CT Blue

So, I'm beginning to decompress from Tuesday's disaster. Overall, I think I agree with the analysis here. In a nutshell, we lost because the national party has sold its soul to Wall Street and corporate interests, but it is still not as satisfactory to those interests as the Republican Party, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate America. Read the whole thing.

Personally, I shudder at the thought of the 2016 election. The Democrats should win big, but they are fully capable of throwing the election away, and this time the stakes could be huge. What are the odds that young people will turn out in droves to vote for a seventy year old woman who might throw some platitudes at them, but is, in fact, a tool of Wall Street? I firmly believe that in 2016 the crazies on the Republican side will get what they claim is their due: a candidate as crazy as them. The Democrats may just be setting up the country and the world for the election of a president of the United States who is certifiably nuts, or, at the very least, a science denying, religion embracing (though not necessarily believing) right wing extremist.

If you want people to vote for you, you have to give them something worth voting for. There are a number of things the Democrats could push that would be hugely popular that we can safely assume the Republicans would never endorse. Moreover, I would argue that each of them would be good public policy and many of them would be incredibly useful in pulling us out of the economic doldrums in which the Republicans, with a lot of Democratic help, have insisted we remain.

Consider this: the people of Arkansas just voted overwhelmingly for a minimum wage hike while also electing a Senator who would do whatever he could to make sure such a thing never happens at the Federal level. It seems like all those folks who came to vote to give themselves a raise should have been Democratic voters. You'd think so wouldn't you? But the guy they sent packing, Mark Pryor, couldn't see past the interests of Wal-Mart. He supported the relatively meagre raise in the state initiative, but opposed the still meagre Obama proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10. A real Democrat should have owned that issue, but he was pretty much indistinguishable from his opponent.

So, a few suggestions for some issues that would really bring people out to vote.

1. We should free our young people from debt peonage. All federal student loan debt should be forgiven. As I'll argue below, higher education should be free in the first place. Forgiving student loan debt would free up a generation burdened by heavy debt to spend that money elsewhere, stimulating the economy and making at least some progress toward restoring the middle class. If they could forgive debt in ancient times we can do it now, in these allegedly more enlightened times, particularly because the creditor in this case is the U.S. government, which doesn't need the money and whose economy would be better off for the cancellation.
2. Make public higher education free, obviating the need for student loans in the future. There was a time when getting a high school education was considered an achievement on its own, and all that most people needed to get a good job. Nowadays, a college degree is a necessary prerequisite for almost any job that doesn't involve flipping burgers or stocking shelves. It is the 21st century equivalent of a mid twentieth century high school diploma. High school was free in 1880; free in 1900; free in 1950; and free today. It's time we made a university education free. It would be an investment in our future well worth the relatively meagre cost. Private universities could charge what they like, but don't believe for a second that costs at Harvard and Yale wouldn't also come down, and, for purposes of this post, don't believe for a minute that prospective students and the parents who are faced with a choice between crippling payments, indebted children, or uneducated children condemned to a life at Wal-Mart wouldn't be eager to vote for the party that promised some relief.
3. Raise taxes on the rich. Really. Another no brainer. In particular, raise the estate tax on billion dollar estates. The Kochs are bad enough. We don't need their offspring retaining ownership of one of our political parties. They call it the death tax, but surely we can come up with a competing and more accurate moniker.
4. Abolish the social security cap. When the present cap on social security taxes was enacted, it was calculated using the assumption that the distribution of income would remain fairly stable. It's only because of the rising level of inequality that the Social Security trust fund faces a problem in the out years. Abolish the cap and the problem disappears. In fact, if we abolished the cap, we could probably lower the overall rate, raise benefits, and still fully fund the system. One small step toward reversing the march of inequality.
5. Don't like Obamacare? Okay, how does Medicare for all sound? Why give away money to the insurance companies when the government can do a far better job of providing insurance for far fewer dollars.
6. Be louder and prouder about raising the minimum wage, and don't argue for half measures. Go the distance, all the way back to 1968 or so, and demand a minimum wage equivalent to that we had in those bygone years.
7. Mandatory sick leave, another no-brainer.
8. Child care. Yet another no-brainer.

Recently, someone read a list of Dan Malloy's progressive achievements to me. It was not inconsiderable, but only a few items on the list affected the broader population. Immigration policy, for instance, affects some people quite a lot; but for most it is a blip. We can't win by focusing like a laser on identity politics issues. We shouldn't abandon them, but front and center should be issues that affect almost everyone. Nor should we shy away from an issue on the grounds that we might not be able to succeed right away. Republicans never give up; Democrats never try. The college loan issue would be a winning one for us, whether or not the Republicans can ultimately prevent its passage. If they do, then we can beat them over the head with that. Another thing: there are certain people we are never going to get: the total gun nuts, the religious whackos, etc. Stop trying. It's a futile endeavor and it only makes us look weak.

My list is not all inclusive, but you get the gist.

Finally, we need to take another page from the Republican play book. You see it all the time. Ask them a question, and they have an answer, and oddly enough, every one has the same answer using the same phrases. Ask them about global warming, and they duck by telling you that “I am not a scientist”. Sure it's intellectually barren, but it works. The Democrats have to start messaging like that. One nice thing about this election was that it stripped us of a lot of Blue Dogs, which means the remaining Democrats, should they wish to survive, can start talking together like real Democrats.

The fact is, we can't get by on just being the non-crazy party. It's amazing how quickly people forget the effects of crazy, particuarly when, like this year, the media is determined not to remind them.

Epilogue: I'm not kidding myself. The Democrats won't advocate much, if any of the above. They are far too beholden to Wall Street.