I wrote last week about Donald Trump, and the things he means and doesn’t mean to me. I'd now like to follow up with my second-ever diary, adding my humble opinions to the many expressed on here, about where we go as a party in this country from here. I think some of the reaction, understandably, has been to blow up the party apparatus, the messaging, the type of candidates, the DNC, all of it, and start over. While I understand the sentiment (Donald effing Trump is president-elect after all), I think that may be a slight over-reaction. Our ideas were still more popular than theirs. The first and most obvious remedy for me is one that democrats have needed for a long time. We need to learn how to talk to people, all people, about what we as a party stand for, and have done and continue to do for them. I think sometimes we count on people to reflexively know that we stand for them, but those who don’t pay attention to politics like the wonderful people on this site do, can be won or lost via messaging. We must find a way to break through the noise and tell people how and why we are the party for them.
Second, I think we must launch all of this rage, despair, and fright of Trump and the Republicans into a major midterm effort to save some, if not all, of our Senators in 2018. This will mean, unfortunately for some I’m sure, working for and supporting some of the more moderate members of our caucus. I know that’s not necessarily popular, but personally I’d much rather have Jon Tester standing up to Trump 80-85% of the time, than somebody like Ryan Zinke rubber-stamping every extraction project and torture chamber Trump proposes. Same goes for Joe Donnelly, Bob Casey, Claire McCaskill, etc. That doesn’t mean, to me at least, that we can’t hold these folks accountable when we disagree, but to become nationally relevant again, we have to allow for some regional considerations, and not, IMO, be totally rigid in demanding ideological purity from these folks.
With all that being said, we have certain principles we can not bend on, and the folks above and anybody else who wants to run as a Democrat needs to champion these ideas. It seems like a good, simple way to message to folks, around a few common ideas that are anathema to what the Trumplicans are going to attempt to throw over on the American people.
1) All citizens have a right to health care that is both comprehensive and affordable. Any attempt to repeal the ACA, or weaken it in any way, must be opposed. No matter the public perception of “Obamacare,” there are 20 million people insured now that weren’t before. This is a winning issue for us, I think.
2) Working people have a right to organize themselves, for the betterment of themselves and their colleagues. There will certainly be another open assault on labor forthcoming, and if we want to be the party of working people going forward, we must not abandon this principle.
3) We must get some distance from corporate America, in our party. Granted, our economy can not function without banks and markets, but we must never let Wall Street own our party. No matter perceptions or realities of candidates in the past, people who want to run as Democrats must be willing to at the very least defend the principles of Dodd-Frank, if not full reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall act. As many have said here for years, it's hard to represent working people when you choose to also represent those who would take advantage of them.
4) We must continue to defend a woman’s RIGHT to make her own healthcare decisions, no matter what. There are a certain set of folks out there who will never vote for our side because of this issue. Fine, I say, we don’t want them, because once you start to allow any government the right to decide, for an individual, what specific health procedures they may or may not have, the slope becomes very slippery. Every woman in America knows better than anyone else ever could what is the correct choice for them personally. No compromise on this, none.
5) Every child in America has the fundamental right to a good PUBLIC education. This includes, in my opinion, the right to go to and graduate from college without owing a pile of money to anyone. This is an easy issue, that affects all people in this country, but none more so than folks who would identify as working-class. We can not allow the Department of Education, federally or in our states, to become yet another entity for funneling taxpayer dollars to private entities, for the benefit of only those who can afford to go to a private school. No vouchers, no no no no. This issue, I think, wins for us all over the country.
There are other issues, plenty, and I’m aware of that. In my opinion, though, simplification and repetition will be important for us, to attempt to set a narrative through the din surrounding this carnival of horrors about to unfold. I guess my over-arching point is that we’ve got the ideas that folks want to hear, but in some instances and locations we may need to do a better job regionalizing and tailoring our message to the target audience. The example I'll use is 2 friends of mine, each of whom ran for office in a rural area this year, both as democrats (1 in ND, one in rural MN). Fair or not, the issues important to us nationally, and even some I talked about in my list above, don’t resonate in areas like that. Somebody in rural western MN is less likely to care about LGBTQ issues. Somebody in western ND doesn’t want to hear us talk about ending most energy production, necessarily. But I know these guys, and we wanted them in office rather than the guys who beat them. The point of the story is I think we need to be big-tent and flexible enough to allow individuals in redder states and districts the freedom to stray away now and again, while still holding our national party together around something similar to the 5 or so principles outlined above. If we do these things, and get ourselves heard in opposition to what promises to be an all-out assault on workers, on women, on minorities, and on the environment, I truly do believe there is a path back for us as a party, as a people, and as a progressive movement.