In the Public Interest
Final Stretch Campaign Advice for Tim Ryan, John Fetterman, Mandela Barnes,
Beto O’Rourke, Catherine Cortez Masto, Maggie Hassan, Raphael Warnock, Patty
Murray & Mike Franken
With less than two weeks to go before the November 8th congressional elections,
the candidates in close races are frantically racing around their districts,
dialing for campaign dollars and doing more of the same speechifying and
repetitive political ads. “More of the same,” however, may not be enough.
Candidates whose campaigns are stalled and a little stale need to resist
late-campaign ditto-heading and freshly propose a compelling future for voters.
In a recent compilation of ideas from twenty-five leading progressive civic
leaders and advocates titled “Crushing the GOP, 2022”
(https://winningamerica.net/ ;
<https://nader.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c5cfd22327c3214afb5955d02&id=071306cf67&e=ed3470c3e9>),
Democratic campaigners can pick and choose motivating messages and ideas to
use in the remaining days before November 8th and in forthcoming elections of
2024.
It is time to present all the families in America with a fulsome commitment to
elevate our health, safety, and economic well-being. Elections should be about
the future, as well as the near-term. Our children, who can be practical
idealists, are our future, and the hope for a just democracy and safe planet.
Astonishingly, the Republicans have been getting away with an astounding
variety of cruelties to children. It is almost as if their inbred corporatism
keeps them from seeing the children for the big bucks. Republicans are pro-life
until children are born. At that point, you’re on your own baby!
The particulars are overt and shameless. Republicans have opposed adequate
neonatal care, paid family leave, maternity leave and child care. They have
blocked a long-overdue national elevation of the $7.25 frozen minimum wage to
$15 an hour. All these issues register large polling majorities. They are the
routine social safety nets common in other western countries.
The clenched-jaw opposition by congressional Republicans to programs
confronting the violence of fossil-fuel-driven climate disruption gives grim
meaning to bought-and-paid-for politicians. They are eagerly refusing to
protect our descendants from the oncoming fury of mega-storms, floods,
droughts, uncontrollable wildfires and sea level rises. Even the Pentagon
thinks the climate crisis is a serious national security threat.
To make matters worse, the Republicans, since 2011, have starved the IRS budget
to the point that the present Trump-appointed head of the IRS Charles Rettig
estimates about one trillion dollars in taxes a year go uncollected. If
Democrats had the FDR, Harry Truman fighting spirit, today they could very
accurately accuse the GOP of actively aiding and abetting massive tax evasion.
The GOP pushed for tax giveaways to the super-rich and large corporations in
2017 and huge tax escapes. But they blocked a portion of the tax dollars being
invested in pro-children programs.
There’s more. In January, Republicans callously and disgracefully blocked the
extension of the $300 a month child tax credit for fifty-eight million
children. Until its suspension, this tax credit cut the child poverty level by
one-third.
At the same time, Republican-dominated, gerrymandered states have governors and
legislatures that refuse to apply for available federal Medicaid funds to
provide broader health insurance for the children in their states.
With Trump in the White House, the GOP Congress pushed for more junk food
(salt, sugar and fat) in school lunch programs. They also repealed a ban on a
pesticide that scientists found to be especially dangerous for very young
children.
Democrats have supported pro-children legislation and regulations, and have a
reputation going back decades fighting against Republican neglect of
safeguarding children. Democrats can connect with parents of fearful tweens and
teenagers calling out adults with their plea: “We are children and ‘you’ are
not protecting us.” Pin that “you” directly onto the GOP.
It is also not too late for get-out-the-vote campaigning for the tens of
millions of midnight shift workers who keep the country running while we are
asleep. Workers in hospitals, nursing homes, factories, all-night stores,
police stations, firehouses, and emergency repair shops have been overlooked in
campaigns. Respecting by name these third-shift occupations and visiting their
places of work can give these voters an exhilarating lift in the closing days
of campaigns.
There is also still time to go on the offensive against the Republicans who
specialize in placing the Democrats on the defensive by invoking cultural and
family values. Ridiculous. In 2014 and 2020, I put together 12 Kentucky Values
the Republicans regularly reject. The Kentucky Democratic Senatorial candidates
refused to embrace this message, even though the state’s leading paper, the
Louisville Courier-Journal published my article titled “Ky. values vs.
McConnell.” Most of these “values” resonate with people everywhere in America.
(See:
https://www.courier-journal.com/story/opinion/contributors/2014/10/24/ralph-nader-ky-values-vs-mcconnell/17846981/
<https://nader.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c5cfd22327c3214afb5955d02&id=3c94a5eb2c&e=ed3470c3e9>).
To the Democratic candidates – Tim Ryan, John Fetterman, Mandela Barnes, Beto
O’Rourke, Catherine Cortez Masto, Maggie Hassan, Raphael Warnock, Patty Murray,
Mike Franken and others in House and Senate races that should not be close – I
say, go directly on the offensive against the most lawless, corrupt, repressive
GOP in history that creates Anxiety, Dread, and Fear for families desperately
trying every day to make ends meet.
Make the final stretch drive a luminous comparison of how the lives and
livelihoods of most people, of most workers and children, would be better under
the Democratic Party than under the chronically lying Republican Party of Big
Business Greed over People.
Ralph Nader
