The radical right is now wreaking havoc with our democracy and endangering every hard-won gain of the last century, stoking fear and diverting the energies of progressives and many of their allies to a constant posture of defense and protection. How did that happen?

Over the last decade, the right did not play defense or push for only what was “winnable.” They created a radical vision, the current operating version of which is Project 2025, and are now implementing it with rigor and zeal. With authoritarianism on the rise, those who still believe in the vision of an inclusive democracy must similarly deliver a bold, progressive vision. But this vision cannot come from the technocrats. It must come from working people—a People’s Project 2029. And the people have spoken very loudly. Since every poll in 2024 and 2025 named the cost of living as the top issue on people’s minds by a landslide, a People’s Project 2029 would need to center a Living Wage for All to inspire and mobilize millions to join us in the fight to save democracy. We are convinced that there is no true path back to progressive power without this kind of visionary agenda at its core.

While the 2024 presidential election was lost to Donald Trump, it was not because his agenda or personality is popular. It happened because working-class people in the United States are drowning, and the center-left is not seen as offering any meaningful or seismic solutions. Desperate times will lead people to cling desperately to anything they think might help. In their desperation, many grasped at someone who seemed to be taking their concerns seriously and promising bold (if ultimately misguided and even destructive) change. If the center-left wants to win power again, it needs a clear and bold plan for how it will use that power—one that centers the needs of working-class voters and offers urgent, meaningful solutions.

The Consumer Price Index rose 22 percent between January 2020 and November 2024. During that period, the price of cereal increased 30 percent. Household electricity went up 32 percent. Car insurance went up 52 percent. The price of eggs is currently up 60 percent from just a year ago. And while employer desperation during the pandemic led to a brief surge in wages, wage growth is now slowing for most American workers, and particularly for low-wage workers. Meanwhile, wealth inequality in the United States is skyrocketing. Over the past 60 years, there’s been a “massive transfer of wealth from the middle class to the wealthiest families,” according to data from the Urban Institute. In other words, it’s not that there’s not enough wealth to go around—it’s that wealth is increasingly hoarded by a handful of super-rich.

While Kamala Harris won a majority of voters making more than $100,000 a year, Trump won voters making less than $50,000 a year—“the first time a Republican has won the lowest income demographic since the advent of reliable exit polling.” Writing in The New York Times in late April 2025, economic historian Aaron Benanav argued:

[T]here is a deeper force underlying today’s disarray: economic stagnation. The world is experiencing a long-term slowdown in growth rates that began in the 1970s, worsened after the 2008 global financial crisis and shows no sign of improving. Stuck with low growth, waning productivity and an aging work force, the world economy is in a rut. This shared economic predicament lies behind the political and social conflicts the world over.

In the United States, working-class families are in big trouble. If Democrats and the center-left want to win, they need to offer big solutions.

One issue that we know works on every level is championing a living wage. It’s a powerful, time-tested principle—that in the richest nation on earth, the nation with the most billionaires on the planet, no one who puts in a hard day’s work should be paid less than a livable wage. It’s inhuman and undermines the promise of the American dream.

Nearly one in five American workers earns less than $17 an hour, the latest minimum wage increase proposed in Congress, but raising the minimum wage has been shown to improve wages for up to a third of all American workers. And nearly half (45 percent) of American workers earn less than $25 an hour, which is less than the minimum needed to cover the cost of living if you have just one child even if you’re living in the least expensive county in the United States, according to the MIT Living Wage Calculator. But in the case of winning elections, it’s not just that raising the minimum wage is the right thing to do—it’s also popular. For instance, in the 2020 election, Donald Trump won the state of Florida easily, but a measure to increase the state’s minimum wage to $15 also won—and by a significantly wider margin. It’s a red flag when progressive policies are more popular than progressive and center-left candidates. It’s a sign that those candidates aren’t seen as championing those issues.

There’s ample evidence that Republicans and the right realize this, too. Arguably that’s why Donald Trump pledged during the campaign to end taxes on tips—even though 60 percent of tipped workers don’t make enough money to pay taxes. And that’s why Trump and the GOP have that proposal in their “big, beautiful” budget bill that will slash taxes for the rich while gutting Medicaid, the latter of which will hurt far more low-wage workers than ending taxes on tips will help. And recently, social media lit up with claims that Trump was raising the minimum wage to $25 an hour—unfounded, but nevertheless enthusiastically spread by the MAGA universe. That’s no surprise. In polling conducted between January and March of 2025, three out of five Americans ranked cost of living as the most pressing issue in their communities. One of the most obvious solutions to rising costs is to put more money in people’s pockets. And the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour hasn’t gone up in 16 years.

So what should center-left political leaders, donors, and activists do? Well, let’s be clear what they shouldn’t do. After voters in Michigan and Washington, D.C., overwhelmingly supported not only raising the minimum wage for all but also phasing out the subminimum wage for tipped workers, which is a literal holdover policy from the era of slavery, Democrats inexplicably piled onto efforts to repeal or water down those victories instead of listening to voters who over and over and over again vote to increase wages for working people. It seems some are so fundamentally invested in the status quo they think the path to future policy and political victories somehow runs through timid centrist stances that at best tweak the status quo rather than upending it.

If we want to win back working people, we have to listen to working people. They’re telling us what to do. The right used its time out of power to craft a clear plan not just for getting back into power but for how to wield that power when they got it. Our answer to the top-down elitist Project 2025 can’t be a top-down elitist Project 2029. It needs to be a People’s Plan for the next Democratic administration, one that takes its guidance from what working-class voters are actually saying. Bold, popular solutions like a $25 minimum wage and ending the subminimum wage are just the beginning. Organizing and advocacy groups like One Fair Wage and others are leading progressive policy campaigns like the “Living Wage for All” coalition—models for a bold progressive vision that actually delivers real change. We can run campaigns—and candidates—that win on these platforms because the platforms come from the voters themselves. But we can win only if donors, party leaders, and the political machine support bold, progressive, populist policies—instead of working against them.