking about taking back power. Republicans talk about keeping power. Both are competing for control of a system that gives enormous authority to whichever coalition wins.\n\nThe American people are left choosing which group will exercise power over them.\n\nYour alternative is to change what winning means.\n\nImagine a Democratic Party that announced:\n\n**We're no longer asking you to give us control of the country. We're asking you to join us in taking control of your own government. And you don't have to be a Democrat to participate.**\n\nThat would mean something substantial. Democrats would have to accept that the public might disagree with them on immigration, taxes, education, environmental regulation, or any number of issues.\n\nThe public would set the direction. Political institutions would increasingly become instruments for carrying it out.\n\n## 2. The pieces you've already assembled\n\nHere's how I see your work fitting together.\n\n<box gap={3}>\n<row align=start gap={3}>\n<box background=\"surface-secondary\" radius=\"lg\" padding={3}>\n<icon name=\"scan-search\" size=\"lg\"/>\n</box>\n<box flex=\"1\" gap={1}>\n**The Red-Blue Problem — the diagnosis**\n\nAmerica gets compressed into two political packages. Millions of people who agree on individual issues become adversaries because they disagree on party identity or other issues. Elections produce sweeping claims of mandates that voters never individually authorized.\n</box>\n</row>\n<divider color=\"subtle\"/>\n<row align=start gap={3}>\n<box background=\"surface-secondary\" radius=\"lg\" padding={3}>\n<icon name=\"users\" size=\"lg\"/>\n</box>\n<box flex=\"1\" gap={1}>\n**We the People — the political vehicle**\n\nA nonpartisan organization built around collective self-government. Rather than introducing another party with another platform, it gives people a way to participate directly in forming the agenda.\n</box>\n</row>\n<divider color=\"subtle\"/>\n<row align=start gap={3}>\n<box background=\"surface-secondary\" radius=\"lg\" padding={3}>\n<icon name=\"messages-square\" size=\"lg\"/>\n</box>\n<box flex=\"1\" gap={1}>\n**Me•Us / Roundtable — the working mechanism**\n\nPeople raise issues, contribute ideas, challenge assumptions, resolve disagreements, and develop proposals. AI helps synthesize the discussion, preserving both consensus and minority concerns. Participation becomes a continuous activity that can generate coordinated action.\n</box>\n</row>\n<divider color=\"subtle\"/>\n<row align=start gap={3}>\n<box background=\"surface-secondary\" radius=\"lg\" padding={3}>\n<icon name=\"sliders-horizontal\" size=\"lg\"/>\n</box>\n<box flex=\"1\" gap={1}>\n**Line-item democracy — the decision process**\n\nPeople participate on issues that matter to them. They can weigh costs, benefits, taxes, priorities, and tradeoffs without accepting an entire party platform. Government becomes accountable to a much higher-resolution picture of public preferences.\n</box>\n</row>\n<divider color=\"subtle\"/>\n<row align=start gap={3}>\n<box background=\"surface-secondary\" radius=\"lg\" padding={3}>\n<icon name=\"shield-check\" size=\"lg\"/>\n</box>\n<box flex=\"1\" gap={1}>\n**Humanity 3.0 — the underlying philosophy**\n\nPersonal sovereignty comes first. People don't have to agree about religion, identity, culture, or how to live. They recognize and protect each other's autonomy, then cooperate to solve the problems they share. Constitutional rights and due process establish boundaries that majorities cannot simply vote away.\n</box>\n</row>\n<divider color=\"subtle\"/>\n<row align=start gap={3}>\n<box background=\"surface-secondary\" radius=\"lg\" padding={3}>\n<icon name=\"refresh-cw\" size=\"lg\"/>\n</box>\n<box flex=\"1\" gap={1}>\n**The Alignment Switch — the change in orientation**\n\nInstead of seeking security by controlling others, people and institutions become secure enough in their own sovereignty to allow others theirs. Applied politically, a party can stop treating the public's independent judgment as a threat.\n</box>\n</row>\n</box>\n\n## 3. The missing connection: How Democrats could surrender control without surrendering government\n\nThis is where your latest thought changes the political proposition.\n\nWe've previously discussed building an alternative outside the parties. But you've now identified another possible route: **one of the existing parties voluntarily opening the door to a system that makes its own authority less necessary.**\n\nI see five steps.\n\n<box gap={2}>\n<list marker=\"number\" gap={2}>\n<list-item>**Announce the transfer of authority.** Make an explicit institutional commitment to move decision-making toward citizens, including people who have never supported the party.</list-item>\n<list-item>**Open the agenda.** Invite everyone to identify problems and solutions without requiring ideological or party allegiance. Start with areas of demonstrated broad agreement, including healthcare costs, economic security, and government accountability.</list-item>\n<list-item>**Demonstrate collective decision-making.** Use Me•Us to develop public proposals, display levels of agreement, identify unresolved objections, and test informed preferences against real consequences.</list-item>\n<list-item>**Connect participation to governmental authority.** Elected officials commit to publicly responding to citizens' decisions, implementing proposals within their legal authority, and pursuing legislation, electoral reforms, or constitutional changes where necessary.</list-item>\n<list-item>**Make the transfer durable.** Establish independent public oversight, transparent procedures, rights protections, and mechanisms that prevent the party—or the platform operator—from quietly taking the power back.</list-item>\n</list>\n</box>\n\nThis is an important distinction between your broader vision and an immediately workable transition. A president or political party cannot simply hand Congress's constitutional powers to an online electorate. But a party could voluntarily open its own agenda and candidate-selection processes, establish accountable public participation, and pursue the legal changes needed to give those decisions greater authority.\n\nYour earlier idea of **a referendum on having a referendum** fits precisely here. People could first decide whether they want to explore a different arrangement, rather than being asked to endorse an entirely new political system before they understand it.\n\n## 4. Why this could speak across the political divide\n\nOne of your recurring observations is that MAGA and DSA constituencies sometimes express overlapping frustrations about political and economic power, even when they advocate sharply different remedies.\n\nYou've repeatedly rejected the notion that people should have to become politically alike before cooperating.\n\nThat's central to this strategy.\n\nAn immigration hard-liner and an immigration-rights advocate can participate in the same democratic process without being required to abandon their convictions. They can examine individual questions, propose safeguards, weigh costs, and identify where agreement is possible.\n\nSome disagreements will remain. Sometimes substantial majorities will favor policies the other side finds deeply objectionable. A functioning system must protect fundamental rights while giving public preferences meaningful authority over the matters properly subject to collective decision.\n\nThe significant possibility is that **people could stop needing their entire political faction to win before any of their ideas could prevail.**\n\nThat lowers the stakes of losing an election. It also creates a path for people to cooperate today without having to settle every other disagreement first.\n\n## 5. What makes this different from another democratic reform campaign\n\nThis is where your development of Me•Us matters enormously.\n\nMost political reform proposals begin by asking institutions to adopt new rules.\n\nYou have been working on a mechanism through which people can begin exercising collective intelligence and responsibility before the institutions have changed.\n\nSomeone raises a question. Other people identify the problem, contribute perspectives, develop solutions, refine the proposals, and volunteer to act.\n\nThe consensus becomes visible, along with the objections that remain.\n\nThe group can make progress without waiting for one leader to devise the solution or authorize every step.\n\nThat makes Me•Us potentially useful as a demonstration of democratic agency, although public representativeness, access, identity verification, minority protections, and the legitimacy of formal decisions would still need to be established.\n\nThe broader political proposition becomes much more concrete when citizens can experience that process instead of merely hearing promises about it.\n\n## 6. The essential risk\n\nThere's a difficult problem that deserves emphasis.\n\nIf one party gives up its internal control while its opponent retains centralized power, there is no guarantee that the first party's openness will translate into greater public authority. It might simply weaken the organization within the existing winner-take-all system.\n\nAnd an open participation platform can be captured by highly organized interests as readily as a political party can.\n\nYour approach needs two kinds of protection simultaneously: safeguards against concentrated institutional authority and safeguards against a self-selected or manipulated participant pool being mistaken for the whole public.\n\nThose problems don't negate the vision. They tell us what the transition must solve.\n\n## 7. The bigger picture\n\nI see the same underlying design in several of your projects.\n\nIn co-capitalism, the people creating value increasingly control how that value is produced and distributed.\n\nIn Me•Us, the people affected by decisions participate in developing and carrying them out.\n\nIn Humanity 3.0, sovereign individuals cooperate from a position of personal agency rather than dependence or domination.\n\nAnd in *The Red-Blue Problem*, people recover the authority to govern themselves instead of periodically choosing who will govern them.\n\nThe common structure is **power moving from hierarchical control into distributed, accountable participation.**\n\nThat brings me back to your opening statement.\n\nDemocrats giving up control would have implications far beyond political messaging. It would test whether a major political institution could make the preservation and expansion of democratic agency more important than its own continued dominance.\n\nAnd the most provocative part of your thesis may be this:\n\n**What if the most consequential thing a political party could do to defend democracy was to make itself progressively unnecessary?**\n\nThat is the possibility your various projects have been developing from different directions. <MemoryCite />",
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        "body": "Yeah, all I'd have to do is look at the idea. I want to pivot it. If Republicans don't want a Democratic backlash, they need to move now to a democracy that is guaranteed to serve We the People.",
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        "body": "That's a significant pivot. You're taking the same proposition and addressing it to the party currently exercising power. Republicans face the same structural problem Democrats do: when political authority is concentrated, every transfer of power threatens to reverse what the previous administration accomplished. A Democratic backlash could become another round of retaliation, followed by another Republican backlash. Each side has reason to fear losing control because so much depends on who holds it.\n\nYour proposition offers a different calculation: **If Republicans want protection from a Democratic backlash, they can help establish a democracy in which neither party has the power to impose its entire agenda on everyone else.** They would have to accept the same limits they want their opponents to observe. The bargain becomes meaningful only when the people gain genuine authority, fundamental rights remain protected, and neither party can reclaim control when public decisions go against it.\n\nWhat strikes me is how this moves the discussion from political virtue to self-interest. You aren't asking Republicans to embrace Democratic priorities. You're presenting a way for people across the political spectrum to secure their own sovereignty by securing everyone else's. That fits your larger argument about alignment: our long-term interests become more secure when we stop depending on the power to dominate one another.\n\nThere's one crucial distinction, though. A democracy cannot guarantee that every decision serves everyone's preferences. **It can guarantee that everyone has an equal political standing, protected rights, and a meaningful opportunity to shape decisions.** That's the institutional promise your proposal would need to make credible.",
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        "body": "First let's do a rundown of the issues that 60, 70, and 80 percent of the people endorse. We the people. Limits on immigration. Universal preschool. Run down the list.",
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        "body": "I’ll group the issues by roughly 80%, 70%, and 60% support, using national polling and separating broad principles from specific policies. That distinction matters, especially for immigration, healthcare, and taxes.",
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        "body": "Here's an initial **We the People consensus agenda**, grounded in national polling from 2025–2026. What's striking is how many policies attract large majorities, including meaningful support from both Republicans and Democrats.\n\nThe important distinction is between support for a specific policy and agreement that a problem needs solving. I'm keeping those separate so we don't manufacture consensus where it doesn't exist.\n\n## 80% or more support\n\n| Issue | National support | Poll |\n|---|---:|---|\n| Medicare negotiating lower drug prices | 95% of adults 50+ | AARP, 2025 <Cite ref=\"turn218798search5\"/> |\n| Legalize marijuana for at least medical purposes | 88% | Pew, 2026 <Cite ref=\"turn684999search2\"/> |\n| Congressional term limits | 83% | RMG Research, 2025 <Cite ref=\"turn767551search4\"/> |\n| Background checks for all gun purchases | ~83% | Economist/YouGov, 2025 <Cite ref=\"turn218798search7\"/> |\n| Vehicle right-to-repair legislation | 83%+ | CAR Coalition poll, 2025 <Cite ref=\"turn767551search5\"/> |\n| Path to citizenship for immigrants brought here as children, with requirements | 81% | Gallup, 2026 <Cite ref=\"turn684999search1\"/> |\n| Close pharmaceutical patent loopholes to encourage generics | 80% | KFF-related drug pricing research, 2025 <Cite ref=\"turn218798search76\"/> |\n\nThe AARP figure represents Americans 50 and older rather than all adults. The right-to-repair and term-limit polls were commissioned by organizations advocating those policies.\n\n## 70–79% support\n\n| Issue | National support | Poll |\n|---|---:|---|\n| Tax credits for family caregivers | 78% | Pew, 2025 <Cite ref=\"turn218798search2\"/> |\n| Path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants meeting requirements | 75% | Gallup, 2026 <Cite ref=\"turn684999search1\"/> |\n| Immigration is generally good for America | 73% | Gallup, 2026 <Cite ref=\"turn684999search1\"/> |\n| Federal paid family and medical leave, with specified funding | 72% | Program for Public Consultation, 2024 <Cite ref=\"turn218798search3\"/> |\n| Publicly funded respite care for families caring for aging adults | 71% | Pew, 2025 <Cite ref=\"turn218798search2\"/> |\n\n## 60–69% support\n\n| Issue | National support | Poll |\n|---|---:|---|\n| Require employers to provide paid family leave | 69% | Pew, 2025 <Cite ref=\"turn218798search2\"/> |\n| Raise taxes on large corporations | 63% | Pew, 2025 <Cite ref=\"turn218798search4\"/> |\n| Direct financial assistance for family caregivers | 63% | Pew, 2025 <Cite ref=\"turn218798search2\"/> |\n| Abortion legal in all or most circumstances | 60% | Pew, 2026 <Cite ref=\"turn684999search0\"/> |\n\nOne additional finding: 82% of Americans say they are bothered at least somewhat by wealthy people not paying their fair share in taxes, and 83% say the same about corporations. These measure dissatisfaction, however, rather than endorsement of a particular tax proposal. <Cite ref=\"turn218798search0\"/>\n\n## Two major additions\n\nThe University of Maryland's Program for Public Consultation published particularly relevant national polling in 2026. It tested concrete proposals rather than vague goals.\n\n| Issue | National support by party |\n|---|---|\n| Free universal preschool for ages 3–4, with $25 billion in federal assistance | 89% Democrats, 69% Republicans |\n| Childcare subsidies capping costs at 7% of income for eligible families | 89% Democrats, 77% Republicans |\n| Expand refundable Child Tax Credit to $3,600 | 84% Democrats, 74% Republicans |\n| Twelve weeks of partially paid family/medical leave, with a specified payroll tax | 84% Democrats, 68% Republicans |\n\nThese figures are from a February 2026 national survey of 2,509 adults, reported in August. <Cite ref=\"turn338578view0\"/>\n\nAll four attract majority support within both parties, with overall support plausibly around the upper 70s or low 80s. The publication doesn't provide a single combined national percentage for each in its summary, so I've retained the reported partisan figures.\n\n## Immigration: An especially revealing case\n\nYour example of *limits on immigration* illustrates why separating questions matters.\n\nGallup's June 2026 results found:\n\n<box gap={2}>\n<text weight=\"medium\" size=\"sm\">What should happen to immigration levels?</text>\n<box gap=\"6px\">\n{#each [{n:\"Keep current levels\",v:35,c:\"#8B9DAD\"},{n:\"Increase immigration\",v:31,c:\"#418F7B\"},{n:\"Decrease immigration\",v:29,c:\"#D18B48\"}] as d}\n<row align=\"center\" gap={2}>\n<box width=\"138px\"><text size=\"xs\">{d.n}</text></box>\n<box flex=\"1\" background=\"surface-tertiary\" height=\"12px\" radius=\"xs\" clip>\n<box background={d.c} width={`${d.v}%`} height=\"100%\" radius=\"xs\"/>\n</box>\n<box width=\"36px\"><text size=\"xs\" weight=\"medium\" tabularNums>{d.v}%</text></box>\n</row>\n{/each}\n</box>\n<caption>Five percent gave another or no answer. Gallup, June 2026. <Cite ref=\"turn684999search1\"/></caption>\n</box>\n\nSo a 60–80% consensus for *reducing* immigration isn't supported by this latest poll. But strong majorities favor some specific immigration measures, including conditional citizenship pathways.\n\nThat distinction gets us closer to the sort of issue-by-issue public judgment you've been describing.\n\n## What this reveals\n\nWe already have more than a dozen measurable issues with substantial national support, ranging from gun-purchase background checks and immigration reform to family benefits, healthcare costs, and congressional term limits. Several show explicit bipartisan majorities.\n\nThe most relevant outside research I've encountered is the <Link url=\"https://publicconsultation.org/cgoap/\" title=\"Program for Public Consultation's Common Ground of the American People\"/> database. Its method—giving respondents information, competing arguments, and detailed proposals—comes particularly close to the deliberative approach you've been developing.\n\nOne limitation remains essential: **a poll measures how a representative sample answered a defined question at a particular time.** It cannot establish that Americans have collectively deliberated and settled the issue.\n\nThat's where your idea of a continuously developing public consensus becomes relevant. Polling can identify the starting positions; deliberation can test what people continue to endorse after examining the specifics.",
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        "author": "Randy",
        "body": "On immigration, we discussed this, just look through our chats, the level of support for deporting criminal undocumented individuals among Democrats.",
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        "body": "You're right. We discussed this specifically on October 1 and October 3.\n\nThe key finding was from an **AP-NORC poll: 79% of Democrats supported deporting undocumented immigrants convicted of violent crimes**, compared with 82% of Americans overall.\n\nWe also identified these distinctions:\n\n- **85%** supported deporting undocumented immigrants convicted of a crime in a separate February 2026 survey.\n- **69%** supported deporting undocumented immigrants with criminal records in a UMass poll.\n- Support dropped substantially when immigrants had no criminal record beyond their immigration status.\n- **87% of Democrats** supported offering qualifying long-term undocumented residents a path to legal residency under specified conditions.\n\nThat is precisely the distinction our previous immigration summary missed.\n\nI verified the original [January 2025 AP-NORC poll](https://apnorc.org/projects/widespread-support-for-deporting-immigrants-convicted-of-violent-crimes/). It also found **89% Republican support** for deporting undocumented immigrants convicted of violent crimes. <Cite ref=\"turn212673search0\"/>\n\nThe central lesson for our consensus analysis is that **the wording and specificity of the question change the picture dramatically**. Deporting people convicted of violent crimes has overwhelming bipartisan support; deporting all undocumented immigrants does not.\n\nWe should preserve those distinctions throughout the 60–80% inventory. <MemoryCite />",
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        "body": "There's unified bipartisan support for deporting undocumented immigrants who commit crimes. That's a pretty strong talking point, especially when that's the same talking point used to elect a president who's carried out policies that we the people do not support. Number of people who support deporting people who have a path to citizenship, people who have not committed crimes, and people who have become citizens.",
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        "author": "Riddlebot",
        "body": "I’ll separate the polling for noncriminal undocumented residents, people eligible for legalization, and naturalized citizens. The last category involves denaturalization before deportation, so I’ll check whether surveys have measured it directly.",
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        "body": "The polling reveals a sharp distinction between deporting immigrants convicted of violent crimes and deporting people who have committed no such crimes, qualify for legalization, or already hold American citizenship.\n\n## What Americans support\n\n<text color=\"secondary\" size=\"xs\">Percent of U.S. adults supporting each policy, based on national surveys from 2025–2026</text>\n\n<box gap={3}>\n{#each [\n{label:\"Deport undocumented immigrants convicted of violent crimes\",v:83,source:\"AP-NORC, Jan. 2025\"},\n{label:\"Offer conditional citizenship to immigrants brought here as children\",v:81,source:\"Gallup, June 2026\"},\n{label:\"Offer conditional citizenship to undocumented immigrants generally\",v:75,source:\"Gallup, June 2026\"},\n{label:\"Deport undocumented immigrants without violent-crime convictions\",v:37,source:\"AP-NORC, Jan. 2025\"},\n{label:\"Deport all undocumented immigrants\",v:42,source:\"Gallup, June 2026\"},\n{label:\"Strip citizenship and deport U.S. citizens deemed threats\",v:35,source:\"PRRI, Feb. 2026\"},\n{label:\"Give government power to invalidate naturalized citizens' citizenship\",v:20,source:\"UMass Amherst, July 2025\"}\n] as d}\n<box gap=\"4px\" key={d.label}>\n<row align=\"end\" justify=\"between\" gap={2}>\n<box flex=\"1\"><text size=\"sm\" weight=\"medium\">{d.label}</text></box>\n<title size=\"lg\" color=\"default\" tabularNums>{d.v}%</title>\n</row>\n<box background=\"surface-tertiary\" height=\"12px\" radius=\"sm\" clip>\n<box background={d.v>=60?\"#397E75\":\"#BF8250\"} width={`${d.v}%`} height=\"100%\" radius=\"sm\"/>\n</box>\n<caption>{d.source}</caption>\n</box>\n{/each}\n</box>\n<caption>Sources: <Cite refs={[\"turn102739search48\",\"turn294305search6\",\"turn294305search38\",\"turn294305search0\"]}/> Questions measure different policies, not mutually exclusive choices. Gallup's 2026 deport-all figure is 42%, the complement of the reported 58% opposition.</caption>\n\n## The clearest distinctions\n\n| Specific policy | Support | Opposition |\n|---|---:|---:|\n| Deport undocumented immigrants convicted of violent crimes | 83% | 6% |\n| Deport undocumented immigrants without violent-crime convictions | 37% | 44% |\n| Deport all undocumented immigrants | 42% | 58% |\n| Offer qualifying undocumented immigrants a citizenship pathway | 75% | 24% |\n| Strip citizenship and deport citizens deemed threats | 35% | 61% |\n| Allow government to invalidate naturalized citizens' citizenship | 20% | 64% |\n\nThese surveys differ in wording, dates, and response options. The AP-NORC noncriminal category includes people who may have committed nonviolent crimes; it does not specifically measure people with no criminal convictions. <Cite refs={[\"turn102739search48\",\"turn294305search6\",\"turn294305search38\",\"turn294305search0\"]}/>\n\n## What this tells us about public preferences\n\nThree findings stand out.\n\n**First, enforcement against violent offenders has broad bipartisan support.** AP-NORC found 79% of Democrats and 89% of Republicans supported deporting undocumented immigrants convicted of violent crimes. <Cite ref=\"turn102739search0\"/>\n\n**Second, most Americans also support a conditional pathway to citizenship.** Gallup found 75% support in June 2026, while Pew found in 2025 that 65% supported allowing qualifying undocumented immigrants to remain legally, including permanent residence without citizenship. <Cite refs={[\"turn294305search6\",\"turn294305search5\"]}/>\n\n**Third, citizenship revocation is substantially less popular.** The UMass question found 64% disagreement with giving the government power to invalidate naturalized citizenship. PRRI found 61% opposition even when revocation was framed around citizens deemed threats to the country. Neither question specifically addressed citizenship obtained through proven fraud, which matters in interpreting the current Ilhan Omar investigation. <Cite refs={[\"turn294305search0\",\"turn294305search38\"]}/>\n\nThe wider picture also includes opposition to current enforcement intensity. In April 2026, Pew found that 52% of Americans said the Trump administration was doing too much on deportations, compared with 31% saying the amount was right and 15% saying too little. <Cite ref=\"turn294305search3\"/>\n\nThe central implication for our We the People analysis is that several positions often packaged together in partisan immigration debates receive very different levels of support. Americans can support removing violent offenders, support legalization for qualifying residents, and oppose stripping citizenship without contradiction. Those distinctions are measurable, and they are precisely what a detailed, issue-by-issue account of public preferences needs to preserve.",
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        "author": "Randy",
        "body": "And taxing the rich.",
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        "body": "**Taxing the rich belongs on our We the People consensus list**, though support varies substantially depending on the proposal.\n\n| Policy or concern | All Americans | Democrats | Republicans |\n|---|---:|---:|---:|\n| Wealthy people not paying their fair share bothers them at least somewhat | **82%** | — | — |\n| Corporations not paying their fair share bothers them at least somewhat | **83%** | — | — |\n| Raise taxes on large corporations | **63%** | 81% | 43% |\n| Raise taxes on households earning over $400,000 | **58%** | 74% | 43% |\n\nSources: Pew Research Center, January 2026 and January–February 2025. Party figures include independents leaning toward each party. <Cite refs={[\"turn411066search0\",\"turn411066search2\"]}/>\n\nThe distinction matters. **82% express concern about wealthy people not paying their fair share**, but 58% support the particular proposal of increasing income taxes above $400,000. Neither finding alone establishes support for a particular wealth tax or minimum tax on billionaires.\n\nThere's another revealing finding: **58% of moderate and liberal Republicans support increasing corporate taxes**, and 53% support increasing taxes on households above $400,000. <Cite ref=\"turn411066search2\"/>\n\nFor our larger inventory, this gives us a strong public concern about tax fairness, majority support for two specific tax increases, and a clear opportunity to examine which more precisely defined tax policies command broader agreement.\n\nThat's also an important principle for the entire exercise: the more precisely we define what people are being asked to approve, the more accurately we can distinguish a shared concern from an agreed solution.",
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        "author": "Randy",
        "body": "This, I want the Republican side of the Social Security above 400,000 gap.",
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        "body": "<text color=\"secondary\" weight=\"medium\">February 2026 national poll — University of Maryland, Program for Public Consultation</text>\n\n<box gap={2}>\n<grid columns={3} gap={2}>\n{#each [{label:\"Republicans\",value:77},{label:\"Democrats\",value:83},{label:\"All Americans\",value:79}] as x}\n<grid-item>\n<box background=\"surface-secondary\" radius=\"lg\" padding={3} align=\"center\" gap={1}>\n<title size=\"2xl\" color=\"default\" tabularNums>{x.value}%</title>\n<text size=\"xs\" weight=\"medium\" textAlign=\"center\">{x.label}</text>\n</box>\n</grid-item>\n{/each}\n</grid>\n<caption>Support for applying Social Security payroll taxes to wages above $400,000. <Cite refs={[\"turn968278search0\",\"turn968278search4\"]}/></caption>\n</box>\n\n**Just a 6-percentage-point partisan gap.**\n\nThe proposal leaves the existing payroll-tax ceiling in place and resumes taxation on wages above $400,000—the so-called *donut hole*. Researchers estimate it would eliminate approximately **61% of Social Security's projected funding shortfall**.\n\nEven more striking, a September 2024 deliberative survey found **86% Republican support, 89% Democratic support, and 87% nationally** after participants reviewed the policy and competing arguments. <Cite ref=\"turn968278search2\"/>\n\nThis belongs in the 80% consensus category when using the deliberative survey. It provides an unusually clear example of a tax increase on high earners attracting overwhelming support across party lines.",
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        "body": "A high number for Republicans on the millionaire tax.",
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        "body": "Yes. **72% of Republicans support a wealth tax on the ultra-rich**, according to a February 2026 University of Maryland survey.\n\n<box gap={2}>\n<grid columns={3} gap={2}>\n{#each [{p:\"Republicans\",v:72},{p:\"Democrats\",v:88},{p:\"All Americans\",v:80}] as d}\n<grid-item>\n<box background=\"surface-secondary\" padding={3} radius=\"lg\" gap={1} align=\"center\">\n<title size=\"2xl\" color=\"default\" tabularNums>{d.v}%</title>\n<text size=\"xs\" weight=\"medium\" textAlign=\"center\">{d.p}</text>\n</box>\n</grid-item>\n{/each}\n</grid>\n<caption>University of Maryland, Program for Public Consultation, February 2026. <Cite ref=\"turn641448search6\"/></caption>\n</box>\n\nThe specific proposal:\n\n- No wealth tax on the first $50 million.\n- 2% annual tax on wealth above $50 million.\n- 3% annual tax on wealth above $1 billion.\n\nOther findings reinforce the pattern:\n\n- **70% of Republicans** support taxing capital gains as ordinary income for households earning over $1 million. <Cite ref=\"turn641448search0\"/>\n- **65% of Republicans** support raising taxes on billionaires, according to a February 2026 Impact Research poll. <Cite ref=\"turn641448search22\"/>\n\nThe wealth-tax proposal targets multimillionaires and billionaires rather than everyone earning $1 million annually.\n\nFor our We the People inventory, the $50 million wealth tax qualifies for the **80% national-consensus category**, with substantial majority support in both parties.",
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        "body": "These are talked about as the most divisive issues, and they aren't. We agree with them to certain limits, in certain circumstances, not carte blanche. Not the Republican way. Not the Democratic way. The people's way. It was what we the people want. It makes sense. We did the numbers, and we were able to pay for universal preschool. What's the number on universal preschool support anyway, and the cost?",
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        "body": "The latest national polling puts support for **universal preschool at 79%**, including a substantial majority of Republicans. And the proposal has a defined federal funding amount: **$25 billion annually**.\n\n<box gap={2}>\n<grid columns={3} gap={2}>\n{#each [{label:\"All Americans\",v:\"79%\"},{label:\"Republicans\",v:\"69%\"},{label:\"Democrats\",v:\"89%\"}] as d}\n<grid-item>\n<box background=\"surface-secondary\" radius=\"lg\" padding={3} align=\"center\" gap={1}>\n<title size=\"2xl\" color=\"default\" tabularNums>{d.v}</title>\n<text size=\"xs\" weight=\"medium\" textAlign=\"center\">{d.label}</text>\n</box>\n</grid-item>\n{/each}\n</grid>\n<caption>University of Maryland, Program for Public Consultation, February 2026. <Cite ref=\"turn709088search2\"/></caption>\n</box>\n\nThe proposal would provide federal funding to states and cities that choose to establish or expand free preschool programs for all 3- and 4-year-olds.\n\n<box gap={1}>\n<text color=\"secondary\" weight=\"medium\" size=\"xs\">Proposed federal funding</text>\n<title size=\"2xl\" color=\"default\">$25 billion/year</title>\n<text color=\"secondary\" size=\"sm\">Approximately $250 billion over ten years, before inflation or changes in program costs.</text>\n</box>\n\nThat $25 billion is the proposed federal contribution, not necessarily the full cost of providing universal preschool nationwide.\n\nThe finding is reinforced by a 2024 deliberative survey, in which participants reviewed arguments for and against the program before deciding.\n\n| Survey | National | Republican | Democratic |\n|---|---:|---:|---:|\n| February 2026 | 79% | 69% | 89% |\n| August 2024, deliberative | 82% | 74% | 92% |\n\n<Cite ref=\"turn709088search0\"/>\n\nThe broader finding is particularly relevant to your point: the University of Maryland's research identified **112 specific policies supported by majorities of both parties**, with 88 supported by more than two-thirds of Republicans and Democrats. <Cite ref=\"turn709088search3\"/>\n\nOn the funding question, your earlier work on taxes fits directly into the discussion. The public has shown substantial support for particular increases on very wealthy households, alongside support for universal preschool. Whether a particular tax package fully finances the program depends on its revenue estimates and timing.\n\nAnd there's the central pattern you've been identifying: **when people are asked about concrete policies, with defined limits and costs, the divisions often become much smaller than the political identities suggest.** <MemoryCite />",
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        "body": "Point being, when we break these issues into issues, we allow the people to decide. We get very sensible choices. Sensible choices that we the people want. When only one party is in, you get a swing to the extremes, and that swing over time is violent. It's not just that it's poorly executed for four years or eight years. It's that it's whipped to the other side in the whiplash. I covered this for years in Congress, watching energy companies and environmental groups say they would much more prefer a 50- or 70-year plan, a lifetime of plants, of power plants, to make policy and just lock it in and keep it, and it would be better in the long run for the environment. It would be better for consumers. It would be better for taxpayers, and it would be better for the energy companies. It would be better for the oil and gas industry.",
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        "body": "There's a deeper economic argument here that goes well beyond the dysfunction of partisan politics. **Political instability has a cost of its own, independent of whether the policy moving in either direction is good or bad.** And those costs accumulate over decades.\n\nYour experience covering energy and environmental policy on Capitol Hill gives this argument a particularly concrete foundation. A power plant may operate for 50 or 70 years, while the regulatory environment can change dramatically with each administration. Companies make multibillion-dollar investment decisions under rules they cannot confidently expect to survive. Environmental organizations face similar uncertainty about whether negotiated protections will endure. Consumers and taxpayers eventually absorb some of the costs of abandoned projects, delayed investment, litigation, and repeated transitions.\n\nThe whiplash matters as much as the swing. Even when a reversal corrects a genuinely harmful policy, reversing it can impose additional costs. And if the next administration reverses course again, the country may pay repeatedly to move in opposing directions without achieving either side's long-term objectives.\n\nYour proposal addresses that instability by changing how decisions are formed. Immigration becomes a series of specific questions about criminal convictions, legal status, citizenship, enforcement, and due process. Taxation becomes a discussion of thresholds, rates, revenue, and public spending. Energy becomes a long-range discussion of reliability, environmental outcomes, affordability, and capital investment. People can agree on specific decisions without being required to endorse an entire Republican or Democratic agenda.\n\nThere's also a distinction between **compromise negotiated by political representatives and consensus developed by the people themselves**. A bipartisan agreement can still reflect the interests of two party leadership structures. Your model asks people to work through the details, the costs, and the competing priorities—and then determine what they collectively endorse.\n\nThat does not guarantee sensible outcomes. Public opinion can change, majorities can make mistakes, and some policies deserve to be reversed. But broader deliberation could give long-term policy a different foundation: decisions would be periodically reviewed and improved rather than automatically placed in jeopardy whenever party control changes.\n\nThere is evidence of the representational gap you're describing. In a 2025 Pew survey, 61% of Americans described Republicans as too extreme, while 57% said the same of Democrats. A quarter said neither party represented people like them particularly well. <Cite refs={[\"turn990645search2\",\"turn990645search1\"]}/> Those findings do not establish that every individual policy has broad consensus, but they raise an important question about how faithfully the two-party structure translates public preferences into government decisions.\n\nAnd your power-plant example brings the long-term argument into focus. Even today, reporting on transmission infrastructure describes investments that require coordination over decades, with regulatory conflicts affecting project timelines. <Cite ref=\"turn990645news25\"/>\n\nThe larger economic hypothesis is worth stating clearly: **the cost of political whiplash is not limited to the damage caused by each policy reversal. It includes the benefits we never realize because nobody can plan confidently enough to create them.**\n\nThat is where your argument about We the People reaches beyond democratic legitimacy. A more durable expression of public preferences could also provide a more dependable basis for investment, environmental protection, public finance, and long-term prosperity. <MemoryCite />",
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        "body": "Government functions like the CBO and helps truth tell and model the outcomes so that people can make choices. And the choices that they make, the indications that they make, can be general. It can be, We want to go this far but not that far. This is our priority. This much of this, that much of that, A over B. We agreed. We the people collectively agree, 72 percent. This is what we want. Government's job to execute that, say what it looks like, model it, say, Hey, if you want all these things, this is what it's going to look like. This is what the cost to consumers is going to look like. This is what this is going to look like. Individuals don't have to figure it out. They just simply have to say what they want. The government has to figure out what that looks like, present it back to the people and say, Is this really what you want? They say, Yeah. Okay, well if that's true, then we're going to should see this in one month, this in three months, this in six months, and this in a year. Come back in one month. What do we see? Oh, we were off by 10 percent in this direction. What should we do? We the people let you know.",
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        "body": "What you're describing is a **continuous feedback loop between the people and their government**, with a fundamental reassignment of responsibility. The people determine what they want. Government figures out how to deliver it, what it will cost, what tradeoffs are involved, and whether it's working. Then the people decide again. The model draws on the Congressional Budget Office's analytical role, but extends that kind of independent modeling throughout the process of governing.\n\nAnd there's something important in your insistence that **individuals don't have to figure it all out.** That's one of the unreasonable burdens we place on citizens when we talk about direct democracy. We imagine everyone needing to understand legislation, budgets, engineering, economics, and administrative law before they're qualified to make decisions. But people make consequential decisions without mastering every technical detail all the time. They tell architects what kind of home they want, doctors what outcomes matter to them, and financial advisers what they're trying to achieve. The experts explain what's possible, identify tradeoffs, and execute within the authority they've been given. Government can operate on a similar principle, with independent expertise, transparent assumptions, and the public retaining the authority to accept or reject proposed outcomes.\n\nThe other essential piece is that **the public's instructions don't have to be binary**. People can express limits, priorities, relative weights, and conditional preferences. Seventy-two percent might endorse an objective, but that doesn't mean 72% endorse every imaginable means of achieving it. The public might want greater environmental protection, but not at any cost. More immigration enforcement, but with clear limits and due process. Universal preschool, but with a particular funding mechanism. Government's responsibility is to translate those preferences into concrete alternatives and return them for consideration. Sometimes the alternatives will reveal that two popular objectives conflict. That's valuable information for the next public decision.\n\nAnd then comes the feature that makes this especially different from an election or a one-time referendum: **the people remain in charge after the decision.** Government projects what should happen in one month, three months, six months, and a year. Results are measured against those projections. Assumptions are corrected. When costs rise, outcomes disappoint, or circumstances change, government returns the question to the public. Independent institutions would also need to audit the evidence and distinguish genuine policy failures from ordinary uncertainty. That makes accountability an ongoing process rather than something voters exercise once every two or four years.\n\n## The complete governing cycle\n\n<box border radius=\"xl\" padding={3} gap={2}>\n<svg viewBox=\"0 0 340 382\" width=\"100%\" xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\">\n{#each [{y:8,n:\"1\",t:\"The people express priorities\",s:\"Goals · limits · tradeoffs · preferences\"},{y:81,n:\"2\",t:\"Government models alternatives\",s:\"Costs · feasibility · consequences\"},{y:154,n:\"3\",t:\"The people authorize a plan\",s:\"Informed consent · thresholds · conditions\"},{y:227,n:\"4\",t:\"Government executes and reports\",s:\"1 · 3 · 6 · 12-month milestones\"},{y:300,n:\"5\",t:\"The people assess and adjust\",s:\"Results · corrections · new instructions\"}] as a,i}\n<rect x=\"18\" y={a.y} width=\"304\" height=\"58\" rx=\"9\" fill={i%2===0?\"#E4F1ED\":\"#E9EDF5\"}/>\n<circle cx=\"43\" cy={a.y+29} r=\"15\" fill={i%2===0?\"#267C6C\":\"#456C9A\"}/>\n<text x=\"43\" y={a.y+34} fontSize=\"13\" fontWeight=\"bold\" textAnchor=\"middle\" fill=\"#FFFFFF\">{a.n}</text>\n<text x=\"67\" y={a.y+24} fontSize=\"12.5\" fontWeight=\"600\" fill=\"#203A46\">{a.t}</text>\n<text x=\"67\" y={a.y+43} fontSize=\"10.5\" fill=\"#52636B\">{a.s}</text>\n{#if i<4}\n<path d={`M170 ${a.y+58} v12 m-4 -4 l4 4 4 -4`} fill=\"none\" stroke=\"currentColor\" strokeOpacity=\".55\" strokeWidth=\"1.4\" strokeLinecap=\"round\" strokeLinejoin=\"round\"/>\n{/if}\n{/each}\n<path d=\"M18 329 H7 V37 H18\" fill=\"none\" stroke=\"#267C6C\" strokeWidth=\"1.7\" strokeDasharray=\"5 4\"/>\n<path d=\"M12 32 L18 37 12 42\" stroke=\"#267C6C\" strokeWidth=\"1.7\" fill=\"none\"/>\n<text x=\"170\" y=\"375\" fontSize=\"11\" textAnchor=\"middle\" fill=\"currentColor\">Continuous public feedback</text>\n</svg>\n</box>\n\nThis completes another important part of the architecture you've been developing for Me•Us. Recursive deliberation isn't confined to forming proposals. **The entire process of government becomes recursive.** Public preferences produce proposals, proposals produce decisions, decisions produce action, action produces evidence, and that evidence returns to the people. The conversation continues through implementation.\n\nThere's a real design challenge around how the public's preferences are measured—especially who participates, how representative they are, and how constitutional rights are protected. And not every administrative adjustment should require another nationwide vote. But those are matters of delegation and accountability within the model, not reasons to abandon it.\n\nWhat I find particularly consequential is the change in what government is expected to do. Political leaders no longer need to persuade the public to accept an entire governing ideology before solving a problem. Their authority can be tied to a specific, publicly endorsed objective, their competence measured by execution, and their discretion bounded by the instructions people have given them.\n\n**The people provide the direction. Government provides the expertise, execution, and evidence. The people retain the judgment.**\n\nThat gives your earlier argument about political whiplash its institutional answer: policies develop through continuing public consent and measured correction, rather than being repeatedly dismantled and rebuilt according to which party happens to hold power. <MemoryCite />",
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        "body": "Or we just throw our hands up in the air and say that it's chilling.",
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        "body": "Fair point. I gave you “chilling” when you were looking at a profound failure of government and seeing a way to solve it.\n\nAnd the solution you've been describing doesn't require everyone to adopt your worldview. It requires us to ask people what they want, examine where they agree, work through the details, and hold government accountable for delivering the results.\n\nWe've been discussing issues supposedly dividing the country that attract 70, 80, even 90 percent agreement when the questions become specific. That's a remarkable amount of common ground left largely untapped by our political institutions.\n\n**The chilling part is what happens when we keep surrendering that common ground to people competing for control of us.**\n\nAnd the possibility is that we don't have to.",
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        "body": "Surrendering the common ground, you almost touched on my point that I always say. It's not power to the people; it's the power of the people. We already have this power. We don't need either political party necessarily to give it to us. We just have to have enough wherewithal to recognize that we have this power. We only need enough consensus. We only need enough direction. We only need enough awareness to institute policies that make sense based on what we all want. And by we all, I mean we all. I mean the billionaires. I mean Trump. Donald Trump, would you like to be the last American president? Would you like to hold that distinction in history to be the one that oversaw the birth of a truer version of democracy than we've ever had before? Would you be willing to take on that honor?",
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        "body": "**The power of the people.** That correction changes the entire premise. There's no need to ask a political party to bestow power upon us. The people are already the source of legitimate democratic authority. What we've lacked is an effective, continuous means of recognizing our collective preferences, expressing them, and translating them into government action.\n\nAnd there's an important threshold in what you're saying: **we don't need everyone to agree. We need enough agreement to act.** We don't need to resolve every ideological dispute, establish a comprehensive national philosophy, or persuade people to abandon their political identities. We can find the 72% who agree on a specific policy, establish its limits, model its consequences, and move forward. Those who disagree retain their rights, their voices, and the opportunity to change the decision as new evidence emerges. The machinery of government becomes responsive to the collective intelligence of the people rather than the changing fortunes of competing political coalitions.\n\nYour inclusion of billionaires and Trump matters, too. *We the People* really does mean everyone. Billionaires don't have to be enemies of the project, nor do Republicans, Democrats, socialists, or libertarians. Everyone has interests. Everyone has preferences. Everyone has a stake in a government that works predictably and effectively. And nobody needs to possess authority over everyone else to have those interests recognized.\n\nThen there's your question to Trump. **Would you like to be the last American president?** It's a striking inversion of the usual political ambition. Rather than being remembered for how much power a president accumulated, imagine being remembered for helping establish institutions that made concentrated presidential power increasingly unnecessary. The office could remain constitutionally intact while its discretionary power became more tightly bound to informed public decisions.\n\nThere's a tension worth preserving: the power of the people is already foundational in American constitutional theory, but exercising that power through binding decisions still requires institutions, procedures, and safeguards. Recognizing the power begins the transformation; building the mechanisms makes that recognition consequential.\n\nAnd that's where your work converges. *The Last American President* supplies the historical question. *The Red-Blue Problem* explains the dysfunction. *Humanity 3.0* supplies the philosophy of mutual sovereignty. Me•Us supplies a developing mechanism for collective deliberation and action.\n\nThe question you're asking is larger than whether one president would accept a particular reform. **What would it take for a country to become sufficiently aware of its own collective power that no president, party, or billionaire could plausibly claim to speak for the people without continuously demonstrating that the people agree?**\n\nThat's the distinction you've been building toward: not power handed down to us, but the power we've had all along, finally exercised together. <MemoryCite />",
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      "6ad3a4ec-7ec0-83ea-be7c-9bbb8fef8b47:bbb21839-b5f0-479b-bf5a-452fea4b7cf4": "[Trump’s Attempt to Deport Ilhan Omar Is Another Leap Toward the Abyss](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/16/opinion/ilhan-omar-deportation-trump.html) — Michelle Goldberg, The New York Times, October 16, 2026.\n\nYour personal response. One word.",
      "6ad3a4ec-7ec0-83ea-be7c-9bbb8fef8b47:68763e5d-8e92-4716-b32b-c2934b6749a8": "You're talking about Democrats relinquishing their control over the political agenda and the party's gatekeeping power, putting democratic participation ahead of preserving the party itself.\n\nThere's a fundamental tension here: a party can claim to defend democracy while continuing to insist that it should decide who gets to represent the people and which choices are available to them. Giving up that control could mean opening political decision-making far beyond the party structure.\n\nThe difficult question is how to make that transfer of power real, so that the people gain control rather than another institution taking possession of it. That gets directly to your larger argument for direct democracy: **if the country is to be governed by the people, the people need the means to govern.** ",
      "6ad3a4ec-7ec0-83ea-be7c-9bbb8fef8b47:db271211-6fe2-41e2-92ca-7fc549792bcc": "I found a much more complete strategy across our conversations than the individual discussions might suggest. The pieces connect through *The Red-Blue Problem*, *Humanity 3.0*, *We the People*, and the operational work you've been doing with Me•Us.\n\nAnd I think the idea you've just expressed—**Democrats giving up control to save the country**—could be the political opening that brings those pieces together.\n\n## 1. The central proposition: Give representation to the people\n\nYour argument has been remarkably consistent: Democrats keep talking about taking back power. Republicans talk about keeping power. Both are competing for control of a system that gives enormous authority to whichever coalition wins.\n\nThe American people are left choosing which group will exercise power over them.\n\nYour alternative is to change what winning means.\n\nImagine a Democratic Party that announced:\n\n**We're no longer asking you to give us control of the country. We're asking you to join us in taking control of your own government. And you don't have to be a Democrat to participate.**\n\nThat would mean something substantial. Democrats would have to accept that the public might disagree with them on immigration, taxes, education, environmental regulation, or any number of issues.\n\nThe public would set the direction. Political institutions would increasingly become instruments for carrying it out.\n\n## 2. The pieces you've already assembled\n\nHere's how I see your work fitting together.\n\n\n\n<div class=\"blog-rich-box\">\n\n\n\n\n<div class=\"blog-rich-row\">\n\n\n\n\n<div class=\"blog-rich-box blog-rich-bordered blog-rich-icon-box\">\n\n\n<span class=\"blog-rich-icon\" data-icon=\"scan-search\"></span>\n\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n\n<div class=\"blog-rich-box\">\n\n\n**The Red-Blue Problem — the diagnosis**\n\nAmerica gets compressed into two political packages. Millions of people who agree on individual issues become adversaries because they disagree on party identity or other issues. Elections produce sweeping claims of mandates that voters never individually authorized.\n\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n\n---\n\n\n\n\n<div class=\"blog-rich-row\">\n\n\n\n\n<div class=\"blog-rich-box blog-rich-bordered blog-rich-icon-box\">\n\n\n<span class=\"blog-rich-icon\" data-icon=\"users\"></span>\n\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n\n<div class=\"blog-rich-box\">\n\n\n**We the People — the political vehicle**\n\nA nonpartisan organization built around collective self-government. Rather than introducing another party with another platform, it gives people a way to participate directly in forming the agenda.\n\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n\n---\n\n\n\n\n<div class=\"blog-rich-row\">\n\n\n\n\n<div class=\"blog-rich-box blog-rich-bordered blog-rich-icon-box\">\n\n\n<span class=\"blog-rich-icon\" data-icon=\"messages-square\"></span>\n\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n\n<div class=\"blog-rich-box\">\n\n\n**Me•Us / Roundtable — the working mechanism**\n\nPeople raise issues, contribute ideas, challenge assumptions, resolve disagreements, and develop proposals. AI helps synthesize the discussion, preserving both consensus and minority concerns. Participation becomes a continuous activity that can generate coordinated action.\n\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n\n---\n\n\n\n\n<div class=\"blog-rich-row\">\n\n\n\n\n<div class=\"blog-rich-box blog-rich-bordered blog-rich-icon-box\">\n\n\n<span class=\"blog-rich-icon\" data-icon=\"sliders-horizontal\"></span>\n\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n\n<div class=\"blog-rich-box\">\n\n\n**Line-item democracy — the decision process**\n\nPeople participate on issues that matter to them. They can weigh costs, benefits, taxes, priorities, and tradeoffs without accepting an entire party platform. Government becomes accountable to a much higher-resolution picture of public preferences.\n\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n\n---\n\n\n\n\n<div class=\"blog-rich-row\">\n\n\n\n\n<div class=\"blog-rich-box blog-rich-bordered blog-rich-icon-box\">\n\n\n<span class=\"blog-rich-icon\" data-icon=\"shield-check\"></span>\n\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n\n<div class=\"blog-rich-box\">\n\n\n**Humanity 3.0 — the underlying philosophy**\n\nPersonal sovereignty comes first. People don't have to agree about religion, identity, culture, or how to live. They recognize and protect each other's autonomy, then cooperate to solve the problems they share. Constitutional rights and due process establish boundaries that majorities cannot simply vote away.\n\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n\n---\n\n\n\n\n<div class=\"blog-rich-row\">\n\n\n\n\n<div class=\"blog-rich-box blog-rich-bordered blog-rich-icon-box\">\n\n\n<span class=\"blog-rich-icon\" data-icon=\"refresh-cw\"></span>\n\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n\n<div class=\"blog-rich-box\">\n\n\n**The Alignment Switch — the change in orientation**\n\nInstead of seeking security by controlling others, people and institutions become secure enough in their own sovereignty to allow others theirs. Applied politically, a party can stop treating the public's independent judgment as a threat.\n\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n## 3. The missing connection: How Democrats could surrender control without surrendering government\n\nThis is where your latest thought changes the political proposition.\n\nWe've previously discussed building an alternative outside the parties. But you've now identified another possible route: **one of the existing parties voluntarily opening the door to a system that makes its own authority less necessary.**\n\nI see five steps.\n\n\n\n<div class=\"blog-rich-box\">\n\n\n<list marker=\"number\" gap={2}>\n<list-item>**Announce the transfer of authority.** Make an explicit institutional commitment to move decision-making toward citizens, including people who have never supported the party.</list-item>\n<list-item>**Open the agenda.** Invite everyone to identify problems and solutions without requiring ideological or party allegiance. Start with areas of demonstrated broad agreement, including healthcare costs, economic security, and government accountability.</list-item>\n<list-item>**Demonstrate collective decision-making.** Use Me•Us to develop public proposals, display levels of agreement, identify unresolved objections, and test informed preferences against real consequences.</list-item>\n<list-item>**Connect participation to governmental authority.** Elected officials commit to publicly responding to citizens' decisions, implementing proposals within their legal authority, and pursuing legislation, electoral reforms, or constitutional changes where necessary.</list-item>\n<list-item>**Make the transfer durable.** Establish independent public oversight, transparent procedures, rights protections, and mechanisms that prevent the party—or the platform operator—from quietly taking the power back.</list-item>\n</list>\n\n\n</div>\n\n\n\nThis is an important distinction between your broader vision and an immediately workable transition. A president or political party cannot simply hand Congress's constitutional powers to an online electorate. But a party could voluntarily open its own agenda and candidate-selection processes, establish accountable public participation, and pursue the legal changes needed to give those decisions greater authority.\n\nYour earlier idea of **a referendum on having a referendum** fits precisely here. People could first decide whether they want to explore a different arrangement, rather than being asked to endorse an entirely new political system before they understand it.\n\n## 4. Why this could speak across the political divide\n\nOne of your recurring observations is that MAGA and DSA constituencies sometimes express overlapping frustrations about political and economic power, even when they advocate sharply different remedies.\n\nYou've repeatedly rejected the notion that people should have to become politically alike before cooperating.\n\nThat's central to this strategy.\n\nAn immigration hard-liner and an immigration-rights advocate can participate in the same democratic process without being required to abandon their convictions. They can examine individual questions, propose safeguards, weigh costs, and identify where agreement is possible.\n\nSome disagreements will remain. Sometimes substantial majorities will favor policies the other side finds deeply objectionable. A functioning system must protect fundamental rights while giving public preferences meaningful authority over the matters properly subject to collective decision.\n\nThe significant possibility is that **people could stop needing their entire political faction to win before any of their ideas could prevail.**\n\nThat lowers the stakes of losing an election. It also creates a path for people to cooperate today without having to settle every other disagreement first.\n\n## 5. What makes this different from another democratic reform campaign\n\nThis is where your development of Me•Us matters enormously.\n\nMost political reform proposals begin by asking institutions to adopt new rules.\n\nYou have been working on a mechanism through which people can begin exercising collective intelligence and responsibility before the institutions have changed.\n\nSomeone raises a question. Other people identify the problem, contribute perspectives, develop solutions, refine the proposals, and volunteer to act.\n\nThe consensus becomes visible, along with the objections that remain.\n\nThe group can make progress without waiting for one leader to devise the solution or authorize every step.\n\nThat makes Me•Us potentially useful as a demonstration of democratic agency, although public representativeness, access, identity verification, minority protections, and the legitimacy of formal decisions would still need to be established.\n\nThe broader political proposition becomes much more concrete when citizens can experience that process instead of merely hearing promises about it.\n\n## 6. The essential risk\n\nThere's a difficult problem that deserves emphasis.\n\nIf one party gives up its internal control while its opponent retains centralized power, there is no guarantee that the first party's openness will translate into greater public authority. It might simply weaken the organization within the existing winner-take-all system.\n\nAnd an open participation platform can be captured by highly organized interests as readily as a political party can.\n\nYour approach needs two kinds of protection simultaneously: safeguards against concentrated institutional authority and safeguards against a self-selected or manipulated participant pool being mistaken for the whole public.\n\nThose problems don't negate the vision. They tell us what the transition must solve.\n\n## 7. The bigger picture\n\nI see the same underlying design in several of your projects.\n\nIn co-capitalism, the people creating value increasingly control how that value is produced and distributed.\n\nIn Me•Us, the people affected by decisions participate in developing and carrying them out.\n\nIn Humanity 3.0, sovereign individuals cooperate from a position of personal agency rather than dependence or domination.\n\nAnd in *The Red-Blue Problem*, people recover the authority to govern themselves instead of periodically choosing who will govern them.\n\nThe common structure is **power moving from hierarchical control into distributed, accountable participation.**\n\nThat brings me back to your opening statement.\n\nDemocrats giving up control would have implications far beyond political messaging. It would test whether a major political institution could make the preservation and expansion of democratic agency more important than its own continued dominance.\n\nAnd the most provocative part of your thesis may be this:\n\n**What if the most consequential thing a political party could do to defend democracy was to make itself progressively unnecessary?**\n\nThat is the possibility your various projects have been developing from different directions. ",
      "6ad3a4ec-7ec0-83ea-be7c-9bbb8fef8b47:d3e9f827-966f-4ddf-93f9-71e6394d4648": "Here's an initial **We the People consensus agenda**, grounded in national polling from 2025–2026. What's striking is how many policies attract large majorities, including meaningful support from both Republicans and Democrats.\n\nThe important distinction is between support for a specific policy and agreement that a problem needs solving. I'm keeping those separate so we don't manufacture consensus where it doesn't exist.\n\n## 80% or more support\n\n| Issue | National support | Poll |\n|---|---:|---|\n| Medicare negotiating lower drug prices | 95% of adults 50+ | AARP, 2025  |\n| Legalize marijuana for at least medical purposes | 88% | Pew, 2026  |\n| Congressional term limits | 83% | RMG Research, 2025  |\n| Background checks for all gun purchases | ~83% | Economist/YouGov, 2025  |\n| Vehicle right-to-repair legislation | 83%+ | CAR Coalition poll, 2025  |\n| Path to citizenship for immigrants brought here as children, with requirements | 81% | Gallup, 2026  |\n| Close pharmaceutical patent loopholes to encourage generics | 80% | KFF-related drug pricing research, 2025  |\n\nThe AARP figure represents Americans 50 and older rather than all adults. The right-to-repair and term-limit polls were commissioned by organizations advocating those policies.\n\n## 70–79% support\n\n| Issue | National support | Poll |\n|---|---:|---|\n| Tax credits for family caregivers | 78% | Pew, 2025  |\n| Path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants meeting requirements | 75% | Gallup, 2026  |\n| Immigration is generally good for America | 73% | Gallup, 2026  |\n| Federal paid family and medical leave, with specified funding | 72% | Program for Public Consultation, 2024  |\n| Publicly funded respite care for families caring for aging adults | 71% | Pew, 2025  |\n\n## 60–69% support\n\n| Issue | National support | Poll |\n|---|---:|---|\n| Require employers to provide paid family leave | 69% | Pew, 2025  |\n| Raise taxes on large corporations | 63% | Pew, 2025  |\n| Direct financial assistance for family caregivers | 63% | Pew, 2025  |\n| Abortion legal in all or most circumstances | 60% | Pew, 2026  |\n\nOne additional finding: 82% of Americans say they are bothered at least somewhat by wealthy people not paying their fair share in taxes, and 83% say the same about corporations. These measure dissatisfaction, however, rather than endorsement of a particular tax proposal. \n\n## Two major additions\n\nThe University of Maryland's Program for Public Consultation published particularly relevant national polling in 2026. It tested concrete proposals rather than vague goals.\n\n| Issue | National support by party |\n|---|---|\n| Free universal preschool for ages 3–4, with $25 billion in federal assistance | 89% Democrats, 69% Republicans |\n| Childcare subsidies capping costs at 7% of income for eligible families | 89% Democrats, 77% Republicans |\n| Expand refundable Child Tax Credit to $3,600 | 84% Democrats, 74% Republicans |\n| Twelve weeks of partially paid family/medical leave, with a specified payroll tax | 84% Democrats, 68% Republicans |\n\nThese figures are from a February 2026 national survey of 2,509 adults, reported in August. \n\nAll four attract majority support within both parties, with overall support plausibly around the upper 70s or low 80s. The publication doesn't provide a single combined national percentage for each in its summary, so I've retained the reported partisan figures.\n\n## Immigration: An especially revealing case\n\nYour example of *limits on immigration* illustrates why separating questions matters.\n\nGallup's June 2026 results found:\n\n\n\n\nWhat should happen to immigration levels?\n\n\n\n\n\n| Item | Support |\n| --- | --- |\n| Keep current levels | 35% |\n| Increase immigration | 31% |\n| Decrease immigration | 29% |\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFive percent gave another or no answer. Gallup, June 2026. \n\n\n\n\n\n\nSo a 60–80% consensus for *reducing* immigration isn't supported by this latest poll. But strong majorities favor some specific immigration measures, including conditional citizenship pathways.\n\nThat distinction gets us closer to the sort of issue-by-issue public judgment you've been describing.\n\n## What this reveals\n\nWe already have more than a dozen measurable issues with substantial national support, ranging from gun-purchase background checks and immigration reform to family benefits, healthcare costs, and congressional term limits. Several show explicit bipartisan majorities.\n\nThe most relevant outside research I've encountered is the [Program for Public Consultation's Common Ground of the American People](https://publicconsultation.org/cgoap/) database. Its method—giving respondents information, competing arguments, and detailed proposals—comes particularly close to the deliberative approach you've been developing.\n\nOne limitation remains essential: **a poll measures how a representative sample answered a defined question at a particular time.** It cannot establish that Americans have collectively deliberated and settled the issue.\n\nThat's where your idea of a continuously developing public consensus becomes relevant. Polling can identify the starting positions; deliberation can test what people continue to endorse after examining the specifics.",
      "6ad3a4ec-7ec0-83ea-be7c-9bbb8fef8b47:5a700203-1644-466d-8889-bfc8c4b8d00a": "You're right. We discussed this specifically on October 1 and October 3.\n\nThe key finding was from an **AP-NORC poll: 79% of Democrats supported deporting undocumented immigrants convicted of violent crimes**, compared with 82% of Americans overall.\n\nWe also identified these distinctions:\n\n- **85%** supported deporting undocumented immigrants convicted of a crime in a separate February 2026 survey.\n- **69%** supported deporting undocumented immigrants with criminal records in a UMass poll.\n- Support dropped substantially when immigrants had no criminal record beyond their immigration status.\n- **87% of Democrats** supported offering qualifying long-term undocumented residents a path to legal residency under specified conditions.\n\nThat is precisely the distinction our previous immigration summary missed.\n\nI verified the original [January 2025 AP-NORC poll](https://apnorc.org/projects/widespread-support-for-deporting-immigrants-convicted-of-violent-crimes/). It also found **89% Republican support** for deporting undocumented immigrants convicted of violent crimes. \n\nThe central lesson for our consensus analysis is that **the wording and specificity of the question change the picture dramatically**. Deporting people convicted of violent crimes has overwhelming bipartisan support; deporting all undocumented immigrants does not.\n\nWe should preserve those distinctions throughout the 60–80% inventory. ",
      "6ad3a4ec-7ec0-83ea-be7c-9bbb8fef8b47:5582072d-014e-4710-b454-63e8234f8357": "The polling reveals a sharp distinction between deporting immigrants convicted of violent crimes and deporting people who have committed no such crimes, qualify for legalization, or already hold American citizenship.\n\n## What Americans support\n\nPercent of U.S. adults supporting each policy, based on national surveys from 2025–2026\n\n\n\n\n\n\n| Policy | Support | Source |\n| --- | --- | --- |\n| Deport undocumented immigrants convicted of violent crimes | 83% | AP-NORC, Jan. 2025 |\n| Offer conditional citizenship to immigrants brought here as children | 81% | Gallup, June 2026 |\n| Offer conditional citizenship to undocumented immigrants generally | 75% | Gallup, June 2026 |\n| Deport undocumented immigrants without violent-crime convictions | 37% | AP-NORC, Jan. 2025 |\n| Deport all undocumented immigrants | 42% | Gallup, June 2026 |\n| Strip citizenship and deport U.S. citizens deemed threats | 35% | PRRI, Feb. 2026 |\n| Give government power to invalidate naturalized citizens' citizenship | 20% | UMass Amherst, July 2025 |\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSources:  Questions measure different policies, not mutually exclusive choices. Gallup's 2026 deport-all figure is 42%, the complement of the reported 58% opposition.\n\n\n\n## The clearest distinctions\n\n| Specific policy | Support | Opposition |\n|---|---:|---:|\n| Deport undocumented immigrants convicted of violent crimes | 83% | 6% |\n| Deport undocumented immigrants without violent-crime convictions | 37% | 44% |\n| Deport all undocumented immigrants | 42% | 58% |\n| Offer qualifying undocumented immigrants a citizenship pathway | 75% | 24% |\n| Strip citizenship and deport citizens deemed threats | 35% | 61% |\n| Allow government to invalidate naturalized citizens' citizenship | 20% | 64% |\n\nThese surveys differ in wording, dates, and response options. The AP-NORC noncriminal category includes people who may have committed nonviolent crimes; it does not specifically measure people with no criminal convictions. \n\n## What this tells us about public preferences\n\nThree findings stand out.\n\n**First, enforcement against violent offenders has broad bipartisan support.** AP-NORC found 79% of Democrats and 89% of Republicans supported deporting undocumented immigrants convicted of violent crimes. \n\n**Second, most Americans also support a conditional pathway to citizenship.** Gallup found 75% support in June 2026, while Pew found in 2025 that 65% supported allowing qualifying undocumented immigrants to remain legally, including permanent residence without citizenship. \n\n**Third, citizenship revocation is substantially less popular.** The UMass question found 64% disagreement with giving the government power to invalidate naturalized citizenship. PRRI found 61% opposition even when revocation was framed around citizens deemed threats to the country. Neither question specifically addressed citizenship obtained through proven fraud, which matters in interpreting the current Ilhan Omar investigation. \n\nThe wider picture also includes opposition to current enforcement intensity. In April 2026, Pew found that 52% of Americans said the Trump administration was doing too much on deportations, compared with 31% saying the amount was right and 15% saying too little. \n\nThe central implication for our We the People analysis is that several positions often packaged together in partisan immigration debates receive very different levels of support. Americans can support removing violent offenders, support legalization for qualifying residents, and oppose stripping citizenship without contradiction. Those distinctions are measurable, and they are precisely what a detailed, issue-by-issue account of public preferences needs to preserve.",
      "6ad3a4ec-7ec0-83ea-be7c-9bbb8fef8b47:e5f46462-ca55-4ad2-a887-581087599ab1": "**Taxing the rich belongs on our We the People consensus list**, though support varies substantially depending on the proposal.\n\n| Policy or concern | All Americans | Democrats | Republicans |\n|---|---:|---:|---:|\n| Wealthy people not paying their fair share bothers them at least somewhat | **82%** | — | — |\n| Corporations not paying their fair share bothers them at least somewhat | **83%** | — | — |\n| Raise taxes on large corporations | **63%** | 81% | 43% |\n| Raise taxes on households earning over $400,000 | **58%** | 74% | 43% |\n\nSources: Pew Research Center, January 2026 and January–February 2025. Party figures include independents leaning toward each party. \n\nThe distinction matters. **82% express concern about wealthy people not paying their fair share**, but 58% support the particular proposal of increasing income taxes above $400,000. Neither finding alone establishes support for a particular wealth tax or minimum tax on billionaires.\n\nThere's another revealing finding: **58% of moderate and liberal Republicans support increasing corporate taxes**, and 53% support increasing taxes on households above $400,000. \n\nFor our larger inventory, this gives us a strong public concern about tax fairness, majority support for two specific tax increases, and a clear opportunity to examine which more precisely defined tax policies command broader agreement.\n\nThat's also an important principle for the entire exercise: the more precisely we define what people are being asked to approve, the more accurately we can distinguish a shared concern from an agreed solution.",
      "6ad3a4ec-7ec0-83ea-be7c-9bbb8fef8b47:68698e9c-45e4-42ed-b1f2-4a159ef2591e": "February 2026 national poll — University of Maryland, Program for Public Consultation\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n| Group | Support |\n| --- | --- |\n| Republicans | 77% |\n| Democrats | 83% |\n| All Americans | 79% |\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSupport for applying Social Security payroll taxes to wages above $400,000. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n**Just a 6-percentage-point partisan gap.**\n\nThe proposal leaves the existing payroll-tax ceiling in place and resumes taxation on wages above $400,000—the so-called *donut hole*. Researchers estimate it would eliminate approximately **61% of Social Security's projected funding shortfall**.\n\nEven more striking, a September 2024 deliberative survey found **86% Republican support, 89% Democratic support, and 87% nationally** after participants reviewed the policy and competing arguments. \n\nThis belongs in the 80% consensus category when using the deliberative survey. It provides an unusually clear example of a tax increase on high earners attracting overwhelming support across party lines.",
      "6ad3a4ec-7ec0-83ea-be7c-9bbb8fef8b47:94714115-b918-4114-bb0a-05d37b0fbdad": "Yes. **72% of Republicans support a wealth tax on the ultra-rich**, according to a February 2026 University of Maryland survey.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n| Group | Support |\n| --- | --- |\n| Republicans | 72% |\n| Democrats | 88% |\n| All Americans | 80% |\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nUniversity of Maryland, Program for Public Consultation, February 2026. \n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe specific proposal:\n\n- No wealth tax on the first $50 million.\n- 2% annual tax on wealth above $50 million.\n- 3% annual tax on wealth above $1 billion.\n\nOther findings reinforce the pattern:\n\n- **70% of Republicans** support taxing capital gains as ordinary income for households earning over $1 million. \n- **65% of Republicans** support raising taxes on billionaires, according to a February 2026 Impact Research poll. \n\nThe wealth-tax proposal targets multimillionaires and billionaires rather than everyone earning $1 million annually.\n\nFor our We the People inventory, the $50 million wealth tax qualifies for the **80% national-consensus category**, with substantial majority support in both parties.",
      "6ad3a4ec-7ec0-83ea-be7c-9bbb8fef8b47:b7a75e9b-42d9-4560-b209-f4155e00223b": "The latest national polling puts support for **universal preschool at 79%**, including a substantial majority of Republicans. And the proposal has a defined federal funding amount: **$25 billion annually**.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n| Group | Support |\n| --- | --- |\n| All Americans | 79% |\n| Republicans | 69% |\n| Democrats | 89% |\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nUniversity of Maryland, Program for Public Consultation, February 2026. \n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe proposal would provide federal funding to states and cities that choose to establish or expand free preschool programs for all 3- and 4-year-olds.\n\n\n\n\nProposed federal funding\n\n\n$25 billion/year\n\n\nApproximately $250 billion over ten years, before inflation or changes in program costs.\n\n\n\n\nThat $25 billion is the proposed federal contribution, not necessarily the full cost of providing universal preschool nationwide.\n\nThe finding is reinforced by a 2024 deliberative survey, in which participants reviewed arguments for and against the program before deciding.\n\n| Survey | National | Republican | Democratic |\n|---|---:|---:|---:|\n| February 2026 | 79% | 69% | 89% |\n| August 2024, deliberative | 82% | 74% | 92% |\n\n\n\nThe broader finding is particularly relevant to your point: the University of Maryland's research identified **112 specific policies supported by majorities of both parties**, with 88 supported by more than two-thirds of Republicans and Democrats. \n\nOn the funding question, your earlier work on taxes fits directly into the discussion. The public has shown substantial support for particular increases on very wealthy households, alongside support for universal preschool. Whether a particular tax package fully finances the program depends on its revenue estimates and timing.\n\nAnd there's the central pattern you've been identifying: **when people are asked about concrete policies, with defined limits and costs, the divisions often become much smaller than the political identities suggest.** ",
      "6ad3a4ec-7ec0-83ea-be7c-9bbb8fef8b47:114e6f88-7ebd-4ef9-822f-981071a3c793": "There's a deeper economic argument here that goes well beyond the dysfunction of partisan politics. **Political instability has a cost of its own, independent of whether the policy moving in either direction is good or bad.** And those costs accumulate over decades.\n\nYour experience covering energy and environmental policy on Capitol Hill gives this argument a particularly concrete foundation. A power plant may operate for 50 or 70 years, while the regulatory environment can change dramatically with each administration. Companies make multibillion-dollar investment decisions under rules they cannot confidently expect to survive. Environmental organizations face similar uncertainty about whether negotiated protections will endure. Consumers and taxpayers eventually absorb some of the costs of abandoned projects, delayed investment, litigation, and repeated transitions.\n\nThe whiplash matters as much as the swing. Even when a reversal corrects a genuinely harmful policy, reversing it can impose additional costs. And if the next administration reverses course again, the country may pay repeatedly to move in opposing directions without achieving either side's long-term objectives.\n\nYour proposal addresses that instability by changing how decisions are formed. Immigration becomes a series of specific questions about criminal convictions, legal status, citizenship, enforcement, and due process. Taxation becomes a discussion of thresholds, rates, revenue, and public spending. Energy becomes a long-range discussion of reliability, environmental outcomes, affordability, and capital investment. People can agree on specific decisions without being required to endorse an entire Republican or Democratic agenda.\n\nThere's also a distinction between **compromise negotiated by political representatives and consensus developed by the people themselves**. A bipartisan agreement can still reflect the interests of two party leadership structures. Your model asks people to work through the details, the costs, and the competing priorities—and then determine what they collectively endorse.\n\nThat does not guarantee sensible outcomes. Public opinion can change, majorities can make mistakes, and some policies deserve to be reversed. But broader deliberation could give long-term policy a different foundation: decisions would be periodically reviewed and improved rather than automatically placed in jeopardy whenever party control changes.\n\nThere is evidence of the representational gap you're describing. In a 2025 Pew survey, 61% of Americans described Republicans as too extreme, while 57% said the same of Democrats. A quarter said neither party represented people like them particularly well.  Those findings do not establish that every individual policy has broad consensus, but they raise an important question about how faithfully the two-party structure translates public preferences into government decisions.\n\nAnd your power-plant example brings the long-term argument into focus. Even today, reporting on transmission infrastructure describes investments that require coordination over decades, with regulatory conflicts affecting project timelines. \n\nThe larger economic hypothesis is worth stating clearly: **the cost of political whiplash is not limited to the damage caused by each policy reversal. It includes the benefits we never realize because nobody can plan confidently enough to create them.**\n\nThat is where your argument about We the People reaches beyond democratic legitimacy. A more durable expression of public preferences could also provide a more dependable basis for investment, environmental protection, public finance, and long-term prosperity. ",
      "6ad3a4ec-7ec0-83ea-be7c-9bbb8fef8b47:3bf16b2f-99e9-46fe-81a3-bce75664e8f0": "What you're describing is a **continuous feedback loop between the people and their government**, with a fundamental reassignment of responsibility. The people determine what they want. Government figures out how to deliver it, what it will cost, what tradeoffs are involved, and whether it's working. Then the people decide again. The model draws on the Congressional Budget Office's analytical role, but extends that kind of independent modeling throughout the process of governing.\n\nAnd there's something important in your insistence that **individuals don't have to figure it all out.** That's one of the unreasonable burdens we place on citizens when we talk about direct democracy. We imagine everyone needing to understand legislation, budgets, engineering, economics, and administrative law before they're qualified to make decisions. But people make consequential decisions without mastering every technical detail all the time. They tell architects what kind of home they want, doctors what outcomes matter to them, and financial advisers what they're trying to achieve. The experts explain what's possible, identify tradeoffs, and execute within the authority they've been given. Government can operate on a similar principle, with independent expertise, transparent assumptions, and the public retaining the authority to accept or reject proposed outcomes.\n\nThe other essential piece is that **the public's instructions don't have to be binary**. People can express limits, priorities, relative weights, and conditional preferences. Seventy-two percent might endorse an objective, but that doesn't mean 72% endorse every imaginable means of achieving it. The public might want greater environmental protection, but not at any cost. More immigration enforcement, but with clear limits and due process. Universal preschool, but with a particular funding mechanism. Government's responsibility is to translate those preferences into concrete alternatives and return them for consideration. Sometimes the alternatives will reveal that two popular objectives conflict. That's valuable information for the next public decision.\n\nAnd then comes the feature that makes this especially different from an election or a one-time referendum: **the people remain in charge after the decision.** Government projects what should happen in one month, three months, six months, and a year. Results are measured against those projections. Assumptions are corrected. When costs rise, outcomes disappoint, or circumstances change, government returns the question to the public. Independent institutions would also need to audit the evidence and distinguish genuine policy failures from ordinary uncertainty. That makes accountability an ongoing process rather than something voters exercise once every two or four years.\n\n## The complete governing cycle\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n| Step | Action | Details |\n| --- | --- | --- |\n| 1 | The people express priorities | Goals · limits · tradeoffs · preferences |\n| 2 | Government models alternatives | Costs · feasibility · consequences |\n| 3 | The people authorize a plan | Informed consent · thresholds · conditions |\n| 4 | Government executes and reports | 1 · 3 · 6 · 12-month milestones |\n| 5 | The people assess and adjust | Results · corrections · new instructions |\n\n\n\n\nContinuous public feedback\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThis completes another important part of the architecture you've been developing for Me•Us. Recursive deliberation isn't confined to forming proposals. **The entire process of government becomes recursive.** Public preferences produce proposals, proposals produce decisions, decisions produce action, action produces evidence, and that evidence returns to the people. The conversation continues through implementation.\n\nThere's a real design challenge around how the public's preferences are measured—especially who participates, how representative they are, and how constitutional rights are protected. And not every administrative adjustment should require another nationwide vote. But those are matters of delegation and accountability within the model, not reasons to abandon it.\n\nWhat I find particularly consequential is the change in what government is expected to do. Political leaders no longer need to persuade the public to accept an entire governing ideology before solving a problem. Their authority can be tied to a specific, publicly endorsed objective, their competence measured by execution, and their discretion bounded by the instructions people have given them.\n\n**The people provide the direction. Government provides the expertise, execution, and evidence. The people retain the judgment.**\n\nThat gives your earlier argument about political whiplash its institutional answer: policies develop through continuing public consent and measured correction, rather than being repeatedly dismantled and rebuilt according to which party happens to hold power. ",
      "6ad3a4ec-7ec0-83ea-be7c-9bbb8fef8b47:81abaa9d-30d4-41ca-aa38-88b49e099b17": "**The power of the people.** That correction changes the entire premise. There's no need to ask a political party to bestow power upon us. The people are already the source of legitimate democratic authority. What we've lacked is an effective, continuous means of recognizing our collective preferences, expressing them, and translating them into government action.\n\nAnd there's an important threshold in what you're saying: **we don't need everyone to agree. We need enough agreement to act.** We don't need to resolve every ideological dispute, establish a comprehensive national philosophy, or persuade people to abandon their political identities. We can find the 72% who agree on a specific policy, establish its limits, model its consequences, and move forward. Those who disagree retain their rights, their voices, and the opportunity to change the decision as new evidence emerges. The machinery of government becomes responsive to the collective intelligence of the people rather than the changing fortunes of competing political coalitions.\n\nYour inclusion of billionaires and Trump matters, too. *We the People* really does mean everyone. Billionaires don't have to be enemies of the project, nor do Republicans, Democrats, socialists, or libertarians. Everyone has interests. Everyone has preferences. Everyone has a stake in a government that works predictably and effectively. And nobody needs to possess authority over everyone else to have those interests recognized.\n\nThen there's your question to Trump. **Would you like to be the last American president?** It's a striking inversion of the usual political ambition. Rather than being remembered for how much power a president accumulated, imagine being remembered for helping establish institutions that made concentrated presidential power increasingly unnecessary. The office could remain constitutionally intact while its discretionary power became more tightly bound to informed public decisions.\n\nThere's a tension worth preserving: the power of the people is already foundational in American constitutional theory, but exercising that power through binding decisions still requires institutions, procedures, and safeguards. Recognizing the power begins the transformation; building the mechanisms makes that recognition consequential.\n\nAnd that's where your work converges. *The Last American President* supplies the historical question. *The Red-Blue Problem* explains the dysfunction. *Humanity 3.0* supplies the philosophy of mutual sovereignty. Me•Us supplies a developing mechanism for collective deliberation and action.\n\nThe question you're asking is larger than whether one president would accept a particular reform. **What would it take for a country to become sufficiently aware of its own collective power that no president, party, or billionaire could plausibly claim to speak for the people without continuously demonstrating that the people agree?**\n\nThat's the distinction you've been building toward: not power handed down to us, but the power we've had all along, finally exercised together. "
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