Latest news with #AndreiCherny
Fox News
07-07-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Liberal critics question why architect of failed Biden foreign policy is advising ‘Project 2029'
Democrats are assembling a new policy brain trust called Project 2029, an effort aimed at shaping the party's long-term vision and regaining electoral strength. But at a time when there's widespread agreement that Democrats need fresh ideas and new voices, the inclusion of longtime party insiders — especially former President Joe Biden's national security advisor Jake Sullivan — is raising eyebrows across the political spectrum. "It's really disappointing to see the lack of self-awareness on Jake's part," said Brett Bruen, former director of global engagement in the Obama White House. "Having Jake involved, let alone leading this, will only lead to stupid, superficial changes." "These Democratic leaders need to take a long look in the mirror and understand they played a big part in bringing this situation about — and exit stage left." Modeled in name and structure after the Heritage Foundation's conservative Project 2025, Project 2029 brings together high-profile Democratic veterans to outline a policy road map. After a decade of standing more against President Donald Trump than for anything else, the group is dedicated to helping Democrats define the policies that can win the 2028 election. The initiative, first reported by The New York Times, is led by longtime Democratic strategist Andrei Cherny and a cast of familiar faces — including Sullivan, Neera Tanden, Biden's domestic policy advisor; Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO of New America; Justin Wolfers, University of Michigan economist; Jim Kessler, co-founder of Third Way; and Felicia Wong , former president of the Roosevelt Institute. But Sullivan's role has drawn particular criticism from both Republicans and progressives. Sullivan was Biden's top advisor during the chaotic 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, which resulted in the deaths of 13 U.S. service members. He reportedly offered to resign at the time once the evacuation didn't go as planned. He's also drawn fire for the Biden administration's failure to help Israel and Hamas reach a lasting ceasefire, and for its Ukraine policy — which, as one European diplomat told Fox News Digital, seemed aimed at letting Ukraine "lose slowly." "Why isn't Jake Sullivan working at Chipotle?" quipped Steven Moore, founder of the Ukraine Freedom Project, on a podcast in 2024. "Jake in his position both as national security advisor and in Biden world is one of the last people on earth that should be involved in a reset for the Democratic Party," said Bruen. Sullivan did not reply to a request for comment by Fox News Digital. Zohran Momdani's stunning upset in New York City's mayoral primary over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo has reignited a debate over whether Democrats on a national level need to start taking progressivism seriously. "The people responsible for driving the Democratic Party into a ditch are now asking for the keys again," said Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of progressive group Our Revolution. "Leaders like Zohran Mamdani are showing what's possible when you speak directly to working-class pain and stand up to entrenched power." Despite the criticism, some Democrats defend Sullivan's role and believe he could help unify the party. "He's a historic organizer of the diverse lanes of Democratic foreign policy, and he's done a great job with it," said Joel Rubin, a former deputy assistant secretary of state and Democratic strategist. However, Rubin questioned how much real influence Project 2029 will have, especially with no clear 2028 front runner. "We're going to have a wide-open primary," Rubin said. "Unlike Project 2025, where Republicans had a candidate-in-waiting in Trump, we have no standard-bearer. So Project 2029 is going to be one of many blueprints for what a Democratic administration should do." Some argue that figures like Sullivan are better suited to bridge the divide between establishment figures and progressives than any leftist leader. "He's part of the old guard, but the old guard isn't that old. There's a lot of young people," one Democratic insider said. "You'd be hard-pressed to find people in the progressive lane pulling in establishment folks, whereas the establishment lane is working to pull in progressives." Sullivan's GOP critics also point to his role in promoting now-debunked allegations during the 2016 election. After a report from Slate claimed Trump Tower maintained a secret server communicating with Russia's Alfa Bank, Sullivan — then a senior advisor to Hillary Clinton — amplified the claim. "This could be the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow," Sullivan said in a statement at the time. "This secret hotline may be the key to unlocking the mystery of Trump's ties to Russia." Republicans later accused him of spreading unverified information and misleading the public.
Fox News
04-07-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Dems 'Project 2029' plan met with mixed reactions, concern over upsetting left's 'interest-group Borg': Report
New York Times political correspondent Shane Goldmacher detailed the mixed opinions among political strategists on the Democratic Party's plan for Project 2029 — a ready-made agenda for the party's next presidential nominee. Goldmacher revealed on Monday that while many Democratic strategists are on board with the project's vision, some are skeptical that the agenda set forth could upset the left's "interest-group Borg" and deepen the divide within the party. The creator of Project 2029, former Chair of the Arizona Democratic Party Andrei Cherny, is working on organizing Democratic thought leaders to ensure there is a set-in-stone agenda ready. "The title is an unsubtle play on Project 2025, the independently produced right-wing agenda that Mr. Trump spent much of last year's campaign distancing himself from, and much of his first few months back in power executing," Goldmacher noted in the piece. Cherny's plan takes more inspiration from the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 than just its name. Similar to Project 2025, the goal of Project 2029 is to turn Cherny's publication, "Democracy: A Journal of Ideas," into a book — and rally the party's presidential candidates behind those ideas during the 2028 primary election season. "The undertaking, which has not previously been reported, strikes at the heart of a raging debate consuming Democratic lawmakers, strategists and policymakers: whether the root of the party's problems is its ideas or its difficulty in persuading people to embrace them," Goldmacher stated. According to Celinda Lake, a prominent Democratic pollster quoted in the story, the party "didn't lack policies," but rather "lacked a functioning narrative to communicate those policies." She criticized the Democratic Party for offering voters "agencies and acronyms and statistics" rather than presenting a clear story about "what we're going to fight for." On the other hand, some Democrats contend that the party has been faltering due to stale ideas that fail to inspire voters to get behind them. Neera Tanden, CEO of the Center for American Progress and advisor to Project 2029, argued that liberals "underestimate the power of Trump's ideas" and that the focus has been his personality. "We get wrapped up in his personality. But he puts forward an idea like 'No tax on tips,' and that's an important signifier that he is championing working-class people," Tanden told the New York Times. Cherny's plan to assemble "the Avengers of public policy" — a coalition of Democrats aiming to set the agenda for their party's next presidential candidate — did not sit well with some who believe that coalitions are to blame for the party's current predicament. "Developing policies by checking every coalitional box is how we got in this mess in the first place," stated Adam Jentleson in the piece, the former chief of staff for Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa. "There is no way to propose the kind of policies the Democratic Party needs to adopt without pissing off some part of the interest-group Borg. And if you're too afraid to do that, you don't have what it takes to steer the party in the right direction." Even though Democrats were successful in rallying their base against Project 2025, Michael Tomasky, editor of The New Republic, claimed that those efforts will not have a negative effect on Project 2029 because — unlike the Heritage Foundation — their "ideas aren't radical or extreme." Tomasky stated that he hoped the project would help rejuvenate the public's view of the Democratic Party among the less fortunate.
Fox News
01-07-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Democrats take page from conservative playbook with new Project 2029
Democrats are taking a page from the conservative playbook. A group of leading Democratic Party thinkers is beginning to collaborate on a policy agenda for their eventual presidential nominee in the 2028 election cycle. And, as first reported by the New York Times, they're calling it Project 2029. It's an obvious play on the notorious Project 2025, the more than 900-page policy blueprint assembled by the conservative powerhouse Heritage Foundation think tank for the Republican Party's 2024 presidential nominee. Democrats repeatedly attacked Project 2025 during the previous White House race as a far-right threat to the nation. Then-GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump and his campaign distanced themselves from the document, even as many Trump allies helped draft it. But Trump, during the opening months of his second tour of duty in the White House, executed much of what was proposed in Project 2025. And Russell T. Vought, who was a key member of the team that produced the document, now leads the Office of Management and Budget. The Democrats behind Project 2029 hope to rally White House hopefuls behind their policy framework as the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination race heats up following the 2026 midterm elections. The project is being spearheaded by Andrei Cherny, a onetime Democratic speechwriter and state party leader. "Avengers… Assemble!" he wrote in a social media post, as he spotlighted the New York Times story on Project 2029. Democrats are aiming to escape the political wilderness following 2024 election setbacks, when the party lost control of the White House and the Senate, and failed to win back the House majority. And 2025 polls have indicated the Democratic Party brand sinking to new lows. "After several Democratic presidential runs that featured the old guard, there is a hunger for the next generation of candidates and ideas," Jim Kessler, executive vice president for policy at the center-left Third Way, told Fox News. Kessler, who's involved with the project, added that the effort "is a chance for those candidates to see and test out new policy ideas. The advisory group runs the gamut of the Democratic ideological perspective, so these new ideas may not bring a consensus, but it can act as a showroom for presidential candidates to test drive." Veteran Democratic strategist James Carville, asked about Project 2029, welcomed more ideas to the party's conversation. But Carville told Fox News Digital that "the person Democrats need to look to, whose ideas will count, is the next presidential nominee. People can throw ideas out and the different candidates can respond in one way or another, but the idea that a political party can develop a message outside of having some power – it's been done before, but it's quite difficult." Word of Project 2029 comes amid continued divisions in the Democratic Party between its establishment and progressive wins. And it comes as the stunning victory in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary by outsider and 33-year-old democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani over former three-term Gov. Andrew Cuomo has reignited the party's argument over whether the Democrats' problem is their policy or their messaging.
New York Times
30-06-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Sound Familiar? Democrats Lay Groundwork for a ‘Project 2029'
As he looks back at the defeat of former Vice President Kamala Harris last fall, the thing that keeps bothering Andrei Cherny, a onetime Democratic speechwriter and state party leader, is that he didn't know what Ms. Harris would have done as president if she had won. The way he saw it, President Trump ran on his own ideas, but Ms. Harris only ran against Mr. Trump's. 'The oldest truism in politics is you can't beat something with nothing,' Mr. Cherny said. Now Mr. Cherny, the co-founder of a nearly two-decade-old liberal policy journal, is organizing a group of Democratic thinkers to recreate what Mr. Trump's allies did when he was voted out of office: draft a ready-made agenda for the next Democratic presidential nominee. They're calling it Project 2029. The title is an unsubtle play on Project 2025, the independently produced right-wing agenda that Mr. Trump spent much of last year's campaign distancing himself from, and much of his first few months back in power executing. The fact that Democrats turned Project 2025 into a cudgel against Mr. Trump during the campaign has not deterred Mr. Cherny and the other Democrats working with him from borrowing the tactic. They plan to roll out an agenda over the next two years, in quarterly installments, through Mr. Cherny's publication, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas. The goal is to turn it into a book — just like Project 2025 — and to rally leading Democratic presidential candidates behind those ideas during the 2028 primary season. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
