Do Democrats Have a Message?

As odious as the opposition may be, it's not enough to simply assume Democratic supporters will turn out. But it's also disappointing to hear complaints about lack of message while claiming that being "too leftist" can't win. Pia Gallegos points out:

According to polling, a majority of Americans support a progressive agenda, including higher taxes on the wealthy, Medicare for All, a $15 minimum wage, stronger environmental protection, improved public transportation and criminal justice reform.

It's a struggle, but corporate influence works against what might otherwise be a winning agenda. What's the point in asking people to vote for someone slightly less evil than the Republicans?

Update (October 28):  Andrew O'Hehir argues there's no "normal" to go back to in U.S. politics.

[Fuckface] was uniquely positioned to capitalize on perceptions that were at least partly true, but that he did not create. Those included the perception that the nation’s bipartisan leadership caste had condescended to the American people for years, lied about their true objectives and collaborated in a regime of endless war and economic inequality. He translated those perceptions into an especially ugly and dangerous form of cultural warfare, some of whose consequences we have observed this week. That does not mean the underlying feelings of cynicism, apathy, abandonment and disenfranchisement — which are felt across the political spectrum, not just among [Dear Leader's] demographic — are entirely illegitimate.

Democrats have a lot riding on this election: They may suffer a severe implosion if they lose, and have no clear idea what to do if they win. The ... coalition loosely termed the “resistance” can agree that it wants an America that is less conspicuously divided and diseased. But its members absolutely do not agree about the roots of that division and disease, or about how to address it.

Update (October 30):  T.J. Coles makes the case for why modern capitalism constrains what liberal or even progressive political parties can accomplish. The dominance of markets forces everyone to be most concerned with their own self-interest with no one looking out for the common good.

If this decades-long model continues to be imposed across the world, especially in nations with huge populations like India and China, which are increasingly adopting neoliberal policies, today’s divisive politics and crumbling infrastructure will seem like a minor headache, particularly against the backdrop of diminishing resources and climate change.

Update (November 1):  Craig Collins warns that "rising energy prices and ballooning debt are poised to strangle the global economy once again" and that "a healthy economy that encourages people to take care of each other and the planet is incompatible with exploiting labor and ransacking nature for profit". Capitalism's death throes could be a nightmare.

Without enough energy to generate growth, catabolic capitalists stoke the profit engine by taking over troubled businesses, selling them off for parts, firing the workforce and pilfering their pensions. Scavengers, speculators and slumlords buy up distressed and abandoned properties – houses, schools, factories, office buildings and malls – strip them of valuable resources, sell them for scrap or rent them to people desperate for shelter. Illicit lending operations charge outrageous interest rates and hire thugs or private security firms to shake down desperate borrowers or force people into indentured servitude to repay loans. Instead of investing in struggling productive enterprises, catabolic financiers make windfall profits by betting against growth through hoarding and speculative short selling of securities, currencies and commodities.

"Green capitalism" won't be the way out.

[I]n a growth-less economy, catabolic capitalism is the most profitable, short-term alternative for those in power.

[C]apitalism’s overriding profit motive is fundamentally at odds with ecological balance and the general welfare of humanity.

Update (November 4):  Andrew O'Hehir continues to point out this election won't really solve anything--we're stuck with "the only car in the driveway that will actually start".

It’s important for the Democrats to win, but not because they are thriving and strong and know what they’re doing. That would be a laughable claim. If anything, the Democratic Party seems strikingly unprepared for this moment. It’s a timorous and internally conflicted coalition with no clear ideology and no core constituency, which deliberately avoids controversial or confrontational positions and has spent almost 30 years defining itself entirely in negative terms: not Republicans, not tax-and-spend liberals, not the left.

In fact, it might be more accurate to describe the Democratic Party, in its weakened and deracinated condition, as a different aspect of the same cultural and political decay that produced [Fuckface], rather than as an actual antidote to [him].

It’s imperative for Democrats to win this election because the decades-long process of moral and intellectual rot in the Republican Party has finally ended in a virulent and dangerous form of madness. Republicans have almost entirely ditched traditional "conservative" politics in favor of a radical agenda to "define democracy downward" and remain in power indefinitely at the helm of a pseudo-democratic state built on racial and economic apartheid. A fascist state, in other words, whatever term it might apply to itself. [Von Clownstick] catalyzed and accelerated this process, and became its major beneficiary. But he didn’t start it, and there’s no reason to believe it will stop when he departs the political scene.

Update (November 5):  Heather Digby Parton expresses the underlying anxiety of this moment.

What I think has many of us especially frightened is that we are seeing huge turnout for a midterm election, possibly even hitting the level of a normal presidential election when all the votes are counted. And we don't know if that huge surge means more of us or more of them.

Update (November 14):  Expanding Medicaid turned out to be popular in Idaho, Nebraska, and Utah.

Update (November 19):  Kendra Horn won a Congressional district in Oklahoma that Republicans have held for 44 years. It seemed to help to not talk about Dear Leader.

Horn campaigned on left-wing issues like gun control, stricter campaign finance regulations, opposition to private prisons, and more funding for education.

Update (November 21):  Ira Glasser points to Max Rose as an example for Democrats to follow.

Rose was not particularly telegenic or charismatic. But he told his conservative constituents they were getting screwed. They already knew that, but he told them why.

It wasn’t because of Mexicans or immigrants. It was, he said, because the economic system is rigged to benefit special corporate interests and the extremely wealthy. He told them that because of government policies, they were getting the short end of the stick, and that what is needed is better infrastructure and stronger unions.

He talked about what mattered to them: oppressively long commute times and the opioid crisis, which is destroying lives on Staten Island. And he criticized the incumbent congressman for taking money from the company that manufactures OxyContin.

Rose didn’t lecture people, or shame them, or tell them not to be bigots or hostile to immigrants. Rather, like Franklin Roosevelt in the ’30s, he focused on their local problems, and proposed real solutions.

Update (November 25):  Senator Bernie Sanders has a message. Is this really too far to the left?

Increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour and indexing it to median wage growth thereafter.
A path toward Medicare-for-all.
Bold action to combat climate change.
Fixing our broken criminal-justice system.
Comprehensive immigration reform.
Progressive tax reform.
A $1 trillion infrastructure plan.
Lowering the price of prescription drugs.
Making public colleges and universities tuition-free and substantially reducing student debt.
Expanding Social Security.

Keep in mind that "red" states voted to raise the minimum wage and expand Medicaid.

Update (December 2):  House Democrats are focusing on voting rights, campaign finance and ethics reforms in the first bill of the new Congress.

Update (December 10):  Dan Siegel says the presidential election was "a call for white men to fight back against those they hold responsible for their diminished roles in the world". He offers "some ideas for a progressive program to unite the American people".

Guaranteed annual income for all Americans.
Commitment to full equality for all races, ethnicities, religious groups, and genders.
Protect the Earth.
Commitment to World Peace.
Right to Affordable Housing.
Progressive tax system.
Right to healthcare.
Quality Education.
Personal Liberty.
End mass incarceration.
Democratize the political system.

Update (January 14, 2019):  Ted Rall offers his guidelines for progressives.

$25 minimum wage.
Abolish student loans.
Forgive outstanding student loans.
Limit the increase in tuition.
Universal healthcare.
Remove U.S. troops from foreign countries.
End drone attacks.
Cut the defense budget by 90 percent.
Etc.

Update (March 3, 2019):  Paul Rosenberg urges Democrats to learn from the failures of neoliberalism (market fetishism).

Ideally, the Democrats' 2020 primary campaign could and should involve a full-throated debate about the best ways to realize the full meaning of inclusive growth, including all the non-economic dimensions of recognition as well. It should flesh out specific aspects of what progressive populism means, and how to achieve its goals. It should promote sound policies to advance inclusive growth. And it should reclaim the once commonsense idea that while the market can be a good servant, it makes a terrible, tyrannical master.