So many times over the last year I’ve heard or read people talk about how the Democrats aren’t offering any alternatives to President Trump, and are simply anti-Trump, which isn’t exactly a winning message. Democrats (and people on the left, generally) tend to want something to vote for, not something to vote against.
In Britain, the minority parties form a minority coalition and create a “shadow government” where they appoint a “shadow prime minister” and shadow officials for all of the other cabinet positions (which they call ministries). The sole job of the shadow government is to offer the minority’s alternatives to the majority coalition’s policies.
I would love to see the Democratic National Committee, or maybe even someone else, create a shadow government in the U.S. that puts the liberal alternative front and center for the American public. That means that every time Trump or one of his cabinet officials (secretary of defense, secretary of state, secretary of education, etc.) considers or implements policy, we would have a shadow secretary who would essentially say “if we were in control, this is what we’d do in this scenario.”