House Progressives Will Have to Fight Like Hell Against the Establishment
Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi. (Screen shot / YouTube)
More progressive Democrats in the House must be prepared to fight like hell
against the Pelosi-Schumer establishment, which will try to make them
quiescent and go along with corporate priorities. What 2016 showed is that
that platform is a formula for humiliating defeat and irrelevance. Democrats
have to stand for something or people won't bother to vote for them.
Here is the proposed Cole Progressive Platform for the next two years:
1. The new Democratic-controlled House must come up with a bill for Medicare
for all which would reform the collapsing Obamacare. They should find a way
to get Big Pharma on their side (there will after all be increased insurance
payments for patients that are now uncovered and can't afford care). They
may well be able to get such a bill past the Republican senate, given that
running against covering pre-existing conditions was fatal for a lot of GOP
candidates for the House. As for Trump, just call it Trumpcare and he might
well sign it. He has after all promised most of the things that a Medicare
for all program would entail, so maybe he'll finally stand by his own
rhetoric.
Even if they can't get the bill implemented into law, they can make
Republicans vote against it in public, and then run against them in 2020 on
that basis.
2. The Dems in the House must pass legislation promoting wind and solar
energy and a move to electric vehicles. The $7500 tax credit should be
expanded and the conditions for it loosened. Banks should be mandated to
offer affordable loans for solar panels. Despite the power of the Big Oil
lobby, the Dems might well be able to get something done. Republican
senators like Chuck Grassley, from a Big Wind state (Iowa), would support
them. Trump may be a lost cause here, but again, making him and GOP senators
veto a bipartisan bill aimed at saving the world from a 7 degree F.
temperature increase and all the disasters it will lead to, just creates an
urgent issue on which Dems can run against them in 2020.
3. The Dems should re-ratify the Paris Climate Accord.
4. We need a national law protecting the right of workers, including state
workers, to organize unions, engage in collective bargaining, and strike. In
practice, these rights have been eroded by prosecutors winking a corporate
union-busting or state legislation of 'right to work' (i.e. right to be
unorganized slaves) laws.
5. The Dems should raise the cap on Social Security payments from $128,000 a
year to $200,000 a year, which would nail down the health of the program for
decades to come.
6. The Dems must craft an immigration bill restoring the Dreamers and
establishing a path to citizenship for the undocumented. If it required
somewhat reducing the number of legal immigrants annually from about 1
million to something less, so be it. The important thing is that people who
have lived and worked in the US for years and who have family here be given
a way to regularize their status, and that future legal immigrants be
guaranteed a regular path to citizenship, as well. Trump says he likes to
make deals, so offer him some things. End visa lotteries. They aren't what
he thinks they are, but he hates them and misunderstands them, so if you
could get his signature on a reasonable law by abolishing them, why note?
They aren't that essential.
7. The Dems should legalize marijuana. Again, this issue could be
bipartisan. It isn't clear that Trump cares one way or another.
8. The Dems must pass a law forbidding the Trump administration to spend any
government money in helping the Saudi-led war on Yemen. This situation could
produce 10 million deaths from starvation, a mind-boggling prospect
reminiscent of the excesses of Stalinism, for which people in the Middle
East will blame the United States.
9. The Dems should also get the US out of Syria, and in that they would find
an ally in Trump and some GOP senators. It really could be done. The US
presence in Syria can't actually block Iran, and it is just a sort of
geopolitical game intended to make the US look like it is still a player.
10. The Dems must bite the bullet and rejoin the Joint Comprehensive Plan of
Action or Iran nuclear deal, on the grounds that it is the most successful
nuclear non-proliferation policy ever pursued by the United States. GOP
attempts to paint Democrats as soft on Iran mostly failed, and the charge
could be turned back on Republicans, that they are destroying an agreement
that reduced the chances of war and reduced military expenditure, and so
risking more US war in the Middle East.
11. Accomplishing some of this may require getting rid of some people from
the Trump administration. Stephen Miller, the evil Rasputin behind some of
Trump's more outrageous immigration policies, should be investigated every
which way from Sunday. Someone so despicable and weaselly has surely broken
laws and could be impeached. Likewise, John Bolton's creepy relationship
with the People's Jihadis (MEK) should be investigated. Deprived of some of
his more dastardly henchmen, Trump might become more malleable.
Juan Cole / Informed Comment
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