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There are a few things I'm thinking about with regard to various Democratic presidential candidate proposals that don't tend to come up in regular policy discussions.
1) What's the filibuster strategy? Can the proposal be done with a reconciliation bill, does the proponent support ending the filibuster, or are they counting on getting votes from more Republicans than supported the 2009 stimulus bill (lol)?
2) What's the judicial strategy? How strong are the precedents for the policy proposal? How easy would it be for Republican-appointed judges to find a bad-faith way to try to toss it?
3) How quickly can the policy spin up? Is it going to start benefiting people relatively quickly? Or does it require several years of ACA-style work before it fully takes effect? If the latter, what happens if the other party wins in the midterms? How difficult is it to undo?
4) How strongly is the candidate prioritizing the policy, given that presidents generally can't get their full agendas passed? Can the policy be stuck onto another bill or is it going to require a big legislative push?
These are all meta questions. But it's important for candidates to be thinking about, and explaining, what they expect to happen when their good ideas smash into governing institutions.
President Obama started with a big House majority and as many as 60 Senate Democrats but his agenda was still fairly circumscribed by these factors. Worth thinking about them now, since there's zero reason to expect the next Democratic president to have more favorable terrain.
