Do these issues deserve to be part of the debate?

[Printer70]

*Full public financing of public elections with the necessary, broad changes for a more fair and representative election process, replacing present charades;

*A responsive political system to expand the civic energies of the American people by, among other ways, facilitating the banding together of workers, consumers, taxpayers, small investors, and communities.

*A serious drive to abolish poverty using long-known policies;
Universal health insurance -- single payer embracing prevention, quality and cost controls;

*A living wage for the tens of millions of workers making less than $10 an hour -- many full time workers at $5.15, $6, $7, $8, and long overdue labor rights reform;

*An adequately funded crackdown on corporate crimes, fraud and abuse that have cheated trillions of dollars from taxpayers, investors, pension holders and consumers, plus specific corporate reforms;

*A comprehensive and determined nurturing of the physical and educational needs of children;

*Reform of the criminal injustice system and defense of the precious pillars of our democracy -- civil liberties, civil rights and civil remedies for wrongful injuries -- which are under relentless assault by corporate interests and the present government;

*A multi-faceted foreign policy to wage multilateral peace and promote arms control, plus utilizing the many assets of our country's knowledge base to lift prospects for the impoverished people abroad;

*A redirected federal budget for the crucial priorities of our country and away from the massive waste, fraud and redundancy of what President Eisenhower called the "military-industrial complex," as well as the massive costs of corporate welfare;

*The crisis of commercial food, water, and diet policies, in addition to agribusiness domination over dwindling, rural, small farm economies;

*The need for renewable energy and energy efficiency, instead of costly oil, gas and nuclear boondoggles;

*The housing problem for the millions of households who can't afford the rents or can't escape gentrification and sprawl;

*The relief of highway congestion and the promotion of modern public transit;

*The pull-down effect of corporate globalization on labor, the environment, consumers and our democratic processes.

*The consequences of media concentration over our public airwaves.
--

Are these issues being talked about? Should they be?

[Maddy McCall]

1. When you cut and paste from Nader's website, you should cite it

All of the above are straight from Nader's website:

http://www.naderexplore04.org/issues.html


Oh, and perhaps you should add the one Bill Maher requested:

17. End the drug war.

Edited to add link

[Printer70]

12. No

I shouldn't. I want to gauge people's reactions to these ideas without provoking their gut response against Nader. I don't want to bias the results.

[Renew Deal]

13. Yes you should.

That's copyright theft for starters. It is also just not right.

[lcordero]

2. They should be but it won't happen unless progressives start

putting as lethal a chokehold as possible on the Democratic Party.

[Maddy McCall]

3. And in the meantime, the Repubs will win the election, appoint conservativ

conservative justices, and then we can kiss this republic goodbye.

[lcordero]

5. oh, and what's my other choice?

have a so-called "democrat" appoint corporatist judges that have no qualms with violating the rights of the people?

or maybe have a "democrat" that is willing to send soldiers to die on a lie?

No thank you

[lcordero]

7. I'm still waiting for my answer

:mad:

[frustrated_lefty]

4. In the current climate,

with George Bush as president, in part due to Nader, I don't care much what issues he thinks should be talked about. He is, in part, responsible for this world now.

Go away, Nader.

[Kipepeo]

6. Nader isn't responsible

for Bush. Bush STOLE the election. I'm glad Nader was in the race to try and pull democrats to their rightful base.

Please don't blame people who vote third party when their principles tell them they have no other choice. If so many of them (enough to cost an election in some people's mind) don't have that choice then it is our responsibility to bring them a Democratic candidate who wants to win *them* instead of Republicans.

But I don't think they cost it anyway. Check out the films "Counting on Democracy" and "Unprecendented" to see how Bush stole the election from Gore's rightful majority.

[AndyTiedye]

8. Nader Made it Possible for Bush* to Steal the Election

Nader spent nearly all of his time attacking Gore, not Bush*,
and doing so in small, swing states.

A Nader run this year would be very, very, bad for us.
It doesn't matter if nobody really votes for him.
It will make it easer for the Rethugs to steal another election:
They can load their Diebolds with warez to siphon off Dem votes
to Nader in liberal areas, and to Bush* in conservative ones.
It is the only way they could plausibly steal California or
any other large, Democratic state. After they installed the
Schwartzengroper as the imperial governor, I am very concerned
that our states 55 electoral votes will be stolen by the Bushidas.

[tkmorris]

9. Damn right they do

So vote for Dennis.

[Lexingtonian]

10. No

If we are serious, that stuff has no relevance at this moment in time.

To talk about a whole lot of it now is just to engage in happy escapist fantasies- a nice thing to do privately, a waste of time in the public arena. None of it is possible on any seriously large scale without first breaking the power of the 'conservatives'.

"A comprehensive and determined nurturing of the physical and educational needs of children" alone involves such needs that government can in the present really only decide to take care of a small portion of the comprehensive set.

The 'conservative' movement consists of a lot of mostly older people who are gaming the system so that their own needs- also a bottomless pit- get taken care of first. Many come from poverty relative to the next generations, got screwed by the way The System worked during the Depression and the early Cold War, and now have so little of a safety net that they secure their quality of life in the desperate and ugly way they do.

Everybody in politics who is not part of that knows what needs to be done for all the people who are getting screwed in the present (as a result). The Nader list is not really news- it falls short, really. (All Green policy fails to realize or admit the specifically American problem of the present, which is cultural and racial/ethnic.) But what the most just balance between the two sets of needs is, that isn't as easy to say. As ugly as the 'conservatives' are, most of their supporters are older men and women who want to live out their last days in certain kinds of dignity and peace rather than desperation and feeling alien and inept in the land in which they were born. True, they choose to try to achieve that in very wrong ways, and their sense of entitlement and dominion is horrid. But the right way to get what we want is to help them live out their days with the things they really can't do without and let their notions of how things should be die out- completely- with them.

We have to talk about the things we want, if only to keep our hopes alive. But just because it's fun and desireable personally doesn't make it the right thing to throw into the public arena at this time. There are ugly, powerful, deeply mean creatures at war in it now, tossing a feeble and pretty creature like these hopes in there is a recipe for seeing it butchered.

So, first things first. Job one is to knock out Republicans and thereby force them into reform, and make as much progress as possible when the power is given for it. Job two is to knock out 'conservative' Democrats as soon as can be afforded, iow while keeping us sufficiently competitive at job one. And at the same time ideas like this list have to keep on getting diffused into the Party.

I've been contemplating the founding of an alternative to the Green Party for a while. It would be a caucus of the Democratic Party, have its own logos and identifiers, and form a humble, socially-centered entity that is separate socially and culturally but not politically from the Party. Sort of an Indian nation diffused over the country, functioning as an autonomous network and pursuing primarily smaller grassroots political tasks and projects. Intensely practical and interested in the public good, but not a debating society or Club o' The Righteous Ideologues. It takes a community of dedicated and good people rather than a nice manifesto of things wished for.

[Printer70]

14. Wrong on several counts

First, on demographics, "old people" don't vote Republican, they historically have voted Democratic. Next, if you don't address progressives issues and Democrats "win", it's a hollow victory- a little like getting Defense of Marriage, NAFTA, and welfare reform during the 90's.

[Name removed]

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