It seems to me that listening to some of the latest candidates debates, that a lot of them are making promises that they will have no way in hell of being able to keep.
Lets have a conversation about which of the candidates promises are acutally politically doable, assuming the following:
A narrow, non-landslide win for the Democratic candidate and a House and Senate that still have Republican majorities.
Lets do one candidate at a time.
I'd like to start with Dean, because he's who I know best issue-wise and campaign-promise wise.
For example: The promises to repeal the Bush tax cuts seem ingenuous because he would have to convince at least 20 House republicans and some house and senate democrats to change their votes and repeal the legislation. On the other hand, these puppies expire at some point in time, and vetoing any attempt to renew them would be the same as repealing them.. just a lot slower.
Signing up to Kyoto is probably doable.
International War Crimes Court is probably not doable. Too many senators would oppose it, and he would have to be wary of the impression of being weak in supporting the military, which, unjustly, is how those opposed to the ICC have framed the argument.
Fixing Iraq, at least from the standpoint of the Pentagon and dealing with our allies, and all other foreign policy work would be within his powers and doable. It's going to be a lot of work going to all of our alienated allies and convincing them to help us fix the mess we created, but if we give up the appropriate concessions, we should be able to pull it off, Congress or not.
The areas where he's going to have trouble are domestic policy, especially tax and economic policy. Republicans will probably also fight him tooth and nail on Civil Unions... while he might be able to pull Olympia Snow and some other moderate repubs over in the senate, there are probably conservative Democrats in both houses who will fight him on this.
On women's issues, again in terms of foreign policy, he can repeal the gag-rule/Mexico City rule and get federal funds back to reproductive health clinics around the world.
He can work within the FDA, EPA and Department of Justice to bring drugs across the border, back off the states on medical marijuana, toughen up enforcement of existing laws on polluters, hate crimes, etc.
I don't know how much he can renegotiate NAFTA, WTO, and other bilateral trade agreements to include international labor standards, but he can work on including those provisions in all new trade agreements. In fact, I think that a lot of third world countries would be open to implementing a "road-map" of sorts towards improving labor conditions in exchange for us opening up our markets.
Anyway, please share your thoughts on whether I'm right or wrong on these issues, and next week we'll take on Clark or Edwards etc. Vote for whom you would like to discuss next.
