Democrats Won the Majority: What Progressively Comes Next

Ryan Haylett

Democrats! you've just won both chambers! Now tell us what you plan to do when you're sworn in...

Ryan Haylett

I make this demand because I've watched this party win before, and I've watched it turn a mandate into a strongly worded letter. That's the story of the last twenty years. Election Day isn't the finish line. It's the starting gun.

Ryan Haylett

Here's what the receipts say. Chuck Schumer has long been criticized for his ties to Wall Street donors and for the Senate Majority PAC, the machine run by J.B. Poersch. That's the leader of the caucus. The guy who sets the agenda. And somehow the agenda keeps ending up friendly to the people writing the checks. Funny how that works.

Ryan Haylett

Then there's Cory Booker. In 2018 he pledged not to take corporate PAC money. Fine. But he's drawn heavy individual and industry money from Wall Street, from private equity, from Big Pharma. He defended Bain Capital back in 2012. And in 2017 he voted against a Sanders amendment that would have allowed importing cheaper prescription drugs from Canada. Cheaper drugs. Voted no. Then he temporarily paused pharma donations. Temporarily. That word is doing a lot of work.

Ryan Haylett

Now, let me be fair about what's fact and what's my read. The donations and the vote are on the record. Whether that's corruption or just the ordinary rot of a system that runs on money, that's interpretation. My read? It doesn't matter. When your biggest donors benefit from the status quo, the status quo wins. Every time. That's not a conspiracy. That's an incentive structure.

Ryan Haylett

And look at what's happening right now. The ACLU is warning that a bipartisan Senate permitting bill could let ICE build concentration camps with, quote, no meaningful legal recourse. Sheldon Whitehouse's office says there's no plausible reading of the bill that exempts detention centers from environmental review. Okay. Maybe they're right. But the ACLU is knocking on doors because they don't trust the process, and after the big bullshit bill poured thirty eight billion dollars into warehouse concentration camps, why should anybody?

Ryan Haylett

So here's the good news. Bernie Sanders was right. I know, shocking. The man's been right about this for decades while the party patted him on the head. Right after the midterms he put out a video saying health care must be considered a human right, not a privilege, and that Medicare for All is supported by sixty six percent of Americans. That's his number, by the way, from his video.

Ryan Haylett

And he laid out a path. Reconciliation. Fifty one votes. Lower the Medicare eligibility age from sixty five to fifty five. Cover dental, vision, and hearing. Guarantee coverage for every child from birth through nineteen. Roll back the Medicaid cuts from the big bullshit bill. That's not the whole dream. That's the staircase. And Politico reports he'll likely chair the Senate Health Committee. So there's a platform.

Ryan Haylett

Now, the catch. Trump will likely veto it. And Politico says it's unclear whether new senators who won in red states, like Annie Andrews in South Carolina and Adam Hamilton in Kansas, would back it. Ron Wyden signed on to Medicare for All in September, which shocked the health care world. But two anonymous sources told Politico he saw it as a way to open discussion, not a legislative plan. His spokesman disputes that. So we'll see.

Ryan Haylett

My answer to the veto problem? Make them veto it. Force the vote. Put it on his desk. Let him explain to a country where two thirds supposedly want this why he said no. That's not losing. That's a campaign ad that writes itself. The old Democratic move is to never send the bill because it might fail. That's cowardice dressed up as strategy.

Ryan Haylett

And this is why the new class matters. Abdul El-Sayed, a doctor turned public health official, who wrote a book on Medicare for All and ran on three things: money out of politics, money in your pocket, Medicare for All. Imagine that. A candidate who says what he wants. James Talarico, who refused corporate PAC money and focused on billionaire corruption, education, and insulin price caps. Those are not abstract ideas. Those are your pharmacy bill.

Ryan Haylett

Add Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and her squad in the House, and you've got a bloc that can force floor votes instead of waiting for permission from a donor friendly leadership. That's the takeover. Not a coup. A primary, a vote, a whip count. Boring, legal, and terrifying to the people who like things the way they are.

Ryan Haylett

Now the part Democrats hate hearing. Abolish ICE. End the private detention contracts. Don't hand them faster permitting for the concentration camps. A GAO report found ICE spent more than a billion dollars trying to convert eleven warehouses without reviews, ran into court challenges, and wasted millions on nonrecoverable costs. And that's the agency we're told is efficient. You can't reform a machine that was built to do exactly what it's doing.

Ryan Haylett

And Iran. Get the fuck out. Don't escalate, don't bomb, don't let the executive branch drag us into another war with no declaration and no end. Sanders and the progressives have been warning about this exact pattern: executive overreach, plus a Congress that bows to the defense establishment. If Democrats want to prove they're different, they can start by making it illegal to do this without a vote.

Ryan Haylett

Then accountability. Richard Blumenthal is expected to lead the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and he's already sent letters to dozens of companies, including Tether, Binance, and World Liberty Financial, plus the folks who donated to Trump's ballroom, with a January fourth, twenty twenty seven deadline before considering, quote, alternative measures. That's a start. Use the subpoenas. Use all of it.

Ryan Haylett

And the Epstein files. Release them, while protecting survivors’ identities. We know enough to demand a real investigation. A New York Times review of the January 2026 release found more than 38,000 references to Trump and related terms, including Melania Trump and Mar-a-Lago, across more than 5,300 files. Trump and Epstein were best friends, there is no denying that.

Ryan Haylett

Virginia Giuffre testified that Ghislaine Maxwell recruited her as a teenager while she worked at Mar a Lago. The Wall Street Journal reported that club employees warned each other Epstein sometimes exposed himself during spa house calls, and that an eighteen year old worker complained to her bosses that he pressured her for sex. That raises serious fucking questions about who knew what, and when. Investigate the evidence, follow it wherever it leads, and protect the survivors.

Ryan Haylett

And Trump's cabinet? Stop treating cruelty as an abstract debate. Under Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the administration admitted it sent Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a prison in El Salvador by mistake, despite a court order protecting him from removal there. The Supreme Court ordered the government to facilitate his return. Sending a man into that hell in defiance of his legal protections is evil shit. Investigate the officials responsible, and prosecute any crimes the evidence establishes.

Ryan Haylett

So here's my message. Once you're sworn in, you'll have the majority. You have a mandate. You have a new class that doesn't owe Wall Street a thing. If Schumer and Booker won't move, then move them. Primary them. Pressure them. Audit them. Because the voters didn't send you there to be polite. They sent you there to finally get shit done.