Here is what it would take for me to vote democrat again:
Dem leaders recognize that authoritarian nannyism is un-American and is not the future. . Covid should be "Never Again." If dems are worried about pandemics, how about banning Gain of Function research , and helping Americans to overcome obesity ( largest risk factor for bad outcomes)? RFK Jr and MAHA are absolutely right. Why do the democrats still treat him like he is radioactive?
Trying to control speech, even obnoxious speech, is wrong. Citizens are adults, not naughty children. We don't need the elites to teach us how to be "inclusive," "anti-racist" or whatever their latest fad is. Nor do we need wars that we pay for and don't support- that are somehow keeping the world safe from dictators, according to "experts." We need robust debate on EVERY issue in all the new media. Stop censoring, stop debanking, and stop the weird foreign wars!
Well, I hope its just an aberration that the Dems are hostile to free speech and open debate. But they do seem to believe that if they could only control the new media and social media, that they would win elections. ( thats called Propaganda). I also hope that the Dems can go back to being a party of peace.
The Dem party is collapsing because Dems made life too expensive for 75% of America. Trillions needlessly spent, long after we knew the extent of Covid, created the worst inflation in 40 years. American life became $13K a year more expensive. Dems created massive Green corporate graveyards, by, literally, burning US tax dollars. $36 trillion dollars in US debt, was the result.
On top of trashing affordability for 75% of the US, Dems purposefully waved in 10 million migrants, without a single new housing unit, extra doctor or teacher, to tend to their needs. There was no way to provide for the migrants, without cutting services to needy Americans.
Most new arrivals, overwhelmingly, lack the education or skills to ever support themselves in a high cost of living country, like the US. It is no reflection on their personal character or work ethics. If they forego, eating and sleeping, they are still, unlikely to ever be self supporting, if they arrived, as an adult, with limited education and/or skills.
Unsubsidized American healthcare now costs $24K a year, or more, for a family of 4, with a $5K per insured, deductibles. Few low skilled Americans can afford that. It is a pipe dream to believe most migrants, arriving with nothing but the clothes on their backs, could ever afford such an annual expense.
The recipe has led to disorder, and a permanent US lower caste, driving down low skilled wages. Moreover, lower and middle earning Americans, were already incensed at the impact of migrants on their healthcare systems, public schools and housing stock, when Dem school and child policies arrived. At Dem behest, public school teachers began discussing sexual matters with children, as young as Kindergarten. Biological boys arrived in girl's locker rooms and on their athletic fields.
Faced with all of the above, Dems still speak incessantly, about Americans overreacting to immigration, thanks to Fox News. They drone on about "messaging", and abortion rights. Incredibly, Dems cannot even agree, violent migrant criminals, should be immediately deported. Center or Left, the Dem party does not need tweaking, but wholesale reformation.
There is a difference between tax cuts , which return money to the Americans who earned it, and needless government spending, that literally, burns trillions of dollars, after Dem donors scrape off billions, before the rest is flushed out to sea.
Biden recently handed Rivian EV billions. The car makers loses $100K a vehicle and will fold the minute subsidies disappear, just like Solyndra.
It's NBC so no mention of illegal alien impact of housing prices especially at low end. They do hit crime, family problems, drugs and generally low quality of life. Notice the job problem caused by no car.
Wrong fusion. Either faction could fuse with MAGA (Yes there is common ground in both cases.
Cenk Uygur gets it.). This would leave both the Republican establishment and the non-fusing faction out in the cold.
In addition, to the points made, the Democrats need a national security policy that doesn't risk blowing the world up. In all the talk after the Ukraine war started about it being 1939 again, it reminded me as nothing so much as 1914 when the collective leadership stumbled into a triple war that wrecked the 20th Century and killed hundreds of millions. The really scary thing is that the leadership in 1914 was better than today, except in Russia. Democrats also need to reconsider relationships with the media (including entertainment). The cover is nice but they constitute the most radical elements in the party and since vast portions of the population no longer believe them, they are not nearly as useful as before. Democrats need to quit carrying water for the teachers unions and pivot toward private sector unionism. School choice and merit pay would be a good place to start and would be popular with minority voters. No one has been hurt more by public school dysfunction. In the private sector, the Democrats still have the leadership but they can't deliver the members so some internal reform is in order. And exorcise Marc Elias from party influence. If you look up divisive in the dictionary, there is a picture of him.
Reading through this article, it just feels like a tired thing. Democrat reformers are wondering "do we push this a couple inches over this way? Do we bring this down a little?" while I don't really think many Americans care. The Democratic Party is 1980s hair metal and it's the summer of 1991, they have nowhere to go, and they need Nirvana to put out an album and just end it. Give them a new headspace to inhabit, give them a new way of looking at things they can grow from.
The Centrists, the Activists, they're both wrong. Fewer and fewer people want technocratic authoritarians and a nanny state anymore, they had their 30 years, it's over.
From a former hair rocker child of the 80's (thankfully my Holy Spirit has shown me the folly of my youth), that's the best analogy ever, nicely done!!
Good observations and assessments of the current state of the Democrat party, but as usual, a lot of policy recommendations that neither faction will consider. Couple of comments: Many things about the progressives are contradictory and don't make sense, but the comment about them wanting to attack the rich and powerful while they ARE the rich and powerful is completely lacking in self-awareness, and is emblematic of the progs as a whole. Also, anytime a Democrat questions any of the progressive program, even a little bit, they are immediately condemned, canceled, attempts to drive them from their jobs or out of office if they are an elected official, and death threats. There is absolutely no chance that the progressive faction will ever compromise with anyone as long as they guard their cult with such fanatic fervor. They will probably eventually die out since it so difficult and exhausting to be a progressive and they keep forcing apostates out of their movement. But it will be a rough ride for the Democrat party as long as the progs hold most of the major positions of power.
The Democratic Party won't have the luxury of waiting on many policies. There is a huge tax fight coming up as the old legislation expires. Social Spending and Tax will be very immediate.
I see legitimacy in both camps of the Democratic Party, and also obstinance that I think will keep any sort of cohesiveness to form up while out of power. All I've heard so far is a hope for Republicans to fail, and as Fetterman explained recently, as an American, and a patriot, I hope Trump and our current government to succeed because I want America and Americans to succeed.
Note well: Political movements that believe they are on the side of moral righteousness are not prone to compromise. They are prone to ideological rigidity, enforced conformity of thought, and purging of "splitters" (that is, anyone who deviates from the movement's strict ideology).
On the one hand, they often make alliances of convenience with less ideological factions, masking their absolutism until they become dominant. As President Erdogan in Turkey once said, "Democracy is like a trolley - once it takes you where you want to go, you get off." Once the righteous take control, they drop the mask and impose their will autocratically.
On the other hand, ideological rigidity is brittle and thus contains the seeds of its own destruction. Over time, if the movement doesn't achieve its political goals in society, it searches internally for the members who are not pure enough and subjects them to reeducation, struggle sessions, and purges. Eventually, the righteous movement shrinks to a tiny number of fanatics and the purged reexamine their beliefs, sometimes jumping completely to the other side of the political spectrum.
Specifically as regards the Democratic Party at this moment, the Progressive wing is not going to want to relegate their beliefs and goals to party unity and party rebuilding for 2028. They did that in 2016, 2020, and 2024, and they will ask what good it did. Even when it led to a Presidential victory, the President the party forced on them has led the party to ruin and made Progressivism look out of touch with the electorate. The Progressive realists are going to want the party to do things their way in 2028 so they can prove theirs is the winning appeal to the working and middle classes and the identity groups in the Democratic coalition. The centrist realists are going to have to choose: knuckle under to the Progressives or accept the schism in the party and hope the Progressives see the light.
Good assessment, as always. I would argue the GOP has as much brand dysfunction as the Democrats. There are still those trying to pretend it is not a MAGA party. Hence, you had representatives and senators almost across the board running 2-4 points below Trump. It was what cost the GOP MI and WI, and possibly another 10 House seats. aa
Newt Gingrich was the last national politician to successfully nationalize down-ballot races (to the point that they polled better than Dole at the top of the ticket). I would suggest Democrats have no chance at all on either the woke/social issues or immigration, and Trump will certainly fix the economy.
There IS a giant realignment possible on non-intervention internationally and on the national debt. This is something that would take at least 4 years of extremely well-focused marketing to put in front of voters, but it can be done. So far neither the House GOP nor the Senate are interested in addressing the debt in real reforms, i.e., SS and Medicare. So unless Democrats are willing to come up with a plan that reverses FDR and privatizes SS and minimizes Medicare costs, I'm not seeing a window.
SS and Medicare are complete non-starters and it has nothing to do with Republican leadership. The people who have been told since FDR that they are paying for their own retirement won't stand for it. It is not their fault, nor even FDR's who vetoed it, that it is based on a flawed financing model. Trump gets this while Paul Ryan doesn't. There is some room to weed fraud out of Medicare but in the context of the debt, that is small ball.
Social spending such as social security and Medicare are two things needing to be addressed, along with debt of course, and the way to address them is to pay for all three. That's what responsible adults do with paying what we owe.
For three generations we've acted like little children, inventing fairy tales like trickle down or the latest of the other side, "modern monetary theory" which is the same thing. We are a rich country with millions of well to do people. I can pay taxes for a couple of years and get rid of debt and fund both programs, if I were joined by others willing to buck up and pay for things.
So write a check. Your share is $106,000. Unless you want to make it progressive. Depending on the survey half to 2/3 of Americans don't have $500 for an emergency. Americans have been relentlessly squeezed since the inflation kicked off by LBJ's attempt to have both guns and butter. Nixon, Ford and Carter just made it worse. Reagan finally stopped the inflation but real wages didn't recover. Then starting with Bush 1, NWO globalization started to take jobs away. This continued until Trump managed a correction. But we are in a really deep hole. Priority One is to stop digging.
The government takes in record amount of cash every year. The idea that people just need to pay more taxes is ridiculous. Federal, state, social security, medicare, property, and sales taxes eat into half our income. And that doesn't count the hidden taxes like surcharges on utilities etc.
That's strange, my accountant tells me my tax rate and my actual tax as a percent of income, around 12% and we don't enter any gray areas. Of course we don't own a mansion or spend like drunken sailor.
I assume he is talking about your Federal income tax over some measure of income. FICA alone is more than this Depending on where you live state and local taxes take another bite Any corporate taxes are just stealth taxes on consumers.
Employer pays half of FICA, and SS ends at 168 thousand, first 29 thousand is income tax free, child tax credit, college tax credit. There's a 20% tax credit for self employed that comes straight out of profits, and if you pay full FICA you deduct half, cars and gas not only deduct but depreciate. State issued refund to everyone as they made so much on sales tax which we hardly pay as we mostly buy food.
Best of all is almost all of our net gain is equities which are unrealized income and we pay no tax except on dividends and interest I believe, and of course no tax on appreciation of real estate but there is a low real estate tax.
Alaska? Employer pays nothing. It indirectly gets paid by you. I assume you know that Democrats are trying to tax unrealized gains and may do so in some states.
"Fusionism"? Really? Stop sounding like PHDs talking to kids.
Here is the plan using your valid bullet points.
What is the Democratic Party’s overall approached to growing the economy and ensuring widespread gains for all Americans? ELIMINATE TARIFFS
What economic policies are worth salvaging from the most recent Biden and Obama presidencies—and which policies should be jettisoned or reconsidered? NONE MOVE ON
Why did the Biden administration policy agenda—from the American Rescue Plan to Build Back Better to the Inflation Reduction Act—fail to garner political support? What are the political advantages and disadvantages of pursuing giant, complicated legislation with narrow majorities? BIDEN STAFF WERE AFRAID TO PUT JOE IN FRONT OF CAMERA. NOBODY CARES BECAUSE TRUMP HAS OXYGEN
What is a viable Democratic policy agenda on climate and energy policy? On immigration? On crime? INFLATION AND HEALTHCARE ARE MORE IMPORTANT
What is the Democratic Party’s position on social spending? What existing programs can/should be cut or pared and which ones should be protected/expanded? MEDICARE FOR ALL,
What is the Democratic Party’s approach to taxation and how do Democrats plan to pay for its social programs and other economic policies? EXPAND ONLY WITH TAXES ON RICH and EXCESS TAX LIKE BASEBALL ON CORPORATE SALARIES.
What is the Democratic Party’s position on governmental and political reform? Which parts of the federal bureaucracy can or should be cut? Which regulations are holding back national economic development and should be tossed? Are there a few precise and achievable reforms that multiple factions could agree to pursue that would improve governance and reduce the role of money in politics? EACH MONTH THE OMB WITH ONE FEDERAL AGENCY MUST IDENTIFY COST SAVINGS.
What is the Democratic Party’s position on contentious social issues AVOID
DEMOCRATS MUST TAKE UP THE TRUMP PLAYBOOK AND USE UP ALL THE OXYGEN COMPLAINING AND OFFERING THE ABOVE SOLUTIONS.
Medicare for all? Each month I pay: $178 for medicare, $250 for supplement, $50 for dental, and $166 for prescriptions. I have no hearing or vision. In what fairy do you live in with this "Medicare for All"?
The CPC and New Dems/Blue Dogs at the caucus level. Jeffries and Schumer at the leadership level along with the House and Senate campaign committees. And outside NGO/think tanks/donors from both sides. Plus lots of Substack posts from the rest of us peons that no one listens to!
Progressives are a smaller part of the Dems then Evangelicals are for the GOP. Dems should do what Trump did to the latter: tell them he'll give them X policies, its non-negotiable and if activist groups don't like it he's perfectly willing to let them switch sides.
Here is what it would take for me to vote democrat again:
Dem leaders recognize that authoritarian nannyism is un-American and is not the future. . Covid should be "Never Again." If dems are worried about pandemics, how about banning Gain of Function research , and helping Americans to overcome obesity ( largest risk factor for bad outcomes)? RFK Jr and MAHA are absolutely right. Why do the democrats still treat him like he is radioactive?
Trying to control speech, even obnoxious speech, is wrong. Citizens are adults, not naughty children. We don't need the elites to teach us how to be "inclusive," "anti-racist" or whatever their latest fad is. Nor do we need wars that we pay for and don't support- that are somehow keeping the world safe from dictators, according to "experts." We need robust debate on EVERY issue in all the new media. Stop censoring, stop debanking, and stop the weird foreign wars!
In other words, take on Trump's ideas and policies.
I am so old I can remember when the Democrats were the peace party, supported free speech and had Kennedys as part of the party
Well, I hope its just an aberration that the Dems are hostile to free speech and open debate. But they do seem to believe that if they could only control the new media and social media, that they would win elections. ( thats called Propaganda). I also hope that the Dems can go back to being a party of peace.
The Dem party is collapsing because Dems made life too expensive for 75% of America. Trillions needlessly spent, long after we knew the extent of Covid, created the worst inflation in 40 years. American life became $13K a year more expensive. Dems created massive Green corporate graveyards, by, literally, burning US tax dollars. $36 trillion dollars in US debt, was the result.
On top of trashing affordability for 75% of the US, Dems purposefully waved in 10 million migrants, without a single new housing unit, extra doctor or teacher, to tend to their needs. There was no way to provide for the migrants, without cutting services to needy Americans.
Most new arrivals, overwhelmingly, lack the education or skills to ever support themselves in a high cost of living country, like the US. It is no reflection on their personal character or work ethics. If they forego, eating and sleeping, they are still, unlikely to ever be self supporting, if they arrived, as an adult, with limited education and/or skills.
Unsubsidized American healthcare now costs $24K a year, or more, for a family of 4, with a $5K per insured, deductibles. Few low skilled Americans can afford that. It is a pipe dream to believe most migrants, arriving with nothing but the clothes on their backs, could ever afford such an annual expense.
The recipe has led to disorder, and a permanent US lower caste, driving down low skilled wages. Moreover, lower and middle earning Americans, were already incensed at the impact of migrants on their healthcare systems, public schools and housing stock, when Dem school and child policies arrived. At Dem behest, public school teachers began discussing sexual matters with children, as young as Kindergarten. Biological boys arrived in girl's locker rooms and on their athletic fields.
Faced with all of the above, Dems still speak incessantly, about Americans overreacting to immigration, thanks to Fox News. They drone on about "messaging", and abortion rights. Incredibly, Dems cannot even agree, violent migrant criminals, should be immediately deported. Center or Left, the Dem party does not need tweaking, but wholesale reformation.
Debt from Trump tax cuts
There is a difference between tax cuts , which return money to the Americans who earned it, and needless government spending, that literally, burns trillions of dollars, after Dem donors scrape off billions, before the rest is flushed out to sea.
Biden recently handed Rivian EV billions. The car makers loses $100K a vehicle and will fold the minute subsidies disappear, just like Solyndra.
Nope.. Govt spends billions on things the private sector doesn't. That is how we got the internet.
Which increased revenue like the Reagan tax cuts and the Kennedy tax cuts
Just reading an article about people stuck in motels long term and what an awful trap that is
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/economics/squeezed-high-prices-growing-number-americans-find-shelter-long-term-m-rcna184166
It's NBC so no mention of illegal alien impact of housing prices especially at low end. They do hit crime, family problems, drugs and generally low quality of life. Notice the job problem caused by no car.
Wrong fusion. Either faction could fuse with MAGA (Yes there is common ground in both cases.
Cenk Uygur gets it.). This would leave both the Republican establishment and the non-fusing faction out in the cold.
In addition, to the points made, the Democrats need a national security policy that doesn't risk blowing the world up. In all the talk after the Ukraine war started about it being 1939 again, it reminded me as nothing so much as 1914 when the collective leadership stumbled into a triple war that wrecked the 20th Century and killed hundreds of millions. The really scary thing is that the leadership in 1914 was better than today, except in Russia. Democrats also need to reconsider relationships with the media (including entertainment). The cover is nice but they constitute the most radical elements in the party and since vast portions of the population no longer believe them, they are not nearly as useful as before. Democrats need to quit carrying water for the teachers unions and pivot toward private sector unionism. School choice and merit pay would be a good place to start and would be popular with minority voters. No one has been hurt more by public school dysfunction. In the private sector, the Democrats still have the leadership but they can't deliver the members so some internal reform is in order. And exorcise Marc Elias from party influence. If you look up divisive in the dictionary, there is a picture of him.
Reading through this article, it just feels like a tired thing. Democrat reformers are wondering "do we push this a couple inches over this way? Do we bring this down a little?" while I don't really think many Americans care. The Democratic Party is 1980s hair metal and it's the summer of 1991, they have nowhere to go, and they need Nirvana to put out an album and just end it. Give them a new headspace to inhabit, give them a new way of looking at things they can grow from.
The Centrists, the Activists, they're both wrong. Fewer and fewer people want technocratic authoritarians and a nanny state anymore, they had their 30 years, it's over.
From a former hair rocker child of the 80's (thankfully my Holy Spirit has shown me the folly of my youth), that's the best analogy ever, nicely done!!
Good observations and assessments of the current state of the Democrat party, but as usual, a lot of policy recommendations that neither faction will consider. Couple of comments: Many things about the progressives are contradictory and don't make sense, but the comment about them wanting to attack the rich and powerful while they ARE the rich and powerful is completely lacking in self-awareness, and is emblematic of the progs as a whole. Also, anytime a Democrat questions any of the progressive program, even a little bit, they are immediately condemned, canceled, attempts to drive them from their jobs or out of office if they are an elected official, and death threats. There is absolutely no chance that the progressive faction will ever compromise with anyone as long as they guard their cult with such fanatic fervor. They will probably eventually die out since it so difficult and exhausting to be a progressive and they keep forcing apostates out of their movement. But it will be a rough ride for the Democrat party as long as the progs hold most of the major positions of power.
Yeap. Purity or power, pick one, you can't have both.
Might we start by asking what policies are right instead of just asking which ones will sell?
The Democratic Party won't have the luxury of waiting on many policies. There is a huge tax fight coming up as the old legislation expires. Social Spending and Tax will be very immediate.
I see legitimacy in both camps of the Democratic Party, and also obstinance that I think will keep any sort of cohesiveness to form up while out of power. All I've heard so far is a hope for Republicans to fail, and as Fetterman explained recently, as an American, and a patriot, I hope Trump and our current government to succeed because I want America and Americans to succeed.
Note well: Political movements that believe they are on the side of moral righteousness are not prone to compromise. They are prone to ideological rigidity, enforced conformity of thought, and purging of "splitters" (that is, anyone who deviates from the movement's strict ideology).
On the one hand, they often make alliances of convenience with less ideological factions, masking their absolutism until they become dominant. As President Erdogan in Turkey once said, "Democracy is like a trolley - once it takes you where you want to go, you get off." Once the righteous take control, they drop the mask and impose their will autocratically.
On the other hand, ideological rigidity is brittle and thus contains the seeds of its own destruction. Over time, if the movement doesn't achieve its political goals in society, it searches internally for the members who are not pure enough and subjects them to reeducation, struggle sessions, and purges. Eventually, the righteous movement shrinks to a tiny number of fanatics and the purged reexamine their beliefs, sometimes jumping completely to the other side of the political spectrum.
Specifically as regards the Democratic Party at this moment, the Progressive wing is not going to want to relegate their beliefs and goals to party unity and party rebuilding for 2028. They did that in 2016, 2020, and 2024, and they will ask what good it did. Even when it led to a Presidential victory, the President the party forced on them has led the party to ruin and made Progressivism look out of touch with the electorate. The Progressive realists are going to want the party to do things their way in 2028 so they can prove theirs is the winning appeal to the working and middle classes and the identity groups in the Democratic coalition. The centrist realists are going to have to choose: knuckle under to the Progressives or accept the schism in the party and hope the Progressives see the light.
Two hunters walked through the woods and came upon a set of tracks. "Look," said one, "bear tracks!"
"You're crazy," said the other. "Those are deer tracks!"
They argued back and forth and would still be arguing to this day - if they had not been run over by the train.
The moral of the story is, when you can't even agree on objective reality and what it means, you aren't going to reach any sort of grand compromise.
Good assessment, as always. I would argue the GOP has as much brand dysfunction as the Democrats. There are still those trying to pretend it is not a MAGA party. Hence, you had representatives and senators almost across the board running 2-4 points below Trump. It was what cost the GOP MI and WI, and possibly another 10 House seats. aa
Newt Gingrich was the last national politician to successfully nationalize down-ballot races (to the point that they polled better than Dole at the top of the ticket). I would suggest Democrats have no chance at all on either the woke/social issues or immigration, and Trump will certainly fix the economy.
There IS a giant realignment possible on non-intervention internationally and on the national debt. This is something that would take at least 4 years of extremely well-focused marketing to put in front of voters, but it can be done. So far neither the House GOP nor the Senate are interested in addressing the debt in real reforms, i.e., SS and Medicare. So unless Democrats are willing to come up with a plan that reverses FDR and privatizes SS and minimizes Medicare costs, I'm not seeing a window.
SS and Medicare are complete non-starters and it has nothing to do with Republican leadership. The people who have been told since FDR that they are paying for their own retirement won't stand for it. It is not their fault, nor even FDR's who vetoed it, that it is based on a flawed financing model. Trump gets this while Paul Ryan doesn't. There is some room to weed fraud out of Medicare but in the context of the debt, that is small ball.
Social spending such as social security and Medicare are two things needing to be addressed, along with debt of course, and the way to address them is to pay for all three. That's what responsible adults do with paying what we owe.
For three generations we've acted like little children, inventing fairy tales like trickle down or the latest of the other side, "modern monetary theory" which is the same thing. We are a rich country with millions of well to do people. I can pay taxes for a couple of years and get rid of debt and fund both programs, if I were joined by others willing to buck up and pay for things.
So write a check. Your share is $106,000. Unless you want to make it progressive. Depending on the survey half to 2/3 of Americans don't have $500 for an emergency. Americans have been relentlessly squeezed since the inflation kicked off by LBJ's attempt to have both guns and butter. Nixon, Ford and Carter just made it worse. Reagan finally stopped the inflation but real wages didn't recover. Then starting with Bush 1, NWO globalization started to take jobs away. This continued until Trump managed a correction. But we are in a really deep hole. Priority One is to stop digging.
The government takes in record amount of cash every year. The idea that people just need to pay more taxes is ridiculous. Federal, state, social security, medicare, property, and sales taxes eat into half our income. And that doesn't count the hidden taxes like surcharges on utilities etc.
That's strange, my accountant tells me my tax rate and my actual tax as a percent of income, around 12% and we don't enter any gray areas. Of course we don't own a mansion or spend like drunken sailor.
I assume he is talking about your Federal income tax over some measure of income. FICA alone is more than this Depending on where you live state and local taxes take another bite Any corporate taxes are just stealth taxes on consumers.
Employer pays half of FICA, and SS ends at 168 thousand, first 29 thousand is income tax free, child tax credit, college tax credit. There's a 20% tax credit for self employed that comes straight out of profits, and if you pay full FICA you deduct half, cars and gas not only deduct but depreciate. State issued refund to everyone as they made so much on sales tax which we hardly pay as we mostly buy food.
Best of all is almost all of our net gain is equities which are unrealized income and we pay no tax except on dividends and interest I believe, and of course no tax on appreciation of real estate but there is a low real estate tax.
Alaska? Employer pays nothing. It indirectly gets paid by you. I assume you know that Democrats are trying to tax unrealized gains and may do so in some states.
"Fusionism"? Really? Stop sounding like PHDs talking to kids.
Here is the plan using your valid bullet points.
What is the Democratic Party’s overall approached to growing the economy and ensuring widespread gains for all Americans? ELIMINATE TARIFFS
What economic policies are worth salvaging from the most recent Biden and Obama presidencies—and which policies should be jettisoned or reconsidered? NONE MOVE ON
Why did the Biden administration policy agenda—from the American Rescue Plan to Build Back Better to the Inflation Reduction Act—fail to garner political support? What are the political advantages and disadvantages of pursuing giant, complicated legislation with narrow majorities? BIDEN STAFF WERE AFRAID TO PUT JOE IN FRONT OF CAMERA. NOBODY CARES BECAUSE TRUMP HAS OXYGEN
What is a viable Democratic policy agenda on climate and energy policy? On immigration? On crime? INFLATION AND HEALTHCARE ARE MORE IMPORTANT
What is the Democratic Party’s position on social spending? What existing programs can/should be cut or pared and which ones should be protected/expanded? MEDICARE FOR ALL,
What is the Democratic Party’s approach to taxation and how do Democrats plan to pay for its social programs and other economic policies? EXPAND ONLY WITH TAXES ON RICH and EXCESS TAX LIKE BASEBALL ON CORPORATE SALARIES.
What is the Democratic Party’s position on governmental and political reform? Which parts of the federal bureaucracy can or should be cut? Which regulations are holding back national economic development and should be tossed? Are there a few precise and achievable reforms that multiple factions could agree to pursue that would improve governance and reduce the role of money in politics? EACH MONTH THE OMB WITH ONE FEDERAL AGENCY MUST IDENTIFY COST SAVINGS.
What is the Democratic Party’s position on contentious social issues AVOID
DEMOCRATS MUST TAKE UP THE TRUMP PLAYBOOK AND USE UP ALL THE OXYGEN COMPLAINING AND OFFERING THE ABOVE SOLUTIONS.
EVERYONE, EVERY DAY
Other plans Democrats should push:
1. Allow FDA approved drugs to be bought internationally.
2. Add restrictions and regulation on Pharmacy Benefit Managers PBMs that get half of all drug costs such as limit markups/profits to 10%.
3. Push for Medicare for All.
4. Veterans get healthcare anywhere, any time including mental healthcare.
5. Sell VA hospitals and get out of hospital business.
6. Sell USPS and get out of the delivery business.
Medicare for all? Each month I pay: $178 for medicare, $250 for supplement, $50 for dental, and $166 for prescriptions. I have no hearing or vision. In what fairy do you live in with this "Medicare for All"?
Not to mention that you have paid 2.9% of your wages for all the time you were employed.
And my employers have kicked in as well. It would cost trillions to implement Medicare for All, where would those trillions of dollars come from?
The 2.9% includes the employer's share. It reduces the money for your pay so it is correctly calculated as something you pay.
I worry about prescription drugs being supplied from China.
They already are. Or in some cases from India with Chinese precursors.
Who do you see sponsoring and participating in these debates?
The CPC and New Dems/Blue Dogs at the caucus level. Jeffries and Schumer at the leadership level along with the House and Senate campaign committees. And outside NGO/think tanks/donors from both sides. Plus lots of Substack posts from the rest of us peons that no one listens to!
Pretty much an establishment debate that won't solve the problems.
Progressives are a smaller part of the Dems then Evangelicals are for the GOP. Dems should do what Trump did to the latter: tell them he'll give them X policies, its non-negotiable and if activist groups don't like it he's perfectly willing to let them switch sides.
“I was in Idaho recently,” Rendon said. “I don’t know that they want to be with us any more than we want to be with them.”
He is the recently termed out Speaker of the CA Assembly. He is also correct.