Democrats Need to Get Past Middle Ground, Win With Big Ideas in 2020
Middle Ground on Climate Change = Uninhabitable Planet * Middle Ground on Healthcare = 30K+ Die Each Year * Middle Ground on Wall Street = Multi-Trillion Bailouts * Middle Ground on Social Security = Work Until You Drop Dead * Middle Ground on Housing = 553K homeless --Warren Gunnels, staff director for Sen. Bernie Sanders
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It makes no difference to me at this point whether the Democratic presidential candidate is Bernie or any one of the other half-dozen or so contenders willing to speak the truth about the way forward. (It’s too early to decide, anyway--at least for me.)
Current events have driven home the importance of electing officials willing to take strong stands on issues; people who don’t start out offering compromise. No successful negotiation begins that way.
This need to elect people who stand for something, who don’t use the framework of the right to justify their ideas, and --most of all-- care about the many instead of the few, shouldn’t be limited to the high profile/national contests. Every official down to dogcatcher needs to step up for team USA, as in We the People.
The undercurrent of angst --encouraged by misinformation-- that drove some voters to stay home or think a vote for Trump would make their lives better still exists.
How we do bridge this divide? With Big Ideas. (Democrats can investigate the hell out of Trump and advocate at the same time. Really!)
Our national reality is ugly. So ugly that half-measures aren’t enough. This is a time for bold ideas, ideas that might even flop. Doing nothing, repealing and replacing, and/or cutting taxes for the wealthy shouldn’t be an option.
Huge numbers of Americans still struggle to meet their family’s basic needs, despite unemployment at its lowest rate in 50 years, and the stock market rising. A study from the Urban Institute, a nonprofit research organizationt found 40% of non-elderly Americans struggling to pay for basic needs like food and housing.
The rent is too damn high. Nationally, someone would need to make $17.90 an hour to rent a modest one-bedroom or $22.10 an hour to cover a two-bedroom place. In Los Angeles, which just reported a huge spike in homelessness, the price of having a roof over your head now exceeds $40 an hour.
‘Tax reform’ was a joke. The White House said workers' wages would rise $4,000 to $9,000 on average thanks to the GOP tax cuts. Congressional researchers found "no indication of a surge in wages in 2018." Real wages rose only 1.2% in 2018.
Two-thirds of people who file for bankruptcy cite medical issues as a key contributor to their financial downfall. More than one million people have lost their health insurance under the rump administration.
Hate crimes have risen for the third consecutive year. Data submitted by 16,149 law enforcement agencies released last November says 60% of victims were targeted because of bias against race, ethnicity or ancestry bias, 20% because of offenders’ religious bias and 15.8% because of the offenders’ sexual-orientation bias.
Thirteen states have passed laws limiting access to abortion. The overlap between anti-abortion activists and white supremacists is coming out into the open, driven by the fear of an increasingly racially mixed society.
In the wake of high voter turnout in the 2018 elections, ten state legislatures are actively considering nineteen bills aimed at restricting voting. More than a dozen states are considering legislation aimed at discriminating or demeaning LGBTQ humans.
Make Science Great Again. On Monday, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Andrew Wheeler criticized coverage of global warming, despite an undisputable rise in the number and severity of catastrophic weather events. And then there’s the little matter of the dozen-plus research projects reported on in 2019 all pointing to increasing dangers.
Racism is as American as apple pie. A review of the social media accounts of current and retired police officers around the country found 20% of current officers, and 40% of retired officers, made public posts or comments displaying bias, applauding violence, scoffing at due process, or using dehumanizing language.
Call them concentration camps, which is what they are. The sites used by immigration authorities to detain border crossers are called detention facilities and we’re asked to look the other way. . The White House's proposed 2020 budget includes expanding current capacity to 10,000 family detention beds, quadrupling the number of beds currently funded. Deaths, abuses of children, and inhumane conditions are treated as though they are aberrations.
Change isn’t a simple matter. It’s the net result of tens of millions of little actions adding up to something much greater.
What does not compromising mean? It means starting with FDR’s Second Bill of Rights, and adding the planet earth and gender to that equation:
We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.
Among these are:
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.
All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.
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Coming soon, camps for homeless people:
https://twitter.com/thedailybeast/status/1135685095787024385
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