Assuming Democrats win the presidency, win control of the Senate, and keep control of the House, here are some things I would think should be fast and obvious (h/t Dartagnan for yesterday’s diary, www.dailykos.com/… , and encouragement):
Substantive:
1) Real voting/election reform. (Want to be sure we have honest elections in the future? Then lay the groundwork now.) Also, investigate foreign interference from 2016, as well as any earlier and since. (But, don't let Republican bullshit and bleating distract us; their game is deny, distract, delay, and destroy. We cannot trust them currently, nor should we treat them as good-faith actors until they prove it.)
2) Actual fucking pandemic preparation, stimulus, de-crony-fication, and restoration of international collaboration. (This is a prerequisite for any other domestic policy, since it will shape the economy for years. We need to get it right -- and build in flexibility for the times that we need to adjust things -- more than we need to accept any Republican sniping.)
3) Actual economic revitalization: if necessary, we can just re-fund the hundreds of kinds of jobs that would make for a better economy and a better country: more scientists, doctors, nurses, childcare workers, teachers, food inspectors, wage-theft investigators, addiction counselors, forensic accountants, IRS agents whose job is to investigate rich tax cheats (I can dream, right?), Infrastructure Week workers, etc.
4) Encouraging (honestly, "requiring," but that feels pollyanna-ish) law enforcement to enforce laws, rather than enforcing existing social hierarchies: investigate federal agencies and agents at the heart of Trump/Barr excesses (Want to reach back to Obama, and Bush, and Clinton? Go ahead.), oversee claims of state and local abuse of authority, ensure that laws regarding First Amendment rights are enforced in a non-partisan manner (why is it that conservative gun supporters and anti-mask zealots can barely get arrested, while BLM protesters can be prosecuted for felonies like "using chalk in public" and "taking pictures of people in public"?), and publish more comprehensive data about every step of the processes.
5) Actual healthcare reform again. This may actually be easier, since Covid-19 (and Covid-19 Denialism) will likely give a lot of people, even in red states and areas, some serious preexisting conditions. (On the other hand, look how they reacted to ObamaCare; I suppose we can look forward to another round of Palin-esque "How dare you try to get me decent healthcare!" bullshit and quite possibly "How dare you try to warn me that I could have had asymptomatic Covid-19 and be at risk of OW OW OWWWWW JESUS WHAT WAS THAT TAKE ME TO A HOSPITAL NOW I DEMAND YOU GIVE ME CARE AND MEDICINE AND DON'T TELL ME I HAVE TO PAY ANYTHING FOR IT YOU FUCKING COMMIE!")
6) Actually acting, internationally, like less of an asshole nation. This should also not be hard.
7) Personal choice/reproductive rights and gender/etc. identity etc. stuff. Again, this should not be hard, unless we conflate Republican whining with "issues we have to pay attention to." (Republicans complain about everything we do. Republicans complain about everything any of us think about doing. Republicans even complain about things we have neither done nor thought about, but which they imagine we could do, or think about, for the purpose of deterring us from doing or thinking about anything at all. We seldom need to listen to this stuff, nor do we need to listen to media hand-wringing that “Democrats may be going too far,” because the 27-40% of the country that ranges from conservative and crazy to merely never-gonna-vote-for-Democrats are not people whom we should let dictate our political decisions. To paraphrase Jesse Unruh, “If you can’t give them healthcare, protect their jobs, enforce the law for them, minimize their risk of dying in a goddamn pandemic, and vote against them the next day, maybe you don’t belong in politics.” Is this faintly paternalistic? Yes. Have conservatives, since 2016, shown that they can be trusted to manage any federal policy? HAHAHAHAHAHA That’s a good one. Should we let them influence our substantive or procedural or political choices? SURE WHY NOT, MAYBE THEY HAVE GOOD IDEAS OR OUR BEST INTERESTS AT HEART. Wow, I actually finished typing that without spewing coffee on the keyboard.)
8) Climate change. Fine, part of this is hard.
9) A bunch of other important stuff I am forgetting. [This probably breaks down into “stuff that has simple answers, like ‘undoing conservative sabotage of the USPS and its financing’,” and “stuff that has some simple answers and some messy answers, like “immigration reform so we don’t require toddlers to represent themselves in court proceedings and so we treat ‘essential workers (in agriculture)’ decently, even if they aren’t documented, by providing Covid-19 health-security measures and ensuring they are paid for their work,” each of which is apparently controversial in America these days.]
Here are some procedural things Democrats should be able to agree on:
1) Ditch the filibuster. (Otherwise, you enable the 60th-most liberal member of the Senate, who is virtually guaranteed to be a member of Mitch McConnell's caucus. Do we want Rob Portman to have a veto over President Biden's policymaking? Do 51 Democrats? Does a new President Biden? I would think these questions would answer themselves, and yet I am not confident the answers will be what we would think they should be.)
2) Staff up all federal jobs very quickly. Yes, all of them. (We need as few conservative Trump-era federal employees in federal jobs as possible under the law. Is the NYC FBI office still replete with Trump-loving agents? Is DHS still hosting racist authoritarians? Has DOD let too many conservative extremists into the military, and is it ensuring that troops know their duty is to the Constitution, rather than to "the president"?) D.C. is full of people who know more about the issues of governing than some 21-year-old Falwell-intern-wannabe or junior-fascist influencer, so let's be sure we can get them into government ASAP.
2A) Trump has let all kinds of senior positions be filled by "acting" and "temporary" and "oops was there a law?" people, which means two things: first, a Democratic president can run roughshod over the Republicans who will inevitably whine that "That mean Democrat didn't take into account my power to advise and consent!" and appoint who he wants to what with 51 Democratic votes (like I said, assuming we win both the White House and the Senate), and second, Democratic senators need to avoid the temptation to do the same kind of grandstanding to get their rings kissed by appointees, because what's important isn't having all the right rings kissed here, it is getting these government agencies and departments back to normal as fast as possible, and that means Democratic-appointed leadership, and minimal intramural kvetching.
2B) Democratic members of Congress should be expected to understand this stuff and be supportive. Or, Biden and Democrats can piss away their "honeymoon." (I mean that figuratively; if it were literal, Trump would bid on the videotape.)
2C) If necessary, Biden should have at least two people for each Cabinet-level position ready to serve as "acting" leaders in case things don't go smoothly, so Republicans can't sabotage a nomination and the media can't run with "Democrats in disarray!" narratives -- and have Democrats exacerbate them.
3) Pass a bunch of the 400+ bills Nancy Pelosi's House Democratic caucus has already crafted and passed, *fast* in 2021. They had hearings, they negotiated, they got language drafted, the bills just died at McConnell's desk. No need to spend months reinventing the wheel, or 400+ of them, when we already have Democratic legislation ready to go. Update a few things as needed, then pass them and have them signed into law. If we have a Democratic wave, we might as well get a wave of Democratic actual legislation, instead of the party thinking, "Oh, we have years of power in which to get all this stuff done!" We might. But we might not; if there is one lesson of the last thirty years, it is not to support Republicans; the second-most vital lesson is that the people whose votes swing elections are often very, very simple politically, and basically ask, "Who do I think has power? Fuck that guy/those guys, I'm gonna vote against him/them now!"
3A) Try not to spend weeks this winter having wimpy "moderates" who can't stand up for democratic or Democratic values and leaders make Nancy Pelosi twist their arms so they vote for her for Speaker. You want to spend weeks shooting your party's image in the foot? Do that 2018-2019 shit again -- who came out of that looking good? Republicans.
4) Investigate the Trump-era carnival of malfeasance. All of it. "We can't investigate all of it, Republicans will call us names and cry at us." Bullshit. Republicans will call you names and cry at you no matter what you do... unless you let them dictate what you do, in which case they will admire your statesmanship. If you want them doing that more than you want the truth about the Trump era, tell us now so we know not to vote for you in primaries.
5) RBG and Breyer retire, and we get replacements who are under 60. Sorry, thank you for your service, now let's make sure we keep four seats in Democratic hands with an eye on a fifth when one comes open.
5A) Court-packing, maybe, especially if Trump gets another seat before he leaves office.
5B) Actually having a real investigation of Kavanaugh instead of the "last-minute book report" version Senate Republicans made the FBI do in 2018.
[5C could be “legislate and litigate with an eye towards reversing anti-democratic Supreme Court decisions” but that calls for more work from more people/groups, etc., on a longer timetable. I’m trying, here, to brainstorm “Stuff Democrats can do in the first few months of having the White House, the Senate, and the House” in the event that we *get* political control of those things, because “when we have more power and time” is the best time to use that power and that time, before Republican carping and whining gets much traction in the media and within either congressional caucus. (H/t cage le elephant)]
Last, and perhaps most importantly, Trump has shown us that a president can do more than one thing at once.
Not in the "walk and chew gum" or "use an umbrella on stairs" sense, but in the sense that he controls a party which is unpopular doing unpopular things, and when the media catches him doing unpopular stuff or accuses his staff of agency personnel of doing unpopular/illegal stuff, he just says, "We are going to keep doing it, and you can't make us stop doing all of it!"
Democrats need to understand that this is abhorrent because the stuff he is doing is bad. But if you do good stuff, and people bust your chops over it, you can JUST IGNORE THEM AND GET AWAY WITH IT. You can ignore the media, and Republicans, and do a lot of stuff.
And, if Democrats have control of the House and Senate, they can afford to have a lot of people doing a lot of stuff at the same time, to improve things. Democrats may not get all the attention they want for what they do, but if they want it done more than they want maximal national attention ("But I didn't persuade all those Fox News viewers who write letters to the editor of a paper that isn't in my district! How can I be sure I am legislating fairly to enough Americans?"), they can get a ton of stuff done.
Look how much President Golfenstein has gotten done, in part by ignoring and overcoming naysayers.
We are supposed to believe we can't match that, in the service of better goals and more democracy?
(Also: What else should Democrats aspire to do, which is basically within their control, as soon as they get more political power? I’m sure there is stuff I have not thought of.)
