Cross-posted at
Politics and Letters
According to recent polls conducted by CNN/Gallup, the Wall Street Journal/NBC, and the Pew Center, Democrats can't miss in 2006. Unless of course they don't tell us what they're for.
Maybe they should just say what the American people are saying.
According to CNN/Gallup in September, 54% of those polled wanted to pay for Katrina reconstruction by cutting spending on the war in Iraq. 17% more wanted to raise taxes for the same purpose.
According to the Wall Street Journal/NBC, in polls conducted in October and November, 75% of the American people want universal heath insurance (96% are in favor of Medicare, 91% are in favor of Medicaid). George W. Bush is still ahead here on national security issues. But the most recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, released November 10th, shows that 57% of the people say the president "deliberately misled" the nation about the case for war in Iraq!
The Pew Center poll of mid-October demonstrates that 69% of the American people want different policies from the president who succeeds Bush (by contrast, 52% wanted different policies from the president who would succeed Clinton). Only 29% are satisfied with the way things are going. Bush's approval ratings in this poll are below 30% on improving morality, on reforming the tax system, on managing the economy, on dealing with race relations, on reforming Social Security, and, duh, on getting health care right. Even on national security, he's at less than 50%.
Democrats got a lock if all they do is translate these numbers into words--that is, into promises of change.
Here's my version of these promises: a Democratic Compact with America.
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"America stands at a crossroads. We have let the Republicans exploit our differences to the point where we can't have the debates we need on health care, energy, taxes, government spending, and foreign policy. We have let incompetent ideologues in the White House and the Pentagon steer us into disaster after disaster, from Iraq to our own Gulf Coast. We have let politicians who are completely out of step with the American people dictate our agendas and determine our futures.
It is time that we take our country back from the ideologues. It is time that we discuss the need for universal health care, tax reform, energy independence, balanced budgets, and exit strategies from Iraq. So we offer this Democratic Compact with America as a first step toward what we need as a people united by our faith in democracy.
(1) We promise to fight for the honesty and integrity of government by insisting on transparency, not secrecy and executive privilege.
(2) We promise to end the cronyism and clean up the corruption that have plagued politics under Republican rule.
(3) We promise to press for universal health insurance based on the principles of single-payer systems that preserve patients' choices about medical servers.
(4) We promise to pass a windfall profits tax on the oil companies that have been gouging American consumers since the summer of 2005. This tax is a one-time, one-year impost that will become permanent only if the oil companies continue their present pricing policies. Proceeds from the temporary tax will be used to subsidize energy costs of low-income families and persons displaced by Katrina.
(5) We promise to press for policies that reduce our dependence on oil from the Middle East, and that honestly address the issue of global warming. These policies would include new MPG minimums for auto makers, incentives to research and investment in alternative fuels, and endorsement of the Kyoto Protocol.
(6) We promise to pass a one-year "Katrina Tax" on incomes over $200,000, and to block the repeal of the estate tax; together these moves will easily pay for the reconstruction of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast (the repeal of the estate tax, which affects less than 2% of all families, will reduce federal revenue by $219 billion, about what Gulf Coast reconstruction will cost).
(7) We promise to block the Republican urge to make Bush's tax cuts permanent; doing so will provide the federal revenue needed to improve homeland security in our ports and mass transit systems.
(8) We promise to raise the minimum wage to $12.00 per hour.
(9) We promise to reduce spending on Medicare by selling only generic drugs in the prescription program and by opening U.S. borders to cheaper drugs elsewhere. We will insist that anyone who chooses the Medicare prescription program cannot be denied health care benefits from another source, and that the "doughnut hole" in the coverage of prescription drug benefits (the unpaid gap between roughly $2000 and $5000 of expenditures for drugs) be closed.
(10) We promise to protect the constitutional right of privacy.
(11) We promise to improve education by (a) following the Georgia example at the federal level: any student with a B average in high school is entitled to enrollment without tuition at his or her state university; (b) offering "signing bonuses" to secondary school teachers in science and mathematics; and (c) fully funding "No Child Left Behind."
(12) We promise to support our troops abroad by raising the child tax credit from $500 to $1500 for all military personnel stationed in Iraq between March 2003 and November 2006, and by providing legal and/or financial assistance to veterans who want to return to their old jobs in the private sector or leave the military.
(13) We promise to protect our troops now and in future conflicts by (a) reiterating American support of the Geneva Conventions, (b) endorsing the McCain Amendment, which prohibits "cruel, inhuman, and degrading" treatment of prisoners of war, and (c) repudiating the executive privileges claimed by the Bush administration, which allow the president to indefinitely detain "enemy combatants."
(14) We promise to set a timetable for a staged withdrawal from Iraq which will remove all American military personnel by the end of 2006. The gradual reduction of war spending, which is now approximately $30 billion a month, will pay for the increased child tax credit for our troops promised at (12) and finance the improvement of education promised at (11).
(15) We promise to reexamine and replace the national security strategy that put our troops at risk in Iraq.