Progressives had excellent results in races that mattered in Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Idaho, and Oregon. And how does the Washington Post characterize it? “The far left is winning the Democratic civil war. Tuesday was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day for Democratic moderates.”
The Washington Post article titled “The Daily 202: The far left is winning the Democratic civil war” got the races right but what Progressive wins really mean all wrong.
The success of very liberal candidates in primaries across four states is causing a new bout of heartburn among party strategists in Washington, who worry about unelectable activists thwarting their drive for the House majority. But it also reflects a broader leftward lurch among Democrats across the country since President Trump took office.
Wasn’t it enough that in some of the lections Democratic turnout doubled? Does that not say that Democrats who normally don’t show in many of these elections have been waiting for candidates that speak to their wants and needs?
Let’s be clear. It is Progressives who are in sync with the wants of America. Moderates & Republican-lite are anathemas to everything that will move Americans forward.
Since when did what three-fifths of Americans want, represent the far left? That is the problem with our politics today. Too many ivory-tower-supposedly-Liberal pundits are distorting or articulating false narratives that tend to stick. As I mentioned in my article “A warning to the Democratic Party: You cannot win like this,”
at least three-fifths of Americans support the following.
- A federally funded healthcare system that provides everyone with insurance.
- Unions should have the same or more influence than they have now.
- Limits on campaign spending.
- Support for renewable energy and climate change.
- Reproductive rights of women.
- LGBT rights.
- Higher minimum wage.
- Legalized marijuana.
- Free childcare.
- A path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
Just like NASA uses the gravitational field of other celestial bodies to slingshot probes in different directions we must use the attacks by both the Right and the Establishment of both parties to accentuate Progressive positions and values. They will get the platform and bring us to their appearances with the expectation to either put us on the defensive or to ridicule us.
Firstly, as I explained in the post titled “The five issues Democrats and Progressives must push to win 2018 midterms,” we must have the following right at the tip of our tongues.
- Democrats will fix the health care issue once and for all with a single-payer Medicare for All system.
- Democrats will provide student loan relief.
- Democrats will provide need-based subsidized child care for anyone who wants to work.
- Democrats will decriminalize marijuana and treat drug use as the disease that it is.
- Democrats will make the criminal justice system live up to the “Justice is Blind” motto.
Those five bullet points expressed in different terms will work in every district in America. It appeals to millennials, people of color, all working class people, parents, and every demographic in between. Most importantly these bullet points afford Americans a path to self-sufficiency It frees them from aberrations in the economy that stunts innovation, the inability to start one’s business, and the dependency and the enslavement to the corporation.
Be prepared and be aggressive. Dialogue from a position of strength. Use our sound economic stance and the intrinsic morality of our positions to put them on the defensive. Open the windows so America can see who they really are, wards of the plutocracy, guardians of a gate to a mansion, not even they can enter.