While most House members were out this month rallying their supporters and beating the bushes for sufficient campaign funds to win reelection, a few Democrats were quietly working behind the scenes to plan for their possible takeover of the chamber next January. At first glance, the Democrats’ preparations might seem an attempt to mimic minority House Republicans’ 1994 campaign platform, “The Contract with America.”Under the tutelage of then-House Whip Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), who went on to become Speaker the following January, the GOP laid out its plans for taking control of the House in the 104th Congress (1995-96).

“The Contract with America” included ten major policy measures Republicans pledged to pass in their first 100-days in the majority, including welfare reform, anti-crime legislation and a presidential line-item veto. It also included a raft of internal House procedural reforms they promised to adopt on the opening day of the new Congress, such as term limits on committee chairmen and abolishing proxy voting. What the Democrats are doing today is markedly different from the 1994 “Contract” scenario.

For one thing, all House Republicans finalized and signed their Contract in September, well before the midterm elections and promised if they did not carry-out all their promises they should be thrown out of office at the next election. So far, Democrats have yet to coalesce around a common set of principles, let alone specific legislative details. Their move has been reactive rather than proactive — a pudding without a theme. Secondly, the Democrats’ efforts are focused more on passing legislation that will seal loopholes in the law that President Trump has exploited to circumvent Congress and the courts.

To date this belated pushback looks like an attempt to close the barn door after the horses have escaped; or, perhaps more accurately, to reconstruct a more durable barn, then rounding up the runaways and returning them to more secure stalls.

A leading proponent of this approach is Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, and its likely chairman if Democrats win back the majority. Relying on the same rebuilding analogy, Raskin said recently, “We have a massive reconstruction task ahead of us. Fortunately, reconstruction has a great history in our country.”Raskin has been leading the charge to reclaim the powers of Congress, not only by closing the barn door to future presidential encroachments on Congress’s prerogatives, but by codifying that reclamation.

He has already drafted bills to bar the president from accepting payments from foreign governments without congressional consent, and requiring congressional review before entering into any monetary settlements with his own government, such as the now defunct $1.8 billion victimization fund to reimburse those who claim to have been persecuted and prosecuted by government for their political views. Other Democratic members have given top priority to limiting presidential powers to unilaterally declare emergencies, as President Trump did in imposing tariffs on foreign nations, implementing questionable deportations, and deploying National Guard troops and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to arrest illegal criminal immigrants.

While some Democrats are already talking about using the impeachment power against the president (for a third time), others, like former President Barack Obama; former House member, ambassador to Japan and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel; and political strategist James Carville, are warning against going down that dead-end road again and reviving rancorous hostilities. Democrats are more focused for now on performing emergency triage to stop the bleeding of the First Branch and restoring the soundness of its original powers and responsibilities under the Constitution.

Their instruments of choice will be their existing investigative and oversight powers to shine a light on previous excessive wrongdoing and rooting out executive mismanagement, abuses of power, and corruption, some of which could lead to criminal indictments. Any immediate attempts at fully pursuing legislative fixes over the next two years will likely face vetoes by President Trump. It is unlikely that Democrats will gain sufficient seats next month to produce a two-thirds vote in both houses to override those vetoes.

Meantime, support remains high in both chambers for ethics reforms to push back on rampant corruption in both branches. This year may not be a 1994-styled congressional reform revolution, with substantive policy themes and glitzy procedural gimmicks. It nevertheless could produce some shift in powers from the executive branch back to the legislative. To spur turnout, the president has repeatedly urged his supporters to “pretend I am on the ballot.”In a spirit of faux bipartisanship, Democrats are gleefully embracing this call to play “let’s pretend.”

Don Wolfensberger is a 28-year congressional staff veteran, culminating as chief of staff of the House Rules Committee. He is author of, “Congress and the People: Deliberative Democracy on Trial” (2000), and, “Changing Cultures in Congress: From Fair Play to Power Plays” (2018).