On the issues with the Democratic Party.at the national level

Hopefully, this is the first of a 3-part series on the party, at the national, state and local levels, and I have different feelings about each one.

Let's get a few things out of the way, shall we?  Yes, I voted for Hillary Clinton in the general despite the fact that she had no chance of winning Tennessee.  Do I think Bernie Sanders would have had a better chance of winning the state in the general?  No.  He had problems reaching the base in Tennessee, and Clinton's decades-long connections with the state party's movers and shakers gave him no chance.  He still had my primary vote because I agreed with him on what was most important for the country, and that is what primaries are for, people.

Next, neither Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders will ever be elected President of the United States, nor should either of them run again.  We need younger candidates (at ALL levels, frankly) to carry their messages.  To be blunt, we need a combination of their messages; he is correct on economics and she is correct on social issues, and we cannot win without BOTH.

Yes, I wish Bernie would become a full Democrat, because you cannot reform ANYTHING from the outside, and the DNC, the DCCC and the DSCC desperately need reform.  The DC consultants, who make their money from ad buys, have provided nothing but losing advice to candidates for the last decade, or since President Obama made the grievous error of dismantling the foundation Howard Dean had made and replacing it with Obama for America.  This has crippled the Democratic Party throughout the country, especially state parties.  While  Tom Perez had a great record as Labor Secretary and has stood for great things then and before then, no one expected him to clean out the cesspool that is the DNC.  And, sadly, he really has not.

To those of you who want the Sanders people to go away, you had better be careful what you wish for.  If they leave and form a 3rd party, it will ensure decades of GOP rule.  We CANNOT regain control of the House, Senate, and state legislatures without bringing them into the fold.  And we can't bring them into the fold if we do not listen to what they have to say and then IMPLEMENT it.  The millennials are not going to just simply do what they are told.  Considering how Democrats have worked too closely with the GOP to ignore anti-trust legislation and allowed consolidation of corporations, which has reduced job availability for them, millennials have no reason to just accept what is being peddled to them.

In short, Democrats have failed to provide them with a reason to vote. BUT TRUMP IS EVIL!!!!!!

Yes, and what have you offered to counter that evil, except for vague, wonkish plans with no clear goals that look like something conceived by Rube Goldberg?  Not much.  What Sanders did, and what Democrats HAVE to do, is provide clear-cut plans that will REVERSE the four-decade-long upward redistribution of wealth, little of which was based on "merit".

In short, to use an old conservative line, if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything.

In short, we have to de-concentrate wealth and power to the extent possible, to restore a sense of fairness in our land, to show that no human or corporation is above the law. to show that no matter your gender, color, sexual identity or national origin, you have the same opportunities as the next person.  PERIOD.

To do that, no matter how much we may want to, we cannot write off rural America, especially considering how the GOP has gerrymandered our Congress and our state legislatures.  Some of those folks will never come back, because they want it to be 1953 again, and not in a GOOD way.  We can never allow that to happen.

However, if we can't figure out how and why people voted for Barack Obama twice and then voted for Donald Trump, we are all screwed.  Misogyny?  Maybe for the people who left during the Reagan years, but the Obama-Trump people?  I am not sure about that at all.

A good plan would include the following items;

Single-payer healthcare for every citizen of the United States.  Get the insurance companies out of the healthcare business and allow Medicare to negotiate prices with all providers and Big Pharma.  If doctors don't like it, let them UNIONIZE.

Outlaw private corrections facilities EVERYWHERE.  Private companies like CoreCivic (you knew them as CCA, which is why they changed their name), need bodies to keep their facilities filled and checks coming from state legislatures.  As part of a plan to completely re-think and re-do our system of correction, this must happen.

A complete overhaul of our income tax system with new laws that incentivize actual competition and investment, and disincentivize cash-hoarding and concentration.  If done properly, this might well help speed the process of breaking up corporations that are too large to regulate or manage.

Here is something which no Democrat ever discusses, and I cannot imagine why: REPEAL THE TAFT-HARTLEY ACT.  This, in effect, would overturn every state's right-to-work-for-less laws, and allow unions to be able to organize at every level.  Democrats have done very little for working people since the 90s, this would be a step in the right direction.

But what if that leads to robots?  Well, then we can talk about a Universal Basic Income.

Now, the DC consultant structure that prevents Democrats from sounding like REAL FDR Democrats (since the hedge-funders that pay their salaries through donations will hate all of this) will scream bloody murder.  SCREW THEM, let them go market soap, we should have no place for them in our party.

Follow this plan, and we may have a chance.  Keep doing what we have been doing, and it will be time to emigrate to Canada or Europe.

Stay tuned for round 2, the TNDP, later.    See you then.