So What Are the Dems Up To?

In follow-up to the hot discussion going on over Bye, Blue?, here’s what the Dems are working on for the 2006 mid-terms, for your consideration:

Senate Democrats have come up with five issue areas that candidates will focus on in the 2006 races, “but are still sorting out who will spearhead each issue and what the overarching message theme will be,” according to Roll Call.

The issues: National security, energy independence, economic strength, retirement security and health care.

“Five different Senators and their chiefs of staff will be designated to lead each effort in what Democratic leaders hope will be a successful repeat of the campaign against President Bush’s plans to overhaul Social Security, an effort led by” Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) and his chief of staff.

I like health care as an issue. The reason I like it is because it’s firmly a progressive issue. Even though Bush passed his idiotic, corporate-welfare Medicaid reform bill, I sincerely doubt there’s anyone with two brain cells still knocking around between their ears who believes it was illustrative of a GOP determination to solve the health care crisis in America.

The other four are issues for which it’s necessary that the Democrats have a solid plan and a cohesive, easily-communicated message. But they’re not inspiring, are they? And that’s because they’re Republican issues. The Dems need to provide an alternative agenda on national security, energy independence, economic strength, and retirement security, but when the nebulous terms are reduced into what they really mean—the Iraq War, oil prices, taxes, and social security—it’s readily apparent that this is a reactionary platform. They’re still letting the GOP control the discussion.

Instead of making those the focus, their positions on those issues should be woven into a comprehensive platform, the centerpiece of which is instead five plainly stated progressive issues: nationalized health care, aggressively addressing endemic poverty, engaging global environmental alliances, voting reform, and reforming school funding (as in, schools no longer primarily funded by property taxes, which creates the disparities we see between rich and poor communities).

Or whatever. Those were just the first five off the top of my head. You could substitute broadening workers’ rights and/or family leave, a 21st century civil rights act, securing a Constitutionally protected right to choice, a compulsory national service plan (in which kids out of high school serve for 2 years in the military, the Peace Corps, a domestic emergency response core, whatever)…I mean, it could be anything. Just something new and exciting—something that will make people pay attention and change the discussion. Something that forces the Republicans to come up with an alternative plan for a bloody change. The Left needs to be vital, and there is vitality in new ideas.

Come on, Dems. Give us something about which to be enthusiastic. Finally coming up with your own message on the GOP’s issues ain’t gonna do it.