The Table of Shared Values.

The Democrats should focus on shared values in 2026 and beyond. Our shared values are the table we build our lives atop. The type of table we share determines what can and cannot go on top of the table. When discussing policy, candidates should explicitly point to the shared values they support, like fairness, opportunity, environment, education (for its own sake and for its commercial value), community, curiosity, due process, rehabilitation and healing, growth both personal and economic, rest, security, liberty, and choice.

In order to excite voters, Democrats need to announce policy innovations related to those values, but the core of the argument isn’t the policy, it’s the values. The legs of the table are the strongest values, like democracy—choosing our leaders, like labor protections—choosing whom to work for and being able to say no to bad things like unsafe or unsanitary conditions and unethical practices at our jobs. The policies that support those legs are things like labor law, legislation against gerrymandering, and universal healthcare so you can quit a bad job without having to go without healthcare.

There are members of this administration who have either through voice or policy, done things like cancelled transgender military service, called for women to not be able to vote, called for deporting people on visas because they don’t like what those people say. They have shown hostility to our table of shared values. We believe in letting people serve the country, in women being allowed to vote, and in letting people here on visas speak their minds so we know how we can make the table better.

All of our shared values matter. They can be strengthened and improved. They must be discussed by Democrats, to remind the people what the table looks like, and they can talk about what they put on theirs, what they keep off of it. Too many of this administration priorities are vandalizing the table, letting things be put in the middle that don’t belong, and forcing people to remove what they should keep. If Democrats make the clear, and if they protect the table when elected, we will be in better hands.

Other shared values that don’t get as much of a voice. Things like promoting reading—personal growth, education for its own sake. Democrats should talk about their favorite books more, or even just ones they have read for fun. Or talk about a book you didn’t like—that it’s okay to not like every book, or to find some hard to read or boring.

The table of shared values is at the core of America, and Democrats need to put it at the core of their campaigns to remind voters why America exists. Republicans often talk of values, but when you look at the table they call for, it has two legs and spikes on the edge to keep people away. Their table’s values makes you sit on six-foot-high stools that you have to either pay a million dollars for or inherit from your parents. Their terrible table is worth contrasting with the ones the Democrats support.