The very smartest thing the Democratic Party could possibly do is to go over the last ten years of legislation and review it, no matter how much it cost to do.
They should then remove anything draconian in either direction and rewrite the laws with that tone.
In the end, drug users should get less jail time than rapists. Somebody who gains a child's confidence only to create child porn should be treated much like a rapist, while someone whose computer simply has such a picture on it without solid proof that it's being intentionally distributed should be left alone. After these more reasonable laws are in place, laws that protect actual victims, a citizen who is not a convicted felon and is not diagnosed with a serious uncured (not untreated) psychiatric condition should be able to buy as much gun as he or she can afford.
We've moved far far away from "let the punishment fit the crime" because zealots are louder than the massive center. Moving back will make enemies of some, but will attract a lot more. Real criminals, like high-level drug dealers, child porn manufacturers, robbers and rapists love the present situation. Their serious crimes are required to carry less real jail time in order to make room for all the "minimum mandatory" criminals without victims.
Public communications (PBS, NPR) should be fully re-funded. Corporations own nearly all mass communications, and that is a dangerous situation. I'll bite my tongue and not advocate restricting what they can say on corporate-owned stations, but there has to be access to communications for all points of view.
Somebody else here suggested outlawing the adding of a pet clause to an otherwise very unrelated bill, making that clause stand on its own merits. That should happen.
"Sense of Congress" or "Intent of Congress" resolutions should be outlawed in legislation. Bills should be plain on their faces about what they intend to do, without opportunities for legal contortionists to twist things like interstate commerce into justification for what would, lacking the convoluted rationale, be seen as simply unconstitutional.
Judges should be judges. The constitution put them there to be so, whether somebody thinks them "activist" or not. Their "activism" was the idea. Judges were not intended to march in lockstep with legislators. If they were, their description as a "check" would be nonsense.
The party that gets in power and does these things and continues to do them will never leave.
But, of course, there will be a cost to them to do this. That cost will be the difference between whatever money is donated by the vast middle just to see that the people retain power and the amount that would be, under present conditions, be donated by a smaller but far wealthier subset, whether that be the Teamsters or AT&T.
