I thought this was a really wise list of strategies from David Plouffe, who I think is as close a political genius as we Dems have.

Here's my summary of his ideas, though he explains many of them well in more detail:

A plan to bring down costs.

Democrats should

- promise to investigate and stop price gouging.

- Get rid of Mr. Trump’s inflation-inducing tariffs.

- Build millions more apartments and homes.

- Establish universal child care.

- Expand Medicare to cover home health costs for family caregivers.

If it can’t be communicated in an Instagram post or 10-second TikTok, go back to the drawing board. Make it about tangibly cutting the cost of living for people, not an ideological wish list.

A plan to create the jobs America needs.

- Candidates could be honest about their districts’ shortages of nurses, police officers, teachers, auto mechanics and plumbers.

- Through tax incentives, training, tuition assistance and a relentless focus on what’s needed, candidates should call for specific numbers of people to be hired over the next four years.

A plan for A.I.

- Force tech giants to be more transparent about their data and algorithms, about how they identify deepfakes and about their plans to mitigate the downstream negative effects of their products.

- Start with A.I.’s toxic stew of higher energy costs, job losses, chatbot mental health misuse and misinformation. Then consider how the revenue from these activities will go to the wealthiest people on the planet.

A plan for reform.

- Term limits and lifetime lobbying bans for members of Congress.

- A ban on stock trading.

- Rules for elected officials and their crypto holdings.

- Guardrails for prediction markets.

- Maybe even consider a constitutional amendment banning presidential pardons.

You can’t go far enough in this lane if you are an outsider candidate challenging the broken status quo.

- Democrats have come to be seen as the defenders of institutions that voters, especially young ones, feel are badly broken. It’s a deadly political place to be. The party can win a debate about how to reform and modernize government when it’s up against a MAGA worldview where there are no rules at all, especially for the powerful. But not if they continue to be seen as the standard bearers of a broken status quo.

Hold your own leaders to account.

- Democrats should call for new leadership and say that, if elected, they won’t support the current crop.

- Candidates should blow the whistle on a poorly performing program or a law or regulation that’s outlived its usefulness.

- If Democrats get better about focusing on results, cutting red tape and getting things done for people, on time and under budget — what’s become known as the abundance agenda — it makes the populist call for higher taxes on the wealthiest even more powerful.