With just over four weeks to Election Day, the Democratic Party still has time to realize its limitations, which have led to them losing winnable races, or barely squeaking by at the federal and state levels. Imagine the worst, most corrupt, lying, dictatorial GOP since its creation in 1854 having their most dangerous and extreme candidates win elections.
Democrats need to escape the controls of their incarcerating political/media consultants.
To liberate the many policies, messages, strategies, rebuttals, and ground-level ways to get out more votes, Democrats need to escape the controls of their incarcerating political/media consultants, who are too often conflicted by their ongoing corporate clients and their 15% commissions received from placing repetitive, vacuous video ads.
With their ample funds, the Democrats have to aggregate the case against the GOP’s morbid opposition to humanity and contrast it with the Democratic Party’s own lawmaking, votes, and positions. For example, the Dems need to compare all their pro-children work with the GOP’s ugly record of cruelty to the little ones once they are born. (See my column: Big Campaign 2022 Issue: GOP’s Cruelty to Children). Trump’s GOP went out of its way to keep federal Medicaid funds from insuring children in GOP-dominated states, lunged to revoke an Obama rule to ban a pesticide, especially deadly to young children, and blocked all attempts to enact paid sick leave, family leave, and daycare. In 2017 the Republicans also slashed the already low tax rates for their Rich and Powerful paymasters.
Dems should move fast with a winning “Protect and Nurture ALL Our Children” platform.
The GOP is chronically antagonistic to freedom and equality for women. Republican opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, equal pay mandates, corporate marketplace discriminations and reproductive choice, and other serious biases can form the basis for a Democratic “Freedom for Women” platform plank.
With lives and public infrastructure being regularly destroyed by floods, ocean surges, winds, and wildfires from global warming, GOP candidates respond with a curled lip: NO! Republicans voted against, or successfully blocked the public works bills backed by congressional Democrats, costing lives, jobs, community stability and using tax dollars not to benefit the people, but to the corporate greed hounds of Wall Street and its plutocrats.
Most Democrats have been reluctant to take on the 800 lb. gorilla in the political arena—widely despised, by both liberal and conservative voters, Big Business controls coercions, bailouts, and exploitations over people’s livelihoods. Over 70% of people, regardless of political labels, bear the brunt of abuses by corporate barons every day where they live, work, and raise their children. Plenty of press reports, pointed studies, and litigation data make the case that Democratic candidates who commit to All the parents, All the workers, and All the consumers to make giant companies our servants, not our masters, will garner large majority voter support. People are tired of double standards. They want corporate crooks to go to jail. They want runaway CEOs to be held accountable. Such stands would immediately contrast with the GOP’s coverups of Wall Street, the big banks, insurance companies, and avaricious drug and health insurance companies. Many Democrats can point to their pending legislation holding these Goliaths to account that the Republicans have stifled.
The central point of these proposals—among others available—is to energize Democratic candidates and enliven their repetitive daily campaign routines and rhetoric. It is time for the Dems to go on the offensive against the GOP’s made-up fake accusations and give a hungry media compelling substance. Reporters are tired of covering campaigns as horse races, and mainly reporting on campaign contributions and polling results.
Headlines could emerge by injecting fresh issues and slogans to grab more of the 120 million eligible voters who are expected to stay at home. Some examples follow.
Exposing the GOP’s Death Cult that can’t help opposing the concrete existing and proposed health, safety, and economic rights of American families, will motivate voters.
“Go vote for a raise to $15 per hour, you’ve earned it and it’s long overdue.” The GOP hates the very idea of a minimum wage and has frozen the federal minimum at $7.25 per hour, while letting the likes of Apple’s CEO Tim Cook, make $833 per MINUTE with low tax rates! Raising the minimum wage will help over 25 million voters.
“Go vote to extend the $300 a month child tax credit that reached 58 million children and cut the child poverty rates by a third, until the congressional GOP blocked its extension in January 2022.”
Democrats who show they mean what they say, stay on the offensive, and hone debating skills to provide memorable contrasts with the GOP can win a working majority in the legislatures to get things done. Moreover, exposing the GOP’s Death Cult that can’t help opposing the concrete existing and proposed health, safety, and economic rights of American families, will motivate voters.
GOP Florida Senator Rick Scott, in charge of electing Republican Senators, wants to sunset laws, including Social Security and Medicare, as indicated in his “An 11 Point Plan to Rescue America.” Run against this outrage daily.
These contrasts can be summarized on a single-sheet Voter Self-Help Guides distributed in the tens of millions everywhere on paper (and online). One side can poll the voters on a dozen positions. The other side can show that the Democratic candidate is “On Their Side” and the GOP candidate is not (supported by the facts and their record).
Together with civic leader Mark Green and two dozen experienced and accomplished civic advocates, we compiled a collection of such policies, strategies, and messaging to attract voters and retire GOP candidates who follow their leader, Herr Trump, in further wrecking our fragile climate, democratic institutions, voting procedures, and public health with their early denial of the Covid pandemic.
The Winning America effort has been endorsed by Senator Edward Markey, Reps. Hakim Jeffries, John Larson, Jim McGovern, Peter DeFazio, Jamie Raskin, and Carolyn Maloney, among others.
There is still time for candidates to listen, learn, and self-galvanize electoral energies. The question is: Will Democrats in the close House, Senate, and state legislative races be willing to break out of their managed cocoons and become Winning Monarch Butterflies on November 8, 2022?
Will the Democratic Party stop the GOP Party of Anxiety, Dread, and Fear from anointing Trump lackey Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as Speaker of the House and the corporatist Mitch McConnell (“The Guardian of Gridlock” who says he “will tell you what we’re going to do AFTER we win the Election”) to resume his control of the Senate?
Voter turnout will decide which future awaits America.
See https://winningamerica.net/
Nader is opposed to big insurance companies, "corporate welfare," and the "dangerous convergence of corporate and government power." While consumer advocate/environmentalist Ralph Nader has virtually no chance of winning the White House, he has been taken quite seriously on the campaign trail.Indeed, he poses the greatest threat to Sen. John Kerry. Democrats fear that Nader will be a spoiler, as he was in the 2000 election, when he took more than 97,000 votes in Florida. Bush won Florida by just 537 votes. The win gave Bush the election. Nader, an independent candidate, who also ran in 1992 and 1996, is on the ballot in 33 states, including Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, and New Mexico—tough battleground states. Kerry stands a chance of losing those vital states if Nader siphons away the votes of Democrats. President Bush and Kerry have been in a statistical dead heat in nationwide polls, and votes for Nader could well tip the balance in favor of Bush.Many Kerry supporters contend that a vote for Nader is in reality a vote for Bush and have made concerted efforts to persuade Nader to throw his support behind the Democratic candidate. Nader, however, has held fast to his convictions that the two candidates are nearly indistinguishable and are pawns of big business.Designing Cars for Everything but SafetyNader was born in Winsted, Connecticut, on Feb. 27, 1934 to Lebanese immigrants Nathra and Rose Nader. Nathra ran a bakery and restaurant. As a child, Ralph played with David Halberstam, who\'s now a highly regarded journalist.Nader with Democratic nominee Jimmy Carter outside of Jimmy Carter\'s home on August 7, 1976, discussing Consumer Protection. (Source/AP) Nader graduated magna cum laude from Princeton in 1955 and from Harvard Law School in 1958. As a student at Harvard, Nader first researched the design of automobiles. In an article titled "The Safe Car You Can\'t Buy," which appeared in the Nation in 1959, he concluded, "It is clear Detroit today is designing automobiles for style, cost, performance, and calculated obsolescence, but not—despite the 5,000,000 reported accidents, nearly 40,000 fatalities, 110,000 permanent disabilities, and 1,500,000 injuries yearly—for safety."Early Years as a Consumer AdvocateAfter a stint working as a lawyer in Hartford, Connecticut, Nader headed for Washington, where he began his career as a consumer advocate. He worked for Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the Department of Labor and volunteered as an adviser to a Senate subcommittee that was studying automobile safety.In 1965, he published Unsafe at Any Speed, a best-selling indictment of the auto industry and its poor safety standards. He specifically targeted General Motors\' Corvair. Largely because of his influence, Congress passed the 1966 National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act. Nader was also influential in the passage of 1967\'s Wholesome Meat Act, which called for federal inspections of beef and poultry and imposed standards on slaughterhouses, as well as the Clean Air Act and the Freedom of Information Act."Nader\'s Raiders" and Modern Consumer MovementNader\'s crusade caught on, and swarms of activists, called "Nader\'s Raiders," joined his modern consumer movement. They pressed for protections for workers, taxpayers, and the environment and fought to stem the power of large corporations.In 1969 Nader established the Center for the Study of Responsive Law, which exposed corporate irresponsibility and the federal government\'s failure to enforce regulation of business. He founded Public Citizen and U.S. Public Interest Research Group in 1971, an umbrella for many other such groups.A prolific writer, Nader\'s books include Corporate Power in America (1973), Who\'s Poisoning America (1981), and Winning the Insurance Game (1990).
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