Let's talk about what Democrats should talk about to win 2018 and 2020; here are my five ideas

[ivwshane]

I never said they weren’t free market capable. And the free market might perform it better, we don’t know because we just don’t know.

Yes I'm sure the free market could do it better but no one stepped up because there is just too much money to be made! I guess we will never know. /eye roll

 

[Bitek]

I say go right after the GOP "strengths" and stay away from proposing distracting, divisive policies in the midterms. They can't jump right into $32T Medicare for all proposals without softening the ground first.

Stay on the story lines Trump created, but make him pay defense, rather than have him attack their ideas with his much larger megaphone.

Just attack how fucked up and rigged the tax bill was, how Trump is screwing up healthcare, and how foriegn policy is a disaster.

Eg. Piggyback of the idea of NK it's a giant threat, but Trump fucked it up and now they are building missles.

 

[HomerJS]

I never said they weren’t free market capable. And the free market might perform it better, we don’t know because we just don’t know.

Didn't "free markets" get us the '08 meltdown??

 

[UglyCasanova]

Didn't "free markets" get us the '08 meltdown??

Government holds a great deal of blame as well. Gov policy encouraged risky lending in the pursuit of expanding home ownership. People were definitely getting filthy rich off it for sure, but the GSE's and HUD pushed lending policies to help low income borrowers buy a house and ultimately promoted risky lending.

 

[HomerJS]

Here's a couple for the list.

Medicare for all
Red state people aren't as much against it as you think. Remember the GOP proposed cuts to the program. RS people made signs "keep your hands off my Medicare". Red State people actually liked the ACA once they were signed in

Immigration reform including... guest worker program.
Fine companies/people for hiring undocumented.
More fair admissions criteria. (No more heavy proliferation of supermodels)
Assistance to South American countries to round up gangs.

Wealth gap. End policies that favor the top 1%. Reverse tax cuts on top 1%

Bigger push federal investment in alternative energy focused in coal states. Long term replacement to fossil fuels

Co-opt abortion issue from the GOP. Issue statement promising to significantly reduce the number of abortions required in the country with the following.
More comprehensive sex ed
Free birth control
Govt investment in ramping up adoption services. Incentives to bring fetuses to term do not force.

Voting rights. Voter ID for all eligible citizens provided by the government. Make govt responsible to see all are issued then enforce the ID at voting. Reform voting process in all 50 states with state minimums. Fix recent wounds in the Voting Rights Act. Increase voter participation perhaps with tax credit or other means.

 

[esquared]

I never said they weren’t free market capable. And the free market might perform it better, we don’t know because we just don’t know.

You would trust the free market to test for drug safety and efficacy? Plenty of drugs have been pulled by the FDA when people became sick or died. Back in the 60's the the FDA wouldn't
approve thalidomide, but it was approved in Europe. Prevented multiple thousands of birth defects here.
Just recently they stopped the importing of multiple high blood pressure medicines that were made in Canada and India, due to contaminants.
https://www.sciencealert.com/a-comm...d-because-it-s-contaminated-with-a-carcinogen.
These were just the first couple that came to me regarding the FDA. No way I would allow big Pharma to do these kinds of testing regarding the products that they make.

The auto industry to meet smog requirements and safety features? Look at that shitshow from VW. Liars and cheats.

There are certain aspects where the government has to do the job. It needs to be done without any influence of money/stockholders/lobbists involved.
Look at what happened during the Bush years.
Financial industries ran amok. In the end, we/gov't put up some roadblocks/requirements to prevent that from happening. Cheeto and his cronies want to
remove all that and give autonomy back to the bankers to run things their way. We need to learn from history and not repeat it.

Its hard enough to be neutral when you are the gov;t but I wouldn't trust certain industries to police themselves.

 

[ivwshane]

Government holds a great deal of blame as well. Gov policy encouraged risky lending in the pursuit of expanding home ownership. People were definitely getting filthy rich off it for sure, but the GSE's and HUD pushed lending policies to help low income borrowers buy a house and ultimately promoted risky lending.

Your claim has been debunked for a while now.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/loans-to-low-income-households-did-not-cause-the-financial-crisis/

While there was a rapid expansion in overall mortgage origination during this time period, the fraction of new mortgage dollars going to each income group was stable. In other words, the poor did not represent a higher fraction of the mortgage loans originated over the period. In addition, borrowers in the middle and top of the distribution are the ones that contributed most significantly to the increase in mortgages in default after 2007. Taken together, the evidence in the paper suggests that there was no decoupling of mortgage growth from income growth where unsustainable credit was flowing disproportionally to poor people."

Lots of previous evidence supports this conclusion. For example, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commissionestablished by Congress concluded:

"...the CRA was not a significant factor in subprime lending or the crisis. Many subprime lenders were not subject to the CRA. Research indicates only 6% of high-cost loans -- a proxy for subprime loans -- had any connection to the law. Loans made by CRA-regulated lenders in the neighborhoods in which they were required to lend were half as likely to default as similar loans made in the same neighborhoods by independent mortgage originators not subject to the law."

 

[HomerJS]

Government holds a great deal of blame as well. Gov policy encouraged risky lending in the pursuit of expanding home ownership. People were definitely getting filthy rich off it for sure, but the GSE's and HUD pushed lending policies to help low income borrowers buy a house and ultimately promoted risky lending.

Financial institutions encoruraged these policies to help support mortgage backed securities. Blaming this on poor people is wrong. They don't have enough in assets or borrow enough to bring down the economy.

 

[SMOGZINN]

I never said they weren’t free market capable. And the free market might perform it better, we don’t know because we just don’t know.

A 'free market' is an artificial construct created by a government, it does not exist with out a strong government to enforce it. A free market not controlled by a government quickly becomes a feudal state. If you need any proof of this just read up on 'Corporate script'. The only way a free market works is if competition is enforced by a government, otherwise one company quickly 'wins' the free market and controls everything and at that point the market is over.

 

[realibrad]

A 'free market' is an artificial construct created by a government, it does not exist with out a strong government to enforce it. A free market not controlled by a government quickly becomes a feudal state. If you need any proof of this just read up on 'Corporate script'. The only way a free market works is if competition is enforced by a government, otherwise one company quickly 'wins' the free market and controls everything and at that point the market is over.

There is a lot wrong here, and I suspect you do not understand things as well as you think you do.

A free market is not a construct of a government. The proof of this is that markets start up all the time outside of government control.

Markets often can work better with government regulation to enforce rules.

The government does not need to force competition. This is stupid. All the government needs to do is make sure that a company is not manipulating the market to keep out competition. In fact, you don't need a competitor for there to be a healthy market. So long as there is a threat that a competitor could enter, it drives prices and innovation.

Its actually perfectly fine for a single firm to win a market given that they did so by offering something better than the competition. So long as the only barrier to entry for another firm to compete is that they need to make a better product then you have a healthy market.

 

[herm0016]

Here's a couple for the list.

Voting rights. Voter ID for all eligible citizens provided by the government. Make govt responsible to see all are issued then enforce the ID at voting. Reform voting process in all 50 states with state minimums. Fix recent wounds in the Voting Rights Act. Increase voter participation perhaps with tax credit or other means.

Increase voter participation by paying people to vote? are you out of your mind? a tax credit for voting is the government giving you something for your vote. campaign on that and the government is now paying the citizens to vote for a certain person. next cycle: ill increase your tax credit if you vote for me! harharhar...
got to be kidding.

im for most of the other things on your list, and i identify more as a libertarian than anything else.

not medicare for all... fyi.

 

[nickqt]

Increase voter participation by paying people to vote? are you out of your mind? a tax credit for voting is the government giving you something for your vote. campaign on that and the government is now paying the citizens to vote for a certain person. next cycle: ill increase your tax credit if you vote for me! harharhar...
got to be kidding.

im for most of the other things on your list, and i identify more as a libertarian than anything else.

not medicare for all... fyi.

The government exists to give people something for their vote.

Government should provide a tax cut to every single person who votes. Something easy, like $500 tax credit. It isn't going to any political position if the politicians do the right thing and pass it unanimously.

The fun thing is, one side knows that the higher the turnout, the less likely they'll maintain electoral office.

 

[umbrella39]

Keep saying Trump is a deplorable and no one should vote for him.

I heard that is the key to a winning ticket....

You forgot the supporters... they are the real deplorables. We all know the reason why they got all pissed off is because they had to look up a word before they knew it was okay to be offended or not...

 

[BonzaiDuck]

It's a shame that I have to say it, and one needs to tread carefully in an atmosphere of mythical fake news, FOX state media, and the myriad trout-fly issues that brought the GOP to power -- particularly minor equivocations of the left that have no significance for anything (like Hillary's flying bullets and Benghazi hypothesis, or Obama's "keep your doctor" miscalculation.)

But as an exercise, we should separate the AGENDA from the MESSAGE in contriving a PLATFORM. I say this for analytical purposes -- initially.

The AGENDA needs a PROBLEM SET. The PROBLEM SET has more and more become a battlefield in which Democrats and Republicans talk past each other.

We KNOW that there is a problem of climate change and myriad ramifications such as the fires in Shasta County. Republicans -- particularly Trump -- deny climate change, and want to resurrect fossil fuel industries and destroy environmental protection at the federal level.

We KNOW there is a problem with education, and we believe in principle that nobody with the aptitude should be denied a college education if they want to work for it.

We KNOW there is a problem with health care, and that the ACA could've easily been repaired.

But now, we have an additions to our problem set.

We've elected a shyster and scam artist who has decimated the State Department, damaged our relations with long-standing allies, compromised us to two foreign adversaries, and threatened to turn a thorny status-quo of the Middle East into a greater disaster with his rule-of-thumb to destroy every point of Obama-era progress, such as the Iran Deal.

He has damaged the civil service more generally across the federal agencies.

He is attempting to destroy and upend our institutions, thoughtfully created and evolved over a century, including Justice, Law Enforcement, the Intelligence Apparatus . . . . and go ahead and name more.

All of these things need to be returned to the previous status-quo and then moved forward -- a monumental undertaking. That's the beginning of an AGENDA.

But throw in the additions to the PROBLEM SET that motivated Trump voters. That is, they've reacted to the SYMPTOMS, but they have the CAUSES wrong and mis-defined. We can't just "bring back the steel industry and big-coal." There is an employment problem with linkages to an opioid and drug problem. There IS a problem with illegal immigration, but it isn't nearly so serious as the Trump adherents have us believe.

So then, how do you proceed with MESSAGING? And if the Trumpie Base is only 20% of the electorate, how much do we need to tip-toe around their reactionary sensitivity?