Thank you for your attention to this matter

Commenter Lee is a British expat living in a former colony of Her Majesty’s Empire (I realize it’s now technically His Majesty’s, but I lived with Her Majesty — a pretty nice girl who didn’t have a lot to say — for 63 years, and I’m sticking with it). He has sent me the following suggestion, which strikes me as far more interesting that the we’ve tried nothing and are all out of ideas posture of the current Democratic party national leadership:

Given the Institutional Dems weak response to Trump, it has made me consider one major weakness of the Presidential System, that you do not have one thing we take for granted in Parliamentary Systems, namely a Leader of the Opposition (LOTO), in Westminster Systems, the opposition has a leader as the focus of the opposition, when the President speaks there is an obvious person for the media to go too to get the opposing view, alternative policies are proposed and effective holding of the Govt to account is all run through the alternative leader of the country

So here is my crazy idea

What if the Dems ran the 2028 Primary process now?  Start the same process you have in 2028 but do it in 2026 on the same calendar, then the Dems will have their alternative President who the media can go to as the first responder to every Trump outrage, it can get some energy going in the party and (now this is where it gets truly silly and I really don’t like this idea but in a Parliamentary system it sometimes happens that a dud LOTO is dumped before seeing an election) if it turns out the person who wins the Primary is ineffective we can do it all again in 2028

Before dismissing it for all the obvious reasons why it can’t work, at least consider whether or not it would be better for Dems if right now they had an obvious leader.

I have to say that after giving this several minutes’ consideration, I really like it. Yes it seems rather desperate, but I don’t see that necessarily as a negative: it’s good to signal to the Olivia Rodrigo vote — ironically I know too much about Ariana Grande at this point for this metaphor to be legit any more — that something Really Bad is happening Right Now, that requires an extraordinary response.

The winner of the Early Primary Process could then name a shadow cabinet, that would be tasked with giving punchy/detailed responses to the relevant Trump administration atrocities.

Now the initial media response would no doubt include a lot of mockery, but on the other hand this would be new and different and exciting, and it would give them their beloved horse race years early. And as Lee mentions, you get a free(ish) trial run for a candidate, where all the Huge Scandals can come out well ahead of time, and allowing for a redo if necessary. Plus the idea of a unified opposition behind an unambiguous leader — in a culture that is getting more authoritarian not to mention cult-like by the minute — is basically a good one. (I realize that there’s a down side to playing to those broader cultural dynamics, but hate the game not the player, or something).

I also like that this is the polar opposite of the two-week primary process advocated for by various people after The Thing last summer, or was that 17 years ago?

I realize there are a bunch of logistical problems to solve, but the alternative is to listen to three more years of sternly worded statements from Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries. Under those circumstances, I believe we need to think outside the box and stop coloring between the lines.

Anyway you can have this idea, worth many trillions of dollars when you think about the value it could add, for free. Especially since I stole it from somebody else.