Democrats: The Party of Tax Cuts, Homeland Security, and a Sound Economy ... Oh, yeah, and Health Care ... Oh, yeah, and Education, too
May 17, 2003
By TygrBright

This, my friends, is the winning Democratic platform for 2004. This is the 5-point, focused, unifying juggernaut that will propel us to victory. This is the plan that the GOPpies don't want you (or any other Democrat) to know about, to talk about, to think about, to campaign on.

This is the unashamedly patriotic agenda that is also simultaneously liberal, broad-spectrum, principled, and positive for all Americans.

It's all in the spin, as the dear GOPpies have taught us. Let's take a closer look:

 
Democrats: The Party of Tax Cuts

American voters want tax cuts? Okay, let's give 'em tax cuts! Real tax cuts that will benefit real people. Let's start with exempting all earned income up to the Federal poverty level from payroll taxes. For a single person under 65, that would mean the first $9,359 of their paychecks would have NO payroll tax deductions. For a family of three, it would be the first $14,494.

Do I have spell this one out? How many voters get income the old-fashioned way—by sweating their asses off for it? Okay, now, how many get it via stock dividends and capital gains? What are people who actually work for a living likely to do with the extra $700-$1,000 bucks in their pay envelopes. Invest it off shore? I don't think so.

Real tax cuts. Democrats can OWN this issue.

 
Democrats: The Party of Homeland Security

This one can be summed up in a few well-chosen words: Cities that are safe and healthy to live in. How do we achieve it? We start by coordinating and channeling serious aid to our struggling cities for law enforcement, public health, and emergency services to improve both catastrophic and quality-of-life service areas. We add help to enable cities to save and/or replace their decaying physical infrastructure—sanitation, roads, public transit, water, public safety, etc.

Then we streamline existing standards, enact needed new standards, and improve enforcement to make certain that industrial and manufacturing sites that are potentially vulnerable to terrorist exploitation or other catastrophic events will not endanger surrounding populations—and that they won't endanger them in the normal course of doing business, either, by polluting the air, water, or land their neighbors depend on.

That is real Homeland Security, my friends. Not snooping into people's library habits. Not pissing off the rest of the world. Not strutting around banging our metaphorical genitalia. Safe, healthy cities, well-prepared and alert enough to stave off terrorist attacks and equipped to respond quickly and minimize the damage in worst-case scenarios.

 
Democrats: The Sound Economy Party

Two words, people: Job creation. They're famous for hyping it. We're famous for doing it. We've done it before, we can do it again. Targeted tax credits, incentives, public-private partnerships. Democrats wrote this book. Let's dust it off and show America the pretty pictures.

A sound economy is an economy where anyone who wants to work can get a full-time job that will let them support themselves and their family. There is no other legitimate definition.

 
Democrats: The Party of Health Care

I think America is ready, don't you? Mandate employer-based coverage with compensating tax credits for small businesses, and re-regulate the insurance industry to keep them from vulgar profiteering and turning real insurance into a which-shell-hides-the-pea "managed care"-style scam. Control costs by creating a Federal malpractice insurance program similar to the FDIC insurance for banking, and let hospitals and individual practitioners buy into it.

Control costs further by reviving incentives for pharmaceutical research in non-profit educational and health care institutions, where such research belongs, and capital investment in the equipment and infrastructure needed for such research. Let the American people own the patents and license the manufacture to private companies for a reasonable profit. Regulate the hell out of pharmaceutical and medical technology profiteers in the private sector.

Finally, revive real insurance for seniors and those unable to work-and broaden the pool to enable self-employed entrepreneurs to buy into a public insurance program managed nationally.

 
Democrats: For a Real 'Education President'

Lift all the unfunded federal mandates on schools and put federal education money into two things, and two things only: Infrastructure support (school construction, renovation, and equipment funding;) and a federal "wealth bank" of educational consulting expertise that states and localities can access at little to no cost to help with planning the financing and operation of their public education systems.

 
It's that simple. Those five things. Over and over, keep it simple. Pick a candidate who can put this program across, and get behind them. Form a squad of pit-bull media managers to exploit every spin-doctoring elision, evasion, and fabrication the GOPpies pull out of their tall pointy white hats and pinstriped pockets.

If we do this, we will nail their coffins back down for another twenty years, and they know it. They're terrified we'll come out of the chute with this agenda and a credible candidate. They will try to distract, to obfuscate, to what-if, to deny, to delay (or should that be DeLay?) everything we do. We stay focused, we will win.

Is our Party leadership ready to take us to victory?

Call 'em and ask. Forward this to them. Print it out and post it on the bulletin board at Party headquarters. Start getting the message out NOW: Keep it simple. Keep it focused. Resist the temptation to be all things to all people. Resist the temptation to get distracted by pretty ideological toys.