It's possible to understand both of our two major political parties as having led America into a crisis. The Republican Party – in control of the US federal government and many states and in the hands of ideological and religious extremists – has been captured by an immoral egotist with no capacity for governing. In pursuit of elite interests and “conservative values,” Republicans have launched an assault on everything good in how our government has come to serve the common welfare since the days of Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt.
Democrats have not been on the playing field. They threw away the 2016 election by passing the presidential nomination through a politically correct form of primogeniture. The candidate threw it away through own goals and writing off voters in certain groups and states. Lacking any coherent vision to address the economic and social effects of globalization, the Democratic Party instead played to niche politics and appears to have little to offer beyond waiting for Trump to crash and the Republicans to burn.
Joe Biden does have a heart and could oversee cleaning up the mess the Republicans leave behind. But there must be a cohesive progressive agenda to go beyond that. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren understood that presenting voters with one could begin the process of putting the country on the right path again. A progressive agenda must begin with embracing the progressive income tax. Government needs money to serve the common good. Our tax system must be made more fair and taxes sufficient to meet our needs. (The Republicans have sought to subordinate this to cutting spending and a regressive taxing system favoring the owners of capital.) It need not be confiscatory but should treat the fruits of labor and capital equally with progressively higher tax rates on individual and corporate income no matter where it comes from and with very limited exemptions.
With adequate funding, the federal government can attend to the chief challenges facing American society in the 21st Century: healthcare, jobs, inequality and education.
Healthcare should be treated as a basic right as it is in other advanced Western societies. It need not be done through a government entity but perhaps with needs-based expansion of Medicare, a non-profit public option and/or payments to purchase insurance on open markets.
In the 21st Century, technology and globalization have conspired to reduce the need for human labor. There simply may not be enough good paying jobs for everyone. A reduction in the work week from 40 to 32 hours plus an increase in the minimum wage may help in opening job opportunities to a greater number. Federal funding to pay for some of the increase in the minimum wage could help reduce the burden on small businesses. Insofar as training will help prepare workers for new roles, government needs to fund that as well.
Inequality undercuts democratic community through making life for many nasty, brutish and short. The federal government should ensure some minimum income for those unable to work and those for whom jobs do not pay enough to rise decently above poverty.
Federal funds should support quality, free public education by focusing on providing modern facilities and adequately paid teachers and staff for all local public school systems. Federal oversight of local schools should be kept to the minimum required to ensure equal access.
Some elements of a progressive agenda need not require additional funding:
Money’s role in politics needs to be removed through campaign financing reform. A national commission on redistricting should oversee the drawing of congressional districts. Each vote should count equally.
A pathway to citizenship should be created for those now in the US “illegally.” A cross border agreement should be made with Mexico (and possibly with the Central American countries) so seasonal workers may go back and forth legally.
The role of contractors and lobbyists in the budgeting process – especially as concerns the military – should be subject to tight limitations.
The
Democratic Party needs to begin talking to this agenda in the next
three months and not only focusing on Trump’s disqualifications.
Waiting for the Republicans to march lemming-like over their cliff
might still not be enough and would nevertheless leave the country
without a clear direction forward. Biden appears to be getting this.
2 comments:
When I read this I think of wine in the sky (I don't eat pie anymore).
Adding up the cost in $ of the "progressive"list of things you project to pay for, and look at your gentle nod toward a bit more taxation, the figures don't get close together.
We should at the least establish priorities. I think an easy first is reforming the electoral system, which would not cost much. Can be done with simple majorities. Then look at wages...we might just have too many people to move up to afford much, even with better revenue. And universal wage mandates? That would be a massive attack on the cluttered diversity of our rather attractive polity, but could be nudged, sort of. There would still be a rather large bottom rung, but at least decently fed and moderately housed.
I find nothing wrong with government supporting culture: music, museums, fine arts. They do not cost much........But give a lot of freedom for innovation, away from government. We will still need flourishing capitalism, with moderate but strong regulation. Human greed, oh find a better word, will simply not disappear.
Enough of this dribble. Hurts me mind to try to think.
I think this election is still completely up in the air. As divisiveness, economic turmoil, the pandemic, and other major upheavals threaten peoples' lives and livelihood, which of the two approaches will connect with more voters?
- Trump talks about fears in people; i.e., Subsidized housing puts poor people in your suburban neighborhoods, makes them less safe, and ruins your property values.
- Biden talks about hope in institutions and things; i.e., We need to build a more resilient, sustainable economy – one that will put the United States on an irreversible path to achieve net-zero emissions, economy-wide, by no later than 2050.
I agree with your points and I know that you have a different audience, but think that framing them at a higher academic and systemic level doesn't make them arguably connected to people's concerns the way Sanders and Warren tried to do. My systemic concerns are at a more fundamental level:
- Biden's campaign is just like Clinton's in 2016; not connecting with people's concerns.
- I do not read about concerted efforts to ensure that people are properly registered to vote and KNOW HOW!
- I suspect that millions of people will be homeless come November. I don't see the Democratic party doing anything to address it's consequences.
- - Voters won't have an address where they can receive their mail-in ballots.
- - Many states have exact match laws for voters. If voters can't match their current address with their registered address and haven't changed it, their votes could be thrown out.
- Confusion over mail-in ballots will be litigated as much as the 2000 Florida recount.
Elections are won in the margins; a few votes here and there in the right places drive the counties which drive the states which drive the Electoral College. The Republicans hold the power of the Presidency to push and pull at those margins to their advantage. Unless the Democrats vote by overwhelming irrefutable margins, I can see Trump in for a second term.
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