Reflections on Dēmos: Heather McGhee

The expression “over the horizon” also reflected a confidence that we were looking not left or right for ideas but into the inevitable future.

In the early days of Dēmos, we often said that we were advocating for “over the horizon” ideas. It was a way to explain why we weren’t weighing in on every political debate of the moment, and why we often promoted policies that had no chance of passing that year or even the next. The expression “over the horizon” also reflected a confidence that we were looking not left or right for ideas but into the inevitable future. The long-term megatrends of wealth inequality and demographic change demanded a next generation of solutions. Now, 25 years after our founding, and seven years after my last day as President of Demos, I’m honored to reflect on what my colleagues have built. 

The founding efforts of people like Stephen Heintz, David Callahan, Charlie Halpern, and Miles Rapoport led to a small but bold experiment in policy advocacy, called Dēmos: A Network for Ideas and Action. At the turn of the 21st century, conservative think tanks like the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the American Enterprise Institute had found a way to set the parameters of elite consensus, influencing the Sunday talk shows and editorial pages, supplying congressional staffers with white papers, and testifying before committees. Progressives had an array of successful single-issue advocacy organizations, but we always seemed to be less than the sum of our parts. The idea of a nimble, multi-issue, “think and do” tank using research to shape the public conversation in a progressive direction was novel and, without an endowment or billionaire investors, never a sure thing. 

Nevertheless, we persisted. When the brilliant Tamara Draut (author of "Strapped and Sleeping Giant") made me her first hire in the Economic Opportunity Program, we brought our lived experience to our research. I was working an entry-level job and drowning in student loan and credit card debt; Tamara was from a working-class family and also knew what it was like to dread the phone ringing and feel trapped by debt. We didn’t have to go far. I reviewed my own credit card agreements to identify the most unfair lender practices, and we crafted consumer protections to stop them. We quickly learned that a combination of racism and greed had replaced common-sense safeguards throughout the lending market. Our work decrying rising debt put us on the radar of a visionary bankruptcy law professor, Elizabeth Warren. Professor Warren, in turn, introduced us to her frequent co-author, her daughter Amelia. An expert in organizational management, Amelia Warren-Tyagi would become our board chair and my partner in leadership after I succeeded Miles Rapoport as president in 2014. 

Although we experienced a tremendous victory when our consumer protection ideas became law with the Credit CARD Act, it was a small consolation prize for an even steeper loss—early warnings of predatory lending and rampant speculation in the securitization market went unheeded, sparking the financial crisis and Great Recession. Trillions in lost household wealth, a generation of Black and brown homeownership disappeared, and all of it was heartbreakingly preventable. 

What the financial crisis taught us at Dēmos was that the “smartest” guys in the room—and they were almost always guys—didn’t know any better than the people who were struggling to make ends meet. If our leaders had asked anybody who fell victim to the predation and unregulated chaos of the lending market, they would have told them that our policies were encouraging an unsustainable house of cards. But too few people in power would listen.  

Dēmos has become a think tank for movement-building organizations.   

Looking back on it, I think that brutal lesson of expert failure was a large part of why we began to more systematically connect our policy and legal tools to the grassroots organizers who were lifting up problems—and solutions—in communities around the country. To address the disconnect between voters' concerns and policymakers' agendas, we also encouraged our partners to advance money in politics and voter access reforms at the state level. We called it the Inclusive Democracy Project (IDP), and together with our partners, we helped win pro-democracy reforms in a dozen states as well as the future state of Washington, D.C. Over a decade of existence, IDP became not just one project of many but a new DNA for the organization. Dēmos has become a think tank for movement-building organizations, holding authentic relationships with grassroots groups across the country that inform and drive our success.   

We’ve always had a culture of self-reflection and improvement. In 2014, when I became president, I launched an ambitious Racial Equity Transformation of the organization. I was lucky to have a colleague who shared my vision and brought her dedication and high standards to an effort for which there wasn’t a pre-existing road map. Lucy Mayo would go on to write that road map, which has been used by dozens of other organizations seeking to live out their values. Through the transformation process, Dēmos grew into a majority person of color think tank and infused a strategic understanding of race and racism throughout our work and theory of change, something that continues to this day.  

All the while, what has made Dēmos special has been its people. I know I’m biased—I basically grew up there, from age 22 onward—but our colleagues on the staff and board are some of the most authentic, intelligent, and inspiring people I’ve met in my professional life. This model was set at the top; For 13 years, Miles Rapoport led with warmth and indefatigable enthusiasm, always considerate of others and quick to offer praise and encouragement. The board chair during most of Miles’ tenure was another sterling leader, Rockefeller Brothers Fund President Stephen Heintz. Dēmos’ donors, board members and funding partners are also a rare kind of supporter: often humble, willing to take risks, and genuinely dedicated to the long, hard work of making change. 

One of those board members from my days in leadership at Dēmos was the inimitable Taifa Smith Butler. She was a force even then, bringing insights and humor to long strategy sessions about the future of democracy. When the right moment came, I was completely certain that she should run Dēmos, bringing her economic policy expertise, management skills, and state-level perspective to the helm. Five years into her leadership, Dēmos now has deeper connections to Black and brown communities, more understanding of state-level power-builders, and greater access to innovative local ideas than we ever have. At a time when the federal government has been captured by would-be autocrats and the broligarchy, this focus also seems prescient. 

Today, most of the ideas that we considered “over-the-horizon” twenty and ten years ago are now firmly in the center of the political debate.

Today, most of the ideas that we considered “over-the-horizon” twenty and ten years ago are now firmly in the center of the political debate. They’ve all become law at the state or local level, from same-day and automatic voter registration and public financing of campaigns to universal child  care, public banking, and debt-free college. Now it’s time to look to the horizon again. It may seem hard to think about bold 21st-century solutions when this administration has tried to dismantle all the progress of the 20th century, but if anyone can, it’s Dēmos. Through transformative research and grassroots collaboration, Dēmos is developing the ideas that will counter cynicism, inspire participation, and ultimately save our democracy. This period of overreach has put the administration and its enablers—from corporations to billionaires to the right-wing think tanks they fund—far out of step with the concerns of ordinary Americans. That, ultimately, will be their downfall. Fresh ideas and authentic leaders are flooding the breach between the ruling party and the American people, and Dēmos is right there, equipping voters, organizers, and new leaders with the tools needed for systemic change. From the beginning, Demos has been steadfast in knowing that inequality was a poison to our economy, and more democracy is the cure. In a recent blog, Taifa discussed the cyclical nature of economic and political power and posed a critical question for this moment: “What if the cycle weren’t vicious? What if it were virtuous?” For 25 years, Dēmos has warned of this moment and now stands prepared to help usher us out of it.