If I had the same power and influence as Grover Norquist, I would sponsor a bunch of insurgent primary challengers against insufficiently progressive Democrats. We can call them Progressive Democrats (PD’s). In our current environment I envision two different kinds of candidates: reforming candidates and policy candidates. There is no reason someone cannot be both a reforming and a policy candidate, but they should at least be one or the other.
Reforming candidates would be primarily concerned with addressing violations of the law, corruption, and correcting the imbalance of powers in Washington. They would agree to pursue the following agenda and not back down when accused of undermining our national security in a time of war.
They would pledge to:
Defund the Pentagon if they do not provide a date certain for American troops to be removed from Iraq. No permanent bases will be put in Iraq, and all military cooperation will be contingent on the consent of the Iraqi government.
Defund the National Security Agency if they do not cease and desist from doing warrantless wiretapping and testify on the extent and nature of their activities before the ENTIRE intelligence committees of both the House and the Senate.
Defund the Central Intelligence Agency unless they cease using extraordinary rendition to torture suspected terrorists.
Push for rigorous ethics reforms, including prohibitions on gifts and gratuities, a ban on moving from government positions to lobbying positions (say, for three years).
Push for strong election reforms, including paper trails for auditible elections, and public funding, and free television time.
Create a Congressional auditor for military procurement contracts. This position would be administratively similar to the CIA’s Inspector General. The Defense Secretary would not hire them and could not fire them.
Pledge to treat violations of American treaties as high crimes and misdemeanors.
There is nothing particularly partisan about the above agenda. I don’t consider those issues to be essentially progressive. If anything, they trend more toward the libertarian. But, that is one reason why the reforming agenda has the potential for a broader appeal than just among progressive Democrats.
The Policy PD’s would push for a total reform of our health care system. The goal would be to provide all American citizens with access to a bare bones medical plan. It would seek to keep costs under control and not destroy the private insurance industry. Essentially, all Americans would be allowed two annual visits to a doctor and two visits to a dentist. All necessary medical and dental procedures would be heavily subsidized. Life-saving drugs would be heavily subsidized. For anything more, private insurance would be required.
Policy PD’s would also push for free higher education. Individual states could work out how to devise their systems and meet federal requirements for funding.
Policy PD’s would also pledge to work to balance the budget through more progressive taxation and higher taxes on dividends, capital gains, and estates. And they would work to undo the bankruptcy bill.
If we can figure out how to recruit and fund candidates that will pledge to run on either/both the reforming or policy platform, we could remake the Democratic Party without having to leave it.
The Policy PD’s would push for a total reform of our health care system.
I appreciate the effort, but is your Policy PD idea just based on healthcare such a good idea? Is what you wrote here even a real reform proposal, or just an evil hoax? If rationing is the objective (as it seems to be), is it better to give poor people a taste of the forbidden fruit only, but no more. Does that in any way make medical and public health sense?
This is not how I wish to remake the party or the Health care system!
It’s not rationing. It’s a guarantee to all Americans that they can get preventative care, necessary surgery and other procedures, and life saving prescription drugs.
Beyond that, you need to buy insurance. If that is rationing, let’s have more of it.
Maybe I just did not understand your proposal? When you said:
all Americans would be allowed two annual visits to a doctor and two visits to a dentist. All necessary medical and dental procedures would be heavily subsidized.
did you mean 2 preventive visits and all necessay other visits would be heavily subsidized, or just the 2 visits no matter what. It takes many visits to solve most problems.
Assuming you meant all necessary visits are subsidized no matter how many, the challenge then becomes who and how are such necessities determined?
Additional visits would have to be authorized by the doctor and would fall into the category of necessary procedures.
It’s really about giving everyone a minimum of preventative care w/o incentivizing people to take their kids to the doctor everytime they have a sniffle.
That’s definitely a good plan. We will obviously need to develop a huge grass roots push to put the “wind in the sails” for those candidates.
At our recent state wide Dem-NPL convention I asked almost everyone young and old whether they had any faith in the the DLC-national campaign consults-etc.
Not one person expressed any confidence in the national D leadership to accomplish success in 2006.
Me, I have the fingers crossed the toes crossed, and if I could think of anything else to cross I do that too.
I love this!!!!! That is why I am getting involved at the party level to try and get our party back to what it is meant to be.
It worked for the religious right.
I don’t think the majority of the electorate cares enough about the issues you raise here to be inspired to vote affirmatively for those who advocate preventing the abuses. Transgressions by NSA, CIA, BushCo, rending and/or killing citizens from foreign lands; the majority of the populace will only care about these things if they can be shown that these specific acts threaten their wallets and bank accounts.
And as long as the fear-inducing wingnut propaganda is succesful, a huge segment of the population will remain more scared of terrorist acts than of the erosion of their own constitutional liberties.
Certainly the taxation issues would resonate if the Dem leadersip had the courage to articulate clearly how the tax structure robs the working class to further enrich the wealthy, but the Dem leadership won’t do that effectively because they want the big corporate money to keep flowing in to their own coffers.
Same with health care issues. Truthtelling could work to make people aware that health care for all is attainable and less costly in the long run, (not to mention that the fact that the US is the only major first world country that doesn’t have a system that supports universal health care for all is an embarrassment, is a sign that gives the lie to our collective. denial-soaked delusion that we are the greatest and strongest and most exceptional country); but truthtelling would expose the avarice of the big healthcare corporations who would in turn give less money to the political campaigns of those exposing them.
Which is why in ’08 we need our own candidates and they need to be funded by the people, not the corporations. A party within a party.
I agree. My central point, perhaps poorly emphasized, was that we shouldn’t expect too many people to make their voting decisions based on the inherent odiousness and transgressive nature of Bush regime policies and actions; that we have to find the language to define the erosion of constitutional liberties represented by BushCo authoritarianism as a direct and personal assault on the individual lives, lifestyles and livlihood of members of the electorate.
Despite what we may want to believe, the vast majority of people vote based on sentiment, (on emotion), rather than based on evaluative analysis and considered reason.
The GOP strategists know this and it’s a large part of why their propaganda works so well.
I don’t have your optimism that reform is even possible in such an entrenched and corrupt system, but the world would be a much better place if you did have that kind of power and influence.