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Opposition Research

The long game.
Every failure studied.

Project 2029 is not the first attempt to fix what is broken. Every major reform in this document has been tried before - and blocked before. We have studied every failure, mapped every veto point, and built our strategy around what has actually stopped progress. This is that record.

The Scale of Prior Failure

The numbers that should shock you.

These are not new ideas. They are old fights that the powerful have won every time - until now.

700+

attempts to reform or abolish the Electoral College

70 yrs

of failed national health insurance proposals (1949-2025)

$16B

in dark money spent since Citizens United in 2010

2009

last time Congress raised the federal minimum wage

10 yrs

the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban was allowed to expire without renewal

3

times net neutrality was enacted and then dismantled

Why This Page Exists

We built Project 2029 around the failures, not despite them.

Every major reform in this document has failed before. Not because the ideas were wrong. Because powerful interests identified the weakest point in the process - a Senate filibuster, a committee chairmanship, a single swing vote, a well-funded lobbying campaign - and killed it there.

The lesson of every prior failure is not "this cannot be done." It is: here is exactly where opposition will strike, and here is what you need to survive it.

Project 2029 is designed with those failure modes in mind. The strategy accounts for the filibuster. The timeline accounts for the lobbying surge. The legislative sequencing accounts for the coalition fractures that killed prior attempts. This is the map of past defeats - and the blueprint for not repeating them.

Democracy Reform →

Electoral and Democratic Reform

The fight to make American democracy actually democratic is the longest-running failed project in American political history.

Electoral College: 700+ Failed Attempts

The National Archives has catalogued more than 700 proposals to reform or abolish the Electoral College - more than for any other constitutional issue in American history. The most serious attempt came in 1969.

  • 1969 The Bayh-Celler Amendment passed the House 338-70 - a massive, bipartisan supermajority. It would have replaced the Electoral College with a direct national popular vote. It died in the Senate, filibustered by a coalition of Southern Democrats (Strom Thurmond, James Eastland) who correctly calculated that the Electoral College amplified Southern white political power.
  • 2000s The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) became the reform vehicle. States pass legislation pledging their electoral votes to the national popular vote winner, regardless of state result. As of 2025, states representing 209 electoral votes have joined - 61 short of the 270 needed to activate it. The compact has stalled in states where one party controls the legislature and benefits from the current system.
  • Blocked by Small states (who receive a proportionally larger voice under the current system), rural state senators, and the Republican Party (which has won the presidency twice in the past 25 years without winning the popular vote).

Campaign Finance: McCain-Feingold to Citizens United

  • 2002 The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA/McCain-Feingold) passed after years of attempts - banning "soft money" donations to political parties and restricting corporate-funded "electioneering communications." It was the most significant campaign finance reform in 30 years.
  • 2010 Citizens United v. FEC (5-4) effectively gutted McCain-Feingold and created the current dark money system. The case was brought by a conservative nonprofit and argued by James Bopp Jr., who had spent 20 years building the legal strategy to get here. The ruling was not an accident - it was the end result of a 20-year litigation campaign.
  • 2021-23 The For the People Act (H.R. 1) passed the House twice with robust majorities. Both times it died in the Senate - blocked by the filibuster and specifically by Senator Joe Manchin, who refused to support filibuster reform to pass it.

Voting Rights and the Preclearance Gutting

  • 2013 Shelby County v. Holder (5-4) struck down the coverage formula of Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act, effectively disabling Section 5 preclearance - which had required states with histories of discrimination to get federal approval before changing voting rules. Within 24 hours of the ruling, Texas implemented a voter ID law that had been blocked for years.
  • 2021 The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would have restored preclearance with an updated formula, passed the House and was filibustered in the Senate. Manchin proposed a bipartisan alternative (the Freedom to Vote Act) that also died by filibuster.
  • Blocked by The Senate filibuster (requiring 60 votes), uniform Republican opposition, and the refusal of 2 Democratic senators to reform the filibuster even for voting rights legislation.

Who blocks democracy reform

  • Small-state senators who benefit from Electoral College amplification
  • The Senate filibuster (60-vote threshold)
  • Dark money networks (Koch, Heritage) funding the litigation pipeline
  • Individual Democratic senators who prioritize "bipartisanship" over reform
  • A captured Supreme Court that has systematically weakened democratic guardrails

What Project 2029 does differently

Healthcare Reform →

National Health Insurance: 70 Years of Failure

Every major democracy on Earth has achieved universal health coverage. The United States has tried and failed since 1949. The opposition has always been better funded than the reform.

The Complete Timeline of Defeat

  • 1949 President Truman proposes national health insurance. The American Medical Association spent $1.5 million (the most expensive lobbying campaign in history at that point) branding it "socialized medicine." It never got a vote.
  • 1970 President Nixon proposes an employer mandate with a public option for the unemployed - essentially a version of what Democrats would propose 40 years later. Ted Kennedy rejected it as insufficient. The compromise that might have passed did not.
  • 1993 The Clinton Health Security Act collapses under a $300 million insurance industry lobbying campaign (the "Harry and Louise" ads), Republican unanimous opposition, and Democratic infighting over whether it went too far or not far enough. Bill Kristol's strategy memo urged Republicans to block any reform to deny Democrats a political victory - even if the reform had merit.
  • 2009-10 The Affordable Care Act passes - but the public option is stripped out by Senators Lieberman and Nelson before passage. The individual mandate was originally a conservative proposal (Heritage Foundation, 1989; Romney's Massachusetts plan, 2006). The resulting law was significantly weaker than proposed.
  • 2021-22 Build Back Better included Medicare expansion (vision, dental, hearing) and drug pricing reform. Senator Manchin killed the bill, citing deficit concerns - despite analysis showing the drug pricing provisions alone would have generated significant savings. The Inflation Reduction Act eventually passed limited drug negotiation provisions.

Who blocks healthcare reform

  • The insurance industry ($686M lobbied in 2023 alone)
  • PhRMA - the pharmaceutical lobby ($373M spent 2020-2022)
  • Individual Democratic senators from states with major healthcare employer interests
  • The filibuster, which requires 60 votes to advance healthcare legislation outside reconciliation

What Project 2029 does differently

Economy & Workers →

Labor and Economic Reform: The Stall Game

The federal minimum wage has not been raised since 2009 - the longest freeze since the minimum wage was established in 1938. The labor movement has been systematically weakened for 40 years.

Minimum Wage: Frozen Since 2009

  • 2021 The Raise the Wage Act ($15 federal minimum) passed the House as part of the American Rescue Plan. Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled it violated the Byrd Rule (which governs what can pass via reconciliation with 51 votes). Senate Democrats accepted the ruling without attempting to override it - despite precedent suggesting they could have. A $15 floor was lost.
  • Pattern Every standalone minimum wage bill dies by filibuster. Every attempt to attach it to must-pass legislation hits the Byrd Rule or a Senate hold. The Chamber of Commerce has made blocking minimum wage increases a top-10 lobbying priority for 20 consecutive years.

Labor Law Reform: EFCA and the PRO Act

  • 2009 The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) - which would have eliminated "captive audience" meetings, required card-check union recognition, and provided binding arbitration for first contracts - was Obama's signature labor promise. Arlen Specter (R-PA, then switching to D) had pledged his vote but flipped in April 2009, citing economic conditions. By the time Democrats had 60 seats (July 2009), the moment had passed. It never got a floor vote.
  • 2021 The PRO Act (Protecting the Right to Organize) passed the House 225-206 with bipartisan support. It died in the Senate filibuster. It included the EFCA provisions plus gig worker protections and first-contract arbitration. The same bill has passed the House in every Congress since 2019 and died in the Senate each time.
  • Pattern Business Roundtable, National Federation of Independent Business, and the Chamber of Commerce spend more than $300 million annually lobbying against labor protections. Their most effective tool is not argument - it is the 60-vote threshold. They do not need to win the debate. They need 41 senators.

Wealth Tax and Tax Justice

  • Historical note The top federal marginal income tax rate was 91% under Eisenhower (1953-1963). It was 70% when Reagan took office in 1981. The supply-side experiment of the past 40 years systematically cut rates on the wealthy and capital gains while raising effective rates on working families through payroll taxes and fees.
  • 2021-22 Senator Warren's Ultra-Millionaire Tax and the billionaire minimum book income tax both died in Build Back Better negotiations. Senator Sinema specifically demanded removal of the carried interest loophole provision as a condition of her vote, preserving a major hedge fund tax benefit. Manchin separately rejected the wealth tax structure.

Who blocks labor and economic reform

  • Chamber of Commerce ($300M+ annually in lobbying)
  • Business Roundtable and NFIB
  • Individual Democratic senators with Wall Street donor dependency
  • The Byrd Rule (limits what can pass via reconciliation)
  • NLRB slow-walking under Republican appointees

What Project 2029 does differently

Environment →

Climate: The Decade of Near-Misses

In 2009, the United States had 60 Democratic senators and a two-term president elected on a climate mandate. We still could not pass climate legislation. This is what happened.

Waxman-Markey: The Bill That Almost Was

  • June 2009 The American Clean Energy and Security Act (Waxman-Markey) passed the House 219-212 - the first cap-and-trade climate bill to pass any chamber of Congress. It was a genuine legislative achievement.
  • 2009-2010 In the Senate, the bill was dead before it arrived. Coal-state Democrats (Robert Byrd, Ben Nelson, Evan Bayh) opposed it. The Obama administration prioritized healthcare reform (ACA) through the same political window. The fossil fuel industry spent $500 million lobbying against it. The bill never received a Senate floor vote.
  • 2022 The Inflation Reduction Act passed $369 billion in climate spending - the largest climate investment in U.S. history. It was a genuine win, achieved by reframing climate policy as economic investment and jobs. But it passed via reconciliation (51 votes) specifically because cap-and-trade is politically dead, and because the fossil fuel industry had shifted from outright opposition to shaping the bill (methane fee exemptions, continued LNG export terminals).
  • 2022 West Virginia v. EPA gutted the "major questions doctrine" - the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA cannot implement major climate regulations without explicit Congressional authorization. This created a constitutional veto over agency climate action, ensuring Congress must act rather than delegating to regulators.

Who blocks climate reform

  • Fossil fuel industry ($700M+ in election spending 2020-2024)
  • Koch Industries political network (Americans for Prosperity)
  • Coal and oil state senators (both parties)
  • A Supreme Court actively limiting EPA authority
  • The filibuster (cap-and-trade cannot pass by reconciliation due to Byrd Rule)

What Project 2029 does differently

Security

Gun Safety: The NRA Veto

Background checks for gun sales have 90%+ public support. They have failed in the Senate every time. The mechanism of failure is always the same.

The Pattern of Failure After Mass Shootings

  • 1994 The Federal Assault Weapons Ban passes as part of the 1994 Crime Bill. It includes a 10-year sunset provision - meaning Congress would have to actively vote to renew it. This was the compromise that got it passed. When the ban expired in 2004, the Bush administration let it lapse without a vote on renewal.
  • 2013 After the Sandy Hook shooting (20 children killed), Senators Manchin (D-WV) and Toomey (R-PA) craft a bipartisan background check bill. It received 54 votes - a majority - and was still killed by the filibuster. Five Democratic senators from conservative states voted against it. The NRA scored the vote as a key vote, ensuring political consequences for any supporter in swing districts.
  • 2005 The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) passed with bipartisan support, giving gun manufacturers near-total immunity from civil lawsuits. This was a unique legal protection not available to any other industry - explicitly preventing the litigation strategy that had worked against tobacco companies. It removed the threat of financial consequences for manufacturers.
  • 2022 The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act passes - the first significant gun legislation in nearly 30 years. It is genuinely incremental: enhanced background checks for under-21 buyers, funding for state crisis intervention programs, clarification of who qualifies as a gun dealer. It does not restore the assault weapons ban or close the Charleston loophole.

Who blocks gun safety reform

  • The NRA (and Gun Owners of America) scoring system - threatens primary challenges to any supporter of reform
  • The filibuster (60-vote threshold means 41 senators can veto popular legislation)
  • Rural state Democratic senators in competitive cycles
  • PLCAA immunity - removes financial pressure on manufacturers
  • Heller (2008) and Bruen (2022) - SCOTUS rulings expanding individual gun rights

What Project 2029 does differently

Housing Reform →

Housing: The NIMBY Iron Triangle

The housing crisis is a policy choice. Zoning laws that exclude density exist because homeowners, local governments, and real estate interests benefit from artificial scarcity.

Why Federal Housing Reform Has Never Worked

  • 1968 The Fair Housing Act passes following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. - the one moment of political will sufficient to overcome real estate industry opposition. Fifty years later, HUD's enforcement budget has never been adequately funded. The Act exists; enforcement does not. Segregation persists in housing outcomes despite the law.
  • State level California, the most expensive housing market in the country, has passed more than 100 housing reform bills since 2017 - and supply has barely increased. Each bill is implemented at the city level, where planning commissions and neighborhood groups exercise veto power over individual projects.
  • Federal limit The Supreme Court's Kelo v. City of New London (2005) expanded eminent domain, then triggered a backlash of state laws limiting it. The Commerce Clause authority that would allow federal zoning preemption has never been successfully used for this purpose. Federal housing policy operates primarily through funding conditions, not preemption.

Who blocks housing reform

  • Existing homeowners (benefiting from artificial home value inflation)
  • Real estate industry (NAR, NAHB) opposing density reforms that threaten margins
  • Local governments exercising zoning authority
  • Neighborhood groups and HOAs
  • HUD - chronically underfunded and politically compromised

What Project 2029 does differently

Media Reform →

Media: From Fairness Doctrine to Fox

The current media environment did not emerge naturally. It was built by deliberate policy choices - and unmade by deliberate policy choices. Both can be reversed.

The Deliberate Dismantling of Public Interest Media

  • 1949-1987 The Fairness Doctrine required broadcast licensees to present both sides of controversial public issues. It was not perfect, but it prevented the most extreme one-sided propaganda on public airwaves. The Reagan FCC, under Chairman Mark Fowler (who called TV "a toaster with pictures"), eliminated it in 1987 as part of a broader deregulatory agenda.
  • 1988 Rush Limbaugh's nationally syndicated show launches - the first program designed specifically to exploit the post-Fairness Doctrine landscape. Conservative talk radio expands from a handful of stations to 1,500+ stations over the next decade.
  • 1996 The Telecommunications Act of 1996 eliminates most limits on radio and TV station ownership. Clear Channel (now iHeartMedia) acquires more than 1,200 stations. Media consolidation accelerates. Local news staffs are gutted. Fox News launches the same year under the same regulatory framework.
  • Net neutrality Net neutrality (treating all internet traffic equally) was established in 2015, repealed in 2017, partially restored in 2024, and faces ongoing legal challenges. Each implementation requires a new legal theory because Congress has never passed statutory net neutrality. Without legislation, every FCC action is one court case away from reversal.

Who blocks media reform

  • Broadcast and cable incumbents (Comcast, Fox, Sinclair, iHeart) fighting any public interest obligations
  • First Amendment litigation strategy - claiming any content regulation is unconstitutional
  • Telecom industry ($650M+ lobbied 2020-2022 against net neutrality)
  • Billionaire media ownership (Murdoch, Musk) creating direct financial interest in deregulation

What Project 2029 does differently

Foreign Influence Reform

Foreign Influence: The AIPAC Exemption

The Foreign Agents Registration Act requires foreign government lobbying disclosure. AIPAC has operated outside that framework for 60 years. Here is how that happened.

The 1963 Exemption and Its Consequences

  • 1962-63 The Senate Foreign Relations Committee (Chairman J. William Fulbright) investigated AIPAC's predecessor organization and found it was lobbying on behalf of the Israeli government without registering as a foreign agent under FARA. Attorney General Robert Kennedy required the American Zionist Council to register. The organization dissolved and reconstituted as AIPAC - which has never been required to register.
  • Structure AIPAC legally claims it is a domestic lobbying organization, not a foreign agent, because it does not receive direct funding from the Israeli government. The distinction is disputed - it clearly coordinates with and advances Israeli government positions. But the legal structure allows it to operate as a domestic PAC while functioning as a foreign government lobby.
  • 2024 election AIPAC's affiliated PAC (United Democracy Project) spent more than $100 million in Democratic primary elections, specifically targeting progressive incumbents who criticized Israeli military conduct. This was the largest single-issue independent expenditure in primary history. It defeated multiple progressive incumbents.
  • Reform attempts Multiple proposals to close the AIPAC-FARA loophole have been introduced. None have received committee hearings. Members who raise FARA enforcement against AIPAC face immediate, well-funded primary challenges. The political cost of the proposal is high; the political benefit is low for individual members acting alone.

Why reform has failed

  • Individual political risk: proposing FARA reform triggers immediate primary challenge funding
  • Bipartisan alignment: AIPAC invests in both parties, creating dual protection
  • Conflation of policy criticism with anti-Semitism: creates a reputational attack that deters action
  • No natural reform constituency with comparable resources

What Project 2029 does differently

Constitutional Reform

Constitutional Amendments: The Hardest Path

The United States has passed 27 constitutional amendments. None since 1992. The Equal Rights Amendment has been pending in various forms for over a century. Project 2029 proposes 10. This is what we are up against.

The ERA: 100 Years of Near-Ratification

  • 1923 The Equal Rights Amendment is introduced for the first time by Alice Paul and Crystal Eastman, three years after women's suffrage. It has been introduced in every subsequent Congress.
  • 1972 The ERA passes Congress and is sent to states for ratification with a 7-year deadline. 35 of the required 38 states ratify. The campaign against it, led by Phyllis Schlafly and the STOP ERA movement, persuades the remaining states to refuse. The deadline passes.
  • 2020-2024 Nevada (2017), Illinois (2018), and Virginia (2020) ratify - reaching the 38-state threshold. The National Archives refuses to certify ratification, citing the expired deadline. The Biden administration DOJ concluded the ERA is not in effect. The legal status remains contested and unresolved.

Term Limits and Why They Require a Constitutional Convention

  • 1995 U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton (5-4): The Supreme Court ruled that states cannot impose term limits on federal representatives. Limiting congressional terms requires a constitutional amendment - states cannot do it unilaterally. This closed the state-level path to term limits and required the harder federal amendment process.
  • Pattern Members of Congress will not vote to limit their own tenure. Any term limit amendment must be proposed by a constitutional convention (the Article V alternative), which has never been used and carries significant risks of scope expansion. This is the one reform where the standard legislative path is definitionally blocked.

The structural problem with amendments

  • Requires 2/3 of both houses of Congress AND ratification by 3/4 of states (38 of 50)
  • Any 13 state legislatures can block ratification indefinitely
  • Rural state overrepresentation in Senate and ratification process creates structural veto
  • The last successful amendment (27th) took 202 years to ratify

What Project 2029 does differently

Education Reform →

Education: Property Taxes and the Inequality Machine

American schools are funded primarily by local property taxes - a system that has been challenged in courts for 50 years and survived every challenge.

San Antonio v. Rodriguez: The Door That Closed

  • 1973 San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez (5-4): Texas school districts with lower property values had significantly less per-pupil funding. The Supreme Court ruled this did not violate the Equal Protection Clause because education is not a fundamental right under the federal Constitution and wealth is not a suspect classification. The federal constitutional challenge to property-tax school funding was definitively closed.
  • State courts Advocates shifted to state courts. School funding challenges have been filed in virtually every state. Some succeeded (New Jersey's Abbott districts, Kentucky's entire system was declared unconstitutional). Many failed. Even successful cases face decades of implementation battles as legislatures minimally comply with court orders while opposing the underlying reform.
  • Student debt Biden's student debt cancellation plan (up to $20,000 per borrower) was struck down by the Supreme Court in Biden v. Nebraska (2023) using the major questions doctrine - the same tool used against EPA climate authority. The Court held that mass debt cancellation required explicit Congressional authorization.

Who blocks education reform

  • Wealthy district homeowners (benefiting from property-tax advantage)
  • Private school voucher interests (Betsy DeVos model)
  • Student loan servicers ($50B+ industry opposing cancellation)
  • A Supreme Court hostile to administrative action without explicit statutory authorization

What Project 2029 does differently

The Through-Line

The same obstacles. The same playbook. The same veto points.

Across every reform area, the same blocking mechanisms appear: the Senate filibuster, the Supreme Court's major questions doctrine, well-funded lobbying campaigns, individual senators with donor dependencies, and the slow erosion of reform between administrations.

These are not accidents. The filibuster was preserved specifically to protect the minority. The major questions doctrine was developed specifically to limit regulatory authority. The PLCAA was passed specifically to insulate an industry from accountability. These are features, not bugs - designed by those who benefit from the status quo.

Project 2029 is built around these obstacles. Every major proposal includes a primary legislative path and a fallback strategy. Every timeline accounts for the lobbying surge that will come. Every reform that requires 60 Senate votes either pairs with filibuster reform or has a 51-vote reconciliation pathway.

We are not the first to try. We are the first to try with the full record of every prior failure mapped and studied. That is the difference.

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Democracy → Healthcare → Economy → Workers → Environment → Education → Housing → Media → Security → Veterans →