I have a more substantive piece I’m going to write tomorrow, but had one I needed to get done this evening—admittedly with more anger than I usually bring to writing here.
I just saw an Instagram video from a prominent, Chicago-area politico with thousands of followers. She said she’d do a breakdown of the candidates in this race, but limited it to three she said were the only “serious candidates”—in her view, nobody else in the race had raised enough money to merit consideration.
If she’d simply said those were the three candidates most likely to win, I’d have agreed. Of course she’d be right. There are candidates who are set to spend millions, who have high name recognition, who have huge online followings, and anyone betting would put their money on one of them. I would, too.
It’s that word “serious” that really bothered me. Because the reason I’m running at all, after years of participating in politics as a volunteer and voter, and why I left not only a good job but a great career to do it, is because I don’t believe those candidates really are serious at the most urgently serious moment I’ve seen in politics. As a voter, I don’t think money makes a candidate serious. Follower count doesn’t make a candidate serious. Name recognition doesn’t make a candidate serious.
So what does?
To start, I’m looking for a real understanding of the political moment we’re in, a reckoning with what it will take to get out of it, and a plan for executing. Instead, I’ve seen candidates running as if it’s 2012. The President is axing agencies, passing tariffs, and more, without Congress. He’s politicized every aspect of governance, most chillingly at the Department of Justice, because they hold the power to prosecute and defend the law. He’s deploying troops and masked agents in American streets and against American citizens, and launching foreign wars and occupations as he sees fit. He has subjugated his party to the point that there is no chance they will oppose him, and the Supreme Court has been expanding his authority to ratify all of it.
None of this (or a hundred more abuses) should have to be repeated, but I do it to set the backdrop of a constitutional order that is snapping apart in front of us. Somehow, Democratic politicians have learned the rhetoric but have not absorbed the reality. And so they continue to campaign as if they’re going to get to Congress and legislate their way out of this.
Here are some real proposals copied verbatim from the campaign website of a “serious” candidate:
In Congress, I’ll fight to rein in Trump’s explosion of power by passing sensible, often bipartisan legislation
It’s a fantasy that we’re going to see any bipartisan cooperation to rein in the President’s powers, but that’s not the worst of this statement. Legislation has to be signed by the President to become law—is the proposal here that President Trump is going to sign sensible, bipartisan legislation that reins in his own power? Particularly when the Supreme Court has already OKed it?
There’s bipartisan legislation pending right now that would place limits on the president’s power to impose tariffs without the approval of Congress.
This has the same problem—the President is not going to sign laws restricting his own power—and another: the Constitution already reserves to Congress the power to impose tariffs. Trump is imposing tariffs by abusing emergency provisions in violation of the law. So: he’s going to obey these new laws, when he hasn’t been obeying the ones that already exist?
We should ban any President from violating anyone in America’s constitutional rights.
The pattern should be familiar now: any ”ban” you want to pass has to get signed by the President, so it’s not happening. But more fundamentally, Constitutional rights are in themselves bans on violating constitutional rights; that’s precisely what constitutional rights are. If the President is happy to violate the Constitution, what is a law that says he’s banned from violating the Constitution supposed to do?
These are just a few, and this is not limited to one candidate. Maybe this sounds like nitpicking, but long before I even thought of running I was a citizen evaluating my options, and the lack of seriousness about what we’re up against was alarming. As I’ve said in public before, ten years ago, I’d happily have voted for one of these candidates. I’d have put up a yard sign and knocked doors. But what I saw this past spring was not good enough for my district and for this moment. That’s what pushed me over the line from citizen to candidate—not that I wanted a job that means time away from my kids, a loss of privacy, and hours of fundraising calls, but because I thought that we needed to do better. I expect that’s true of other candidates in the race, too.
Here’s what serious looks like:
The President is successfully consolidating executive power, unconstitutionally, but it hasn’t happened all at once. Some abuses are easier than others. He could kill USAID and most of America doesn’t appreciate it enough to get up in arms. He can deploy troops in the street, and people don’t like it but it’s not obvious to a lot of Americans that he doesn’t have that authority.
But he still went to Congress for a budget, and had to hold SNAP benefits hostage to get it; he’s not ready yet to just direct the Treasury to fund his actions without appropriations (though he was toying with using tariff revenue as a slush fund to do it). And, most importantly, he hasn’t been able to steal a presidential election—yet. If we want to stop this in its tracks, it’s not going to be impeachment (he’ll get acquitted), or bipartisan legislation (see above), or court cases that take years, or even winning back the House. It’s not going to be “growing a spine,” whatever that means in practice. It’s going to be winning back the White House.
What will it take to do that? Democrats have been losing voters and our approval rating is terrible. We need to persuade new voters to join us. That is, mathematically, the only way to win. My conviction is that voters are looking for ambition and vision, and so I’m proposing a platform that delivers that. I don’t think we can pass it now, but we can start proposing bills and communicating it to the country so they know what our vision is long before we get to 2028. I’d love to hear opposing ideas, but the Democratic field is a wasteland. None of the “serious” candidates in this race has offered an idea of how to bring one new voter into the party.
While I’m at it:
Seriousness to me is also a measure of the experience you bring to the office. I have not been a legislator or public executive—real, important experience that I would never discount.
But here are some things I have done that none of the serious candidates has:
I was a public school teacher in New York City. I want us to expand our investment in education and improve our schools, K-12 and beyond, to realize the promise of great education for all. That’s always been important, but all the more so now as our world and economy will change dramatically in the coming generations. None of the serious candidates has been a classroom teacher.
I was a federal prosecutor in the Antitrust Division of the Obama Justice Department. I’d like America to rein in corporate power, enforce a competitive market, and restore rule of law. None of the serious candidates has any experience in any of those areas.
I worked at Microsoft for nine years in product and business strategy. Building an economy that can compete, particularly with China, and navigating our way through the AI era—including creating regulation that can keep up with the industry—are essential jobs for government in this century. None of the serious candidates has come close to working in these fields in their careers. In fact, if I win, I’d be the only member of Congress to have ever worked on AI products.
And this is, of course, not only about me. Among the candidates who were dismissed as not serious are:
An Army veteran with extensive experience in military strategy and intelligence
A seasoned FBI agent, committed anti-gun violence advocate, and entrepreneur
It has to be a basic of campaigning that you don’t link to your opponents’ sites, but I want to highlight some of the experience that’s being dismissively brushed aside when we filter the race to the candidates with the most money. I certainly don’t have the remarkable experience these candidates have, and the serious candidates don’t have any of what we have.
I started this race believing that a Democratic Party armed with the right message and ideas could take on the Trump Administration, and I wanted to supply it. These months have made me understand that the profound inertia of our party is tying our hands behind us for that fight. We lose because we are set up for support to congeal around the familiar and non-threatening, and to reject anything new—anything that establishment players don’t consider serious. Until we confront that, we will keep bringing the same tired platform to the fight, and MAGA will continue to enjoy its hold on the country.
I accept that money will likely decide the race. I don’t accept that that has anything to do with who’s a serious candidate.