2022 should be about "America's Agenda" embraced by (virtually) all Democrats

[Tom Rinaldo]

I think Democrats have to nationalize the 2022 Midterms, with a platform that highlights our priorities for America. Usually party platforms are a feature of Presidential elections, but this year, far more than in most midterm elections, it is the Democratic Party running against the Republican Party, representing sharply contrasting visions for America, more so than a typical array of locally focused congressional contests. Democrats presenting a unified national message need not shift the focus off of the Stirling attributes of our individual candidates. Nor will doing so overshadow matters of local concern. Our candidates can personalize why it is they so strongly support "America's Agenda", drawing on their lifetimes of achievement and struggles. And what exactly is "America's Agenda?" Collectively it is the measures that Democrats in Congress will fight for and deliver for the American people should they entrust us with workable governing Congressional majorities after the 2022 elections. It will be specific, and highly relevant to the lives of the vast majority of working Americans. It will be Joe Biden's original "Build Back Better" plan, and more.

OK, obviously it doesn't have to be called "America's Agenda", that's just a working "title" I'm tossing out there for the moment, harkening back to when Republicans ran a unified midterm election campaign under the platform detailed under their "Contract with America." The thing about "Build Back Better" as it was originally proposed is that it crystalized current Democratic Party ideology into specific tangible objectives that, if enacted, would positively transform the lives of most Americans in ways that are immediately recognizable. The elements of "Build Back Better" are highly popular, and easier to campaign on as an American agenda than they are as an omnibus piece of congressional legislation, where the focus gets quickly lost in discussions of specific price tags and deficit projections.

Here's the thing. The national Democratic Party, combining the efforts of the Biden Administration with leaders from across the center left spectrum of Democrats in Congress, achieved a 97% consensus on our American Agenda. And that included a straight forward wildly popular agreement on how that agenda would be paid for: Making the rich pay their fair share by rolling back Trump's huge tax giveaways to super wealthy corporations and individuals, and by closing loopholes that allow some of our biggest corporations to pay zero in corporate taxes, while the wealthiest individuals in America often pay a lower rate in taxes than their secretary's do. Americans overwhelmingly support those reforms, it was just a handful of conservative Democrats in Congress who balked and thus muddied that message, thereby raising a frightening specter of inflationary deficits (while forcing the Pentagon to spend billions more money than they asked for.)

Rather than enter the 2022 midterms on the defensive, having failed to fully deliver on President Biden's 2020 campaign pledges in this congressional session, Democrats should use these elections to go on the offensive; urging Americans to reject an obstructionist Congress where Republicans virtually unanimously opposed Democratic attempts to deliver for Americans on health care, on affordable prescriptions, on day care, on expanded preschool education, on elder care, on affordable housing, on sustainable green jobs, on affordable higher education, on combating devastating climate change, and so much more.

Wherever President Biden's legislative agenda got bottle necked by the Senate this year, that becomes a call to action. America can achieve all of that and more, if voters deliver working majorities to Democrats in both houses this November. Our political agenda should be crystal clear. Americans will benefit from in in 2023 if they elect enough Democrats in 2022.Our agenda is national in scope but the impact of it will be felt in every city, in every hamlet, and on every farm once Republican obstructionists are retired.

The American Agenda is conceptually larger than just Build Back Better however. It restores bedrock American values, like a believe in and embrace of science to address the challenges that confront us in every realm, from public health to climate change. It includes renewed adherence to the core democratic principles that have made America a beacon to all of humanity, however imperfectly that light has all too often shined. 2022 must be a contrast election. We can have the America we want if we just go out and vote for it. It's withing our grasp, but the alternative looms large also. Democrats have an Agenda for America. Republicans have more fear, grievances, and hate.

[brooklynite]

1. To have a national message, you need a message that plays nationally...

Do reachable rural and suburban voters care about the same issues as the urban Democratic base?

[Tom Rinaldo]

2. Yes, because we are at the least common denominator level of framing

This is about providing economic opportunity for all Americans, removing obstacles that prevent hard working families in all regions of our nation from succeeding. Affordable day care is not a rural vs urban vs suburban issue. Neither is the cost of prescription drugs, nor of higher education. The accelerating pace of weather disasters does not discriminate based on red or blue constituencies, or on regions of our nation. It effects all of us.

A fair shake is something all Americans can relate to. The wildly accelerating rate of distorted income distribution is a trend that has gone on long enough so that almost any American can understand how it adversely impacts almost all of us. There is a bushel basket of economic issues that Build Back Better addressed. What unites them is the bushel basket itself, the fair play framing, the belief that government has a productive role to play in this or that realm that can impact positively on our daily lives. Some relate closer to one or another issue in the bushel, that can be highlighted where local differences are most prominent, but the beauty of the Democratic Party's economic platform now is that it is far broader in conceptional scope than a series of goodies for localized special interests. We stand for the working and middle class.

[Tom Rinaldo]

3. P.S. to my post above

In many ways I find that what has been most remarkable about the negotiations among congressional Democrats over Biden's Build Back Better agenda is not that we have so far failed to thread the needle to achieve a workable consensus of support to pass it, but how very close we came to doing so, given how ambitious it is. We achieved a remarkable degree of unity behind it, including elected Democrats from all regions of our nation who represent not just the classic core Democratic base. The legislation that was passed in the house bent over backwards to hopefully win the support of a few hold out moderate/conservative Dems, the vast bulk of our caucus would have been comfortable with legislation even less watered down than what was sent on to the Senate. It was not legislation crafted to appeal only to our traditional base.