(Note: if you’re pressed for time, you can just read the highlighted points below in less than half a minute. That’s intentional—we need to be framing our platform that way. If you’d like some more depth, well, read on.)
In my last diary, I discussed how important for Democrats to declare what they are against, not just what they are for. It is insufficient to simply want to build a better society while Trump, the Republicans, and their supporters are at work eroding it.
But this does raise the question of what it is we do need to stand for. As Naomi Klein said, “No is not enough.” Stating positive goals can give us something to fight for, more than just the status quo prior to Trump. There are so many issues—women’s bodily autonomy, a pathway to citizenship, strengthening our healthcare system (particularly Veterans’ Affairs), and so forth. And then there’s the need to complete the reunification process of the progressive and moderate wings of the party. How do we do that? I cannot claim to have all the answers to this. The Democratic party has taken a stab at this with their “Better Deal,” which focuses on some of the economic matters that have been left outstanding for a long time. Now, if were up to me, and I were asked to say what the absolute top legislative priorities need to be if we restore our political power 3.5 years from now, what should they be?
The way I approach this question is like that exercise some of us played when we were kids: If you crash landed in the middle of nowhere, survived, and could only salvage a few items from the airplane, which items would you pick? The way I always went at that was: If you could only pick 1 item, make that #1; if you could only pick 2 items, make the second item #2; etc. So that is how I approach this list and the order of these top three. Obviously there will be some differences between the order of others’ top priorities, but c’est la vie. Please note, the length of each item is not to be taken as my level of support for it. Some of these are straightforward; others are more nuanced.
I am for:
8. Decriminalization of marijuana possession for people 21 years and over. You want to get more young people fired up for Democratic candidates with one single issue? I’m telling you right now, this is the one. Many of them may feel jaded about politics in general, but for some of them the matter of pot legalization is a big exception. And I think they have a good point. Just as we crossed a tipping point for support of gay marriage several years ago, we have crossed a tipping point for the support of marijuana rights. No reason exists for keeping it on Schedule I of the controlled substances list, if it should be on the list at all.
This needs to be the first step in reforming our policy on drugs. We need to come up with sensible, effective policies and solutions to dealing with additions to opioids, heroin, cocaine, and so forth. This needs to be a part of a broader set of changes that I will talk about later.
7. Open disclosure of campaign financing, particularly from SuperPACs. I almost listed this as a subheading in an issue below, but honestly I think this is important enough to deserve its own entry. Ever heard that saying that it would be nice if politicians wore their corporate sponsors’ logos like NASCAR racers? That’s exactly what this would do. Already proposed separately as the DISCLOSE Act, it could serve as the first step in the rollback of the disastrous Citizens United decision, which, BTW, explicitly allows for measures such as the DISCLOSE Act.
6. Immigration reform. There are millions of people who live among us who, because of our broken immigration system, cannot receive all the rights and benefits that the rest of us do. And yet they contribute to our economy. And yet they still want to keep contributing. And yet not all of this desire has not gone away even with Trump as president. If there are a more patriotic group of Americans out there, you’d be hard-pressed to find them.
And let’s be very clear about one thing: If you live in America and are not a Native American, then you have no standing to complain about immigrants. None. We whites were not here first, period.
It is critical to recognize that the anti-immigrant sentiment was one of the single greatest motivators of Trump voters. When we take this message of immigration reform live, we are going to have to confront a xenophobic backlash. And when we do so, we need to be direct about it. No more beating around the bush with cute soundbites such as “immigrants make our economy stronger,” as true as it might be. No, immigrants are people just like you and me, and guess what: Most of us are descendants of immigrants or are immigrants ourselves. So what if they look different from us, talk differently from us, or worship differently from us: They do not increase our crime, they do not steal and rape our women and children, they are not terrorists. They are human beings, with needs and desires, just like you and me.
A final word about immigration and religion: Democrats need to learn the difference between critiquing the religion of Islam (which is fine, as long as you have your facts straight) and showing prejudice against Muslims (which is unacceptable under any circumstances). We need to be very careful about walking into the trap of claims such as “Islam is a religion of peace.” Maybe it is, but there’s plenty of shit in the Quran that suggests otherwise. Just like the same could be said about Christianity. So, just like the fact that the Bible repeatedly supports bigotry and even genocide (that is a fact and is not up for discussion; look it up if you don’t believe me) does not give cause to systematically harass and persecute Christians, the same goes for the Quran vs. Muslims.
Now to my personal top 5:
5. A new voting rights act that strengthens voting rights and the federal government’s ability to protect them. To be honest I do not understand the Democratic party’s lack of passion and urgency on this issue. Voter suppression, gerrymandering, and even accepting help from hostile nations has become the new normal for the Republican party. I think they have done more than enough to prove the need for a Democratic Congress to step up to the plate and use the powers given to them by the 14th and 15th Amendments in order to make it right. In no particular order, it needs to include measures such as the following:
(a) States such as North Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin, who have repeatedly demonstrated an inability to defend the voting rights of all its citizens, need to be placed back under Department of Justice preclearance for at least another decade or two.
(b) Strict requirements on voting machines, in particularly that they be nearly impossible to hack. Computer-free, count-by-hand ballots might be the best way to go. Optical scan could work as well. But states such as Georgia should not be allowed to refuse to provide any paper trail for electronic votes. The lack of integrity of electronic voting has been well documented, yet some states refuse to do anything about it. I suspect that this is a feature and not a bug. And it’s a malicious feature that needs to be done away with.
(c) Gerrymandering needs to be clearly defined and heavily restricted, particularly when it “packs” nonwhite voters into single districts. In extreme circumstances this might well involve Congress’s drawing some congressional and state legislative boundaries in 2021, which is when we really need to be passing this act. (Note: If this bill were to be signed before the final Census 2020 results came out, then they could draw different Congressional maps for the states in question based on different projected numbers of representatives.)
(d) Minimum requirements for voter registration and early voting.
(e) Restrictions on voter ID laws, which are designed to disenfranchise the poor.
(f) Restrictions on entities such as CrossCheck, which have far too much power to arbitrarily strike people from voter rolls.
This would help us win more fights down the road. Currently the electoral playing field is tilted against us, and this will help to level it. Just going for a few political Hail Marys that could be undone four years later will no longer cut it. We have to think about the long-term and prime the pump for future elections. Trust me, that is what our opponents have been doing for years now.
4. A leaner military without compromising our national security. Ever since the Iraq War, there has been a reluctance by many Americans to bomb bomb bomb anyone we hate. Remember, capitalizing on this was a big reason for the Democrats’ resurgence in the 2006 midterms. It makes sense—the Cold War is over, and there is no need to maintain the current state of our foreign policy. For one thing, our military spending is spectacularly wasteful. It is absurd that we build tanks and then bury them in the desert right after they roll off the assembly line. It is pathetic that we are wasting so much money on the F-35 program. FFS, the individual jets cost over a hundred million dollars to make, each. That doesn’t even cover all the money wasted on R&D: The entire program has cost us, the taxpayers, over a trillion dollars.
Also, the drone strike program needs to be suspended immediately until a thorough review of the program can take place. A necessary but not sufficient condition for reinstating it would be no longer deeming civilians killed or maimed by drones as “enemy combatants.” FFS, it’s as if we’re trying to create terrorists in the name of getting rid of them. Go after actual enemy military bases with drones if needs be, but no more striking them where there is any risk of hitting civilians.
The truth is, we need to require that all branches of the armed forces be more cost-efficient. There is no need to waste hundreds of billions on bureaucratic waste. Or on building tanks just to bury them in the desert. Let’s stop giving the military a pass on the requirement to have cost-efficient systems.
Another thing: Entering yet another ground war in the Middle East should be an absolute last resort. In my mind, the only automatic trigger for entering a war should be a military attack against us or an ally. I would not mind a multinational military operation to stop a genocide in progress, either, as I feel that once a certain threshold is crossed, our presence in such a situation would be far less dangerous to civilians than an actual genocide. The same might go for a civil war.
Might authoritarian regimes have a better chance of getting away with tyranny under a less globalist America? Maybe, but I feel that we could trade invading other nations in favor of getting our allies to improve. In particular, I feel that we should leverage our alliance with Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and perhaps Israel to encourage them to improve their states of human rights and democratic rights while maintaining their national security. What if we could guide Saudi Arabia through a peaceful transition to a more democratic power, where women and religious minorities had more rights? It would take many years, and there would be challenges, but I think it is a process worth looking into.
3. Criminal justice reform. This has been needed for decades, maybe even longer. Ever since the disastrous War on Drugs began in the 1970s, incarceration rates have skyrocketed, at a tremendous cost not just of billions of dollars but millions of people’s freedom. Right now, more than 1 in 100 adult Americans is currently behind bars. That’s not lifetime probabilities, nor does it include people on parole: As you read this, more than 1% of all Americans are currently inside the walls of a jail or a prison. This wastes billions of dollars and millions of human livelihoods every year. That is horribly unacceptable.
Worse, the system has ways of keeping them trapped inside for the rest of their lives. If you’re a poor person—particularly a black or brown person—convicted of a felony, then you are staring down the very real chance of financial hardship for the rest of your life, even if by some miracle you get the conviction stricken from your record. We need to fix this. We need to make the system into one that is fair and just for all, not just for those who can afford exorbitant attorney’s fees or not have to live in high-crime neighborhoods in the first place. We need measures such as, but not limited to, the following:
(a) Reform of police training with an emphasis of working with the community, not against them. Community policing, body cameras, and other measures could help with this. This wouldn’t fix all negative police-civilian interactions, but it sure could help. The temptation of the officer to see civilians as “underlings” that are just a bunch of fools has to be actively dismantled. We also need to work with police to help them deal with the very high stress of their jobs. The safety risks of being a police officer are typically overrated, but the emotional toll tends to be underrated.
(b) No more private prisons. Deprivatize the ones that are, or transfer prisoners there to public prisons. The mere fact that these prisons commonly require a high level of prisoner population at all times is a dead giveaway that something is seriously wrong. No matter what people may think of prisoners, they still do have some rights, and those rights are commonly violated at private prisons.
(c) Get rid of minimum sentencing guidelines for nonviolent crimes. There is no reason why someone should be forced to spend 10, 15, 20 years behind bars simply because they were caught with a few ounces of coke. Now if someone commits murder, rape, armed robbery, etc., then I do not have a problem with long sentences. But not everyone who breaks the law deserves to be treated this way.
(d) Raise the threshold for trying juveniles as adults. Just because young people do stupid things does not mean they should be thrown in with hardened, adult criminals.
(e) Reform or eliminate bail and court fees. In practice they are simply punishment for being accused of a crime while poor. Either someone has been arrested for a crime that is so serious that they must be detained until trial, or they should truly be treated as innocent-until-proven-guilty. Same goes for those ridiculous court fees, which are also just a tax on the poor. (Court fees were an underrated part of the oppression in Ferguson, Missouri, years before their events of civil unrest, for example.)
(f) Place more emphasis on rehabilitation instead of punishment only. The truth is that in many cases, rehab works. We should reform their behavior through work programs, tough-love counseling, pet adoptions, etc. By the time their sentences are done, they need to have learned how to reform themselves and to reintegrate into society. But they cannot be expected to do that on their own.
(g) End the barbaric practice of civil asset forfeiture.
(h) Once someone has done their time, their voting rights should be restored. A critical part of reintegration with society will be giving an ex-prisoner their dignity back.
2. Strengthening the economy for the middle class, not for the lucky few at the top. This is not just multiple goals rolled into one: This is a recasting of the economic lens by which our government operates. Strengthening Obamacare, supporting public schools and not selling out to test-taking corporations, enacting a more progressive taxation system, more closely regulating Wall Street, more affordable state colleges, stronger workers’ rights, better support for early childcare, strengthening net neutrality, and so forth, all must be judged according to the standards of what they would do for the bottom 90% of Americans. The United States became an economic powerhouse in the 20th century precisely because of this support for the middle class and a system that kept the tiny few from running away with most of the wealth. Left unchecked, that disparity is the course we are on now, and it is not a course that is sustainable for most Americans.
Furthermore, we need to address the disparity of the disparities. We must understand that as high as the barriers can be for some, for others they are even higher. We need to recognize that poverty disproportionately affects black and brown Americans, single mothers, and so forth, and we need to have concrete measures to counter these additional barriers. A strong public school system and early childcare system for all ZIP codes would be a start, but only a start. Affordable and easily-accessible birth control should be universal. And FFS, no more anti-trans* bathroom bills. It’s the gay marriage fight all over again, and we need to get in front of this one. States and municipalities that pass those hate laws deserve to have legal measures taken against them.
1. A green economy that simultaneously cuts down on our CO2 footprint while developing even more 21st-century technology. We need to reframe the false, either-or choice of the environment vs. the economy as what it really should be, and that is both-and.
Two hundred years from now, none of us are going to be around. Today’s state of the economy won’t matter then. But what we do to the planet now will matter then. If we only get one thing done, this has to be it.
I want to see a carbon fee-and-dividend system, where there is a tax placed on all carbon emissions, but 100% of those revenues are returned to the citizens via income tax rebates. Because personal wealth is positively correlated with carbon emissions, this will have a double effect of lowering carbon emissions and wealth inequality. It’s a simple system, and it doesn’t allow for the shenanigans that can be created by cap-and-trade. Nor is it truly a tax. The only increase in costs to the federal budget would be overhead costs, which can be paid for via spending cuts elsewhere.
When we push for a green economy, we will be attacked by a multi-million dollar anti-science industry whose only goals are to reinforce Big Coal and Big Oil. They will continue to push the propaganda that better environmental policies equate to worse economic policies. But that has never been a valid excuse to back down. We understand that you can grow the economy and help the environment at the same time. We understand that we need a trifecta strategy of cleaner energy, energy storage, and a smart power grid in order to get our CO2 emissions under control. We understand that these new technologies can help, not hurt the economy, and that it’s time to embrace them and leave dirty, outdated technology in the past where it belongs.
Will all of this be enough? Maybe not. It’s unfortunate, but we may have to start thinking about climate engineering as a set of stopgap measures. I don’t like that either, but we have to be pragmatic here. Even an aggressive pace of transitioning to a green economy will take decades, and that is simply time that we do not have available. The clock is ticking on this planet’s ability to sustain life in its current state.
Final thoughts: Remember what I said earlier—this is not an exhaustive list. We need SCOTUS justices who will overturn CItizens United and preserve Roe v. Wade. We need gun laws that will keep people safe. But (1) we have to start somewhere, and (2) we’ve got to get our message down to short, simple, soundbites. No more nuanced explanations except to those who ask for them. If you feel this list is too long, then just cap it at the desired number — top 3 issues, top 5, etc.
Just as important as declaring these positions is owning them with confidence. We need to forcefully declare that we are for causes such as:
1. A green economy
2. An economy for the middle class
3. Criminal justice reform
4. A leaner military
5. A new voting rights act
6. Immigration reform
7. Open disclosure of campaign financing
8. Decriminalization of marijuana possession
Who fucking cares that we’re going to get vicious pushback: That is what the Right does. Embrace that pushback and let it serve as fuel to keep pushing even harder. In the words of one of the greatest Democratic presidents of all time: