A Rallying Cry for Democratic Populism

[Rose Siding]

What would happen if the opposition party actually chose to oppose the one in power? Not just on the margins, but by rejecting outright the majority party's fundamental beliefs on trade and tax policy?

Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.) urges Democrats to take on Republicans in just that way in his new book, "Take This Job and Ship It: How Corporate Greed and Brain Dead Politics Are Selling Out America."...

Depending on how low President Bush's job-approval ratings go, Dorgan might be on to something. His book is worth reading if only to see in detail how a reenergized Democratic Party might act.

Its first tenet would be to buck the economic consensus about the wisdom and inevitability of globalization. Dorgan disparages the elites' blind faith in markets to produce positive financial results. Instead, he concentrates on the human toll that cheap labor has exacted on low- and middle-income families.
.....
The senator does more than tug the heartstrings. He recommends a litany of solutions, including repealing a tax break that encourages the outsourcing of jobs overseas, prohibiting imports from countries that abuse their workers and setting a ceiling on our trade deficits.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/30/AR2006073000552.html

[unlawflcombatnt]

1. Dorgan is Right On

Thanks for posting the link to the WP article. Dorgan is hands-down my favorite Senator. If he ran for President I'd vote for him. I completely agree with his positions on trade, Wal-Mart, and the American Pharmaceutical Cartel.

Washington Post author Birnbaum makes it sound like Dorgan is a way-out,
left-pandering liberal of questionable intelligence. Nothing could be further from the truth. Dorgan's speeches and positions are extremely well thought out and logical. Every time I've heard him speak he makes perfect sense. I'm sure the same is true of his book.

unlawflcombatnt

EconomicPopulistCommentary

EconomicPatriotForum

___________
The economy needs balance between the "means of production" & "means of consumption."

[oscar111]

2. AAR necessary: Campaign time too short to explain wildly different idea

...different ideas on things.


When the current polls show that AAR has persuaded most voters of these fine new ideas, only then can a progressive's brief election campaign have a ghost of a chance of success.

PS dont forget also, that the issue never in the polls, ...

RACISM

is what has been defeating our fine ideas on economics since the sixties.

It outweighs healthcare, having a job, tax, war and everything else. In the mind of racists.

You see, they twist logic to blame the ethnics for everything that is wrong. Racists think this... "Ethnics tell the democrats what to do. So why elect the democrats?"

[grasswire]

3. over at American Prospect there's a strategy paper...

...that is a must read for Democrats who would like to see an actual strategy. It's in four parts. The first part explains why we aren't winning landslides already, because Americans are actually in agreement with Dems on the issues. We oughta be winning big -- so big they can't steal enough votes to take elections. And that could be rectified by an educational campaign to teach America what a Democrat really is.

I urge you to go read the paper.

The first part is here: http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=11435

The second part is here:

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=11443

You can poke around in their search engine to find the other parts.

[welshTerrier2]

4. here are some changes Democrats should be fighting for ...

i wrote this last week ... unfortunately, i was being sarcastic ... the gap between what i'd like to see the party fight for and where they really are is enormous ... Democrats have become way too timid in fighting for the changes we need ...

some may believe the current crop is "getting the politics right" ... perhaps they are; perhaps they're not ... one thing's for sure, they aren't fighting for the really big changes we desperately need ...

here was a mythical post about what would happen if the Democrats were to retake the House and Senate this November ... oh, how i wish it were true ...

my "Top 10" glorious changes if the Dems win the House and Senate

first, of course, we'd finally get some investigations of the corrupt bush regime ... that's only true if Democrats aren't stupid enough to "usher in a new era of 'bi-partisanship'" ... it would be nice to break through some of the cover-ups and the lies ... i think the odds are good that real investigations would occur ... perhaps the most powerful perpetrators in the current administration should be turned over to the World Court to face charges of war crimes ...

second, we would finally see the corrupting influence of big money kicked out of Washington ... instead of catering to lobbyists and big donors, Democrats would reinvigorate our democracy and return all power to where it belongs: to "we the people" ...

third, Democrats would call for massive cuts in the defense budget which is the shining star of corporate welfare ... only important and necessary programs would be retained ... the others would finally be outed as wasteful spending that only weakens the nation ...

fourth, Democrats would immediately terminate all spying on US citizens even if bush finally agreed to first get the approval of the FISA court ... in the end, they'd see that spying on US citizens is just plain wrong and that the issue is greater than just a battle between the branches of government ...

fifth, Democrats would put an end to US imperialism ... our foreign policy would reflect our laws and our values and no longer be conducted solely for "special interests" ... the cycle of endless war being fought to generate oil revenues would finally be ended ...

sixth, Democrats would call for radical changes inside the US to address global warming ... cars would be either banned or substantially restricted ... Democrats would no longer only call for a very gradual transition to alternative fuels ... Democrats would endorse a vision that would have mass transit replacing the automobile wherever possible ...

seventh, Democrats would recognize that democracies cannot exist with widely disparate levels of wealth and income ... they would make laws that, while not forcing absolute equality, would recognize that the gap today between rich and poor must be narrowed ...

eighth, Democrats would strongly support all laws that demand freedom and equality for all citizens ... issues like gay marriage would be supported because every citizen should have the exact same rights as every other citizen ... nonsense about civil unions or "letting the states decide" would be brushed aside because every citizen should have equal rights guaranteed by the US Constitution ...

ninth, Democrats would work hard to balance the budget and make the really tough choices, painful choices, to restore fiscal sanity ...

and tenth, Democrats would call for a "new American revolution (peaceful)" to restore the soul and spirit of the American ideal ...

these are just some of the changes I would expect to see if the Democrats were able to capture both the House and Senate this November ... no, i'm afraid i'm not at all serious ... i wish i were ...