Now is the time finally that Democrats can finally come out as the party of the working and middle class. As another diary noted the poverty is getting a lot of attention now as people are realizing that everything in this country is not sunshine and cupcakes all the time. People are finally realizing that the next step they take on the stair case of wealth may well be to the bottom and not the top. One reason the Democrats have lost is because we have lost what was our core competence, managing the effects of the economy for the benefit of all. Penny ante stuff like a prescription drug bill is meaningless. We need to go full bore with a whole set of wholesale changes and we need rhetoric that makes it clear that our changes are not little but will change everything.
Details after the flip.
Katrina has finally put the nail in the coffin of the idea that government is completely the problem. But we have to work hard to dig the whole and bury the damn thing because at its core dislike of government is a dislike of overwhelming power placed in others hands, which is a perfectly valid fear. Unfortunatly, the Republicans and conservatives have put in peoples head that if they have a choice between widget A and widget B than somehow no one has too much power. The elephant in the room is that your still buying widgets. So what does the government need to do.
First: Job retraining. And not the job retraining we have which is utter and complete bullshit and doesn't do anyone any good. I'm talking full scale. If you get laid off from a job that you've worked for 20 odd years the government will keep you, somewhat, in the style to which you have become accustomed and send you to a tech school or a masters program of something else like that. The government doesn't train them and gives a choice to the individual about what they can do. Instead it uses the resources already available that show that they have a track record in training people. And as I've noticed people who are older are generally much better at school and take it much more seriously than those who are young and don't see the benefits quite so clearly. I'll never forget the woman I met when I was working a summer job who worked two jobs and went to the local community college. She'd had a child when she was a teenager and had decided that nothing was going to stand in her way of being able to provide for her child. But some day's I'd walk in to work in the morning and she'd be there, having not slept that night because of her other job, having not seen her child for twenty four hours because her jobs had booked her shifts in lock step.
Second: Health care. This is an obvious one. The details are hard to work out but my basic idea is to give everyone the Honda of medicine and if you want to upgrade to the Cadillac well you can do that on your own. Basically regular doctors visits are covered, catastrophic care is covered, chronic problems are covered.. But anything that hints at a choice, like you could live without, it isn't covered. This isn't about is everyone getting the best care this is getting everyone some care. Everyone is covered and if you want more you can have it but it's probably going to be expensive.
Third: National Service. Basically take Americore, Peacecore, military, and everything else that I'm not thinking of and make everyone at a certain age do two years of service. Other services the government provides would be contingent on completing this service by a certain time. We'd also have to take care of some issues like the problem of a single breadwinner in a house who is young, but those things can be worked on.
Basically I'm thinking that we need to think big again, screw what's electorially possible now and make it possible. The Democrats need to think of ways to lead rather than of ways to follow. We need to stop trying to cut down our vision to fit small minds and instead try and expand those minds with new ideas. Now none of the ideas I've just mentioned are new but at least they have the virtue of ambition. Because we talk about wanting to regain power, but we have to have a real clear idea of why we want that power. Katrina made me ask the question of why the republicans even want the power they have since they don't seem to do anything with it other than start wars with countries that can't defend themselves and cut taxes. That's pathetic ambition. We need real ambition to counter them.