Dems need a strong progressive platform--and must prevent the GOP from driving lib/con wedges to divide and splinter it. It can do this be keeping up a relentless focus on economic and security issues.
ECONOMIC and SECURITY ISSUES:
1. TERRORISM DEFENSE PLAN. Iraq was a lie from the start, designed to benefit the war, oil and gas industries at the expense of the American middle class. It has done nothing to protect us from terror. Neither has the spike in non-Iraq conventional military spending at home.
While it is true that we do have a moral responsibility not to make conditions in Iraq any worse, we also have a moral responsibility to acknowledge that the President has seriously and immorally abused his office by lying to Congress and the American People to lead us into an unnecessary war for reasons that boil down to the avarice of the few; and in so doing has destroyed respect for our nation abroad, weakened our diplomatic credibility, undermined international law, damaged the UN, increased terror threats worldwide, volatilized world energy markets, weakened our ability to respond militarily to real and necessary global crises, weakened our ability to respond to terror and natural disasters at home by putting our National Guard and its equipment in Iraq, subjected our troops to unnecessary attacks, and pushed Islamic states towards more extremist regimes (as in Iran and Palestine).
We need to withdraw from Iraq as soon as possible in an orderly manner, seriously considering Senator Biden's Partition Plan as an appropriate and realistic solution for a Balkanized Iraq.
We need to abandon "neocon" policies of unilateral action, preemptive strikes, lying to the UN, abusing human rights and scoffing at international law by authorizing torture, the holding of prisoners without charge, the imprisoning of people without evidence, and denying due process of law.
We need to reaffirm our former policy of cooperative and diplomatic engagement of other nations, including promoting--rather than obstructing--important international treaties such as Kyoto that are necessary to secure the peace and prosperity of the community of nations and the evironmental integrity of the planet.
And finally, we need put into place real protection against terror at home. That means better policing our borders; securing our nuclear facilities, transportation infrastructure, government targets, and other high-profile targets; and adopting an approach that recognizes that terror is not war but international crime, and that it cannot be defeated by conventional military spending or "war".
That includes supporting and promoting religious tolerance through the encouragement and fostering of secular governments that recognize a policy of division of church and state.
It also includes subsidization of tolerance-teaching public education programs in nations with terror problems--and favored trade status and other incentives for nations that develop such programs and foster such policies.
It further includes programs to spur economic development in communities that are now hotbeds of new terror recruits.
Think Marshall Plan, not Iraq II.
2. A single-payer national health insurance program (HIP) with comprehensive coverage and freedom of choice as to provider.
HIP would save hundreds of billions of dollars in costs and restore market efficiency to the health care industry by eliminating zero-value-added private insurers whose every dollar in expenses or profit is a dollar taken away from healthcare Americans need; by eliminating the redundant bureaucracies of Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA; by leveraging single-payer status to negotiate fair prices with drug companies; by cutting providers' overhead costs (billing and float); and by regulating excessive awards to lower malpractice rates.
HIP would represent a huge economic benefit to consumers--46 million workers and children would be insured, and would not have to pay for healthcare out-of-pocket; millions more would be freed of burdensome co-pays and deductibles and paying dental and/or eyecare out of pocket.
Employers would see substantial, and possibly even total reductions in their health benefits costs. In one version, employers could be required to pay into the national Health Insurance Fund at a modest rate for each employye-hour worked (without regard to F/T or P/T status); in the other, employer-subsidized insurance could be eliminated entirely.
Either choice means a huge shot in the arm to businesses' bottom lines, and a big help to industries struggling to compete in the global market. HIP would therefore help reduce outsourcing, while creating great new jobs as providers expand to administer care to more Americans than ever before.
HIP is a huge economic issue--one could pass it on market efficiency alone, without even getting to the right to health insurance.
3. ENERGY SECURITY: this includes not just "energy independence" (domestic production of most of our energy needs) but also "economic security". We are currently experiencing persistent, energy (oil&gas)-fueled inflation and chronic interest rate increases. This drag on our economy will not stop as long as we remain open to gaming and gouging by foreign oil producers and disruptive acts of war. If we don't change course, we'll send the American middle class into serious recession.
We need to set the most aggressive clean and renewable energy standards, fuel efficiency standards, green building standards, appliance and electrical efficiency standards, and green government standards in the world.
This is partly economic self defense. We need to be ahead of the curve in clean tech, which is the future--we need to be selling this stuff overseas. It is also as part of a desperately-needed NATURAL DISASTER AND GLOBAL WARMING DEFENSE PLAN. Permitting global warming and pollution to threaten our agriculture, our cities and our coastlines spells economic disaster.
Energy security is an economic issue of staggering importance.
4. A Natural Disaster and Global Warming Defense Plan includes CUTTING SUBSIDIES FOR OIL and natural gas and coal, and putting the money into R&D for clean and renewable energy. WE have to be proactive. Global warming is real, and threatens our physical and economic security.
5. Completely PUBLICLY-FUNDED ELECTIONS and a NATIONAL TELEVISION STATION (NTV) allowing ample and equal time to all candidates, national and local, to present their positions and participate in debates.
Our current system of rampant corporate lobbying has resulted in the above-mentioned energy-fueled chronic inflation and interest-rate hikes and probable recession; it has put impossible burdens on American business and consumers by artificially driving up health benefits and healthcare costs; it has permitted the war industry and military contractors in combination with the energy industry to conspire to mislead America into war in Iraq--with devastating impact on our debt burden, creating a squeeze on social spending now, threatening to choke Social Security in the future.
These anti-middle-class, anti-consumer policies are just a few of those brought about by government by and for the rich. They constitute a drag on our economy by forcing consumers to submit to cash grabs by the supply-side plutocratic ascendancy.
Publicly-funded elections might be the single most important economic issue facing America.
6. Saving Social Security.
7. We need to BALANCE THE BUDGET to prevent the squeezing of social programs, and to stop supply-side sowing of Debt to choke Social Security in the future.
8. Balancing the budget entails progressive tax reform reversing tax cuts for the rich and eliminating loopholes and dodges.
That means creating a simple, progressive, consumer-friendly federal income tax code. One in in which the federal government does not act as a drag on consumption in a regressive system in which 31% of our revenues are raised through payroll taxes and 35% in federal income tax.
The poor should not pay federal income tax at all; the middle class should pay less; and the rich should pay their fair share. The rich should also be taxed progressively, like the rest of the populace. That means additional tax brackets.
9. Balancing the budget also entails cutting war pork. That means no more preemptive wars and no-bid contracts. It means getting out of Iraq as soon as possible, possibly through a partitioned Iraq stabilized with UN forces.
It also means erasing the GOP's absurd non-Iraq increases in conventional military spending that do nothing to protect us against terror. We need a smarter, smaller, more efficient army. It's not our job to permanently occupy nations. It was bad business for the British in their day, and it's still bad business now.
All of the above ought to be planks in a progressive platform designed to unite the middle class.
LIB/CON WEDGE ISSUES
The following issues are divisive WEDGES that splinter the middle class and should NOT be emphasized in democratic campaigns. That does not mean that candidates shouldn't say where they stand on these issues. It means they should say it quickly, say it's an issue the American People have to decide, and then get back immediately to the unifying, progressive issue they were talking about.
1. Abortion. Big divider, big wedge. State your position and quickly get back on the progressive platform. If dems as a party run nationwide as progressives and they'll win big and find themselves able to appoint liberal judges. If they run as liberals on wedge issues nation-wide, just watch what happens.
2. STEM CELLS are part of the abortion wedge. State your position and move on.
3. Gay marriage. State your position--point out that an anti-gay-marriage amendment is essentially silly--and move on.
CONCLUSION:
A national platform that embraces Economic and Security Issues and minimizes wedge differences will get farther in our Utahs and win more elections than a platform that deliberately focuses attention on wedge issues.
