I enjoy reading many of the pieces posted on Daily Kos. I’m particularly grateful to those contributors who keep us posted on court cases and other news stories that I might not otherwise hear about.
Most Daily Kos regulars do not need to be told just how bad, and how terribly divisive, Fox “News” and its ilk are. Unfortunately, the self-segregating and (unwittingly?) insular nature of the Daily Kos community might also be a bit divisive.
When like-minded people get together, their similar views tend to reinforce each other. People thereby tend to become more confident in the validity of those ideas and those views tend to become more extreme. This not only tends to be divisive, it can lead to overconfidence. One can lose sight of the strength and/or appeal of opposing views.
This results in our supporting candidates who are unlikely to bring the country together. (General Wesley Clark would be my choice for President.)
In our eagerness to protect women’s “right to choose,” we should not forget that abortion is, at best, a regrettable expedient. It is not the business of government to intervene in people’s sex life, but there is nothing admirable about sexual promiscuity. And homophobia is perhaps, among other things, a fear in some men that homosexuals will “do unto them” as they, “straight” men, “do unto” women (i.e. think of and treat women as sex objects and second class citizens – often demeaned as sluts, etc.).
Government is often incompetent. And few of the world’s problems can be solved simply by throwing money at them.
For those who don’t want government to work protecting the rights and interests of the “little guy,” one of the “benefits” of negative campaigning and acrimonious gridlock in Congress is that it disgusts people with the political process, so that they don’t vote. Although, it only takes one side to create gridlock, but both sides can blame the other.
Democrats need to give those who rarely vote compelling reasons to vote (such as the fact that Republicans are trying to prevent people from voting). Democrats need to campaign on the big (but less divisive) issues: campaign finance and the resulting political corruption, gerrymandering, pollution, health care, and creating an equitable tax system.
My local Congresswomen, Cheri Bustos, is deemed to be one of the more “vulnerable” Democrats. Last election, her campaign focused on the (patently uncontroversial) issue of helping veterans. Although helping veterans is obviously a good thing, it did little or nothing to distinguish her from her opponent. In the midst of the VA scandal, it may even have hurt her. Of course, voting turnout was low.
Fiscal responsibility in government is, of course, a good thing. Democrats need to make it clear that the Republican cut (almost) everything approach is actually not fiscally responsible. Republicans’ tightfisted approach both to infrastructure spending and social services, although (ostensibly) “penny wise,” is often actually billion dollar foolish.
When dams or levies break, people have great sympathy for (and are very generous to) the victims of those “natural” disasters. Unfortunately (and shortsightedly), spending money on strengthening those dams, levies and other infrastructure so they’re less likely to break in the first place has far less appeal. Providing housing for the homeless and medical care for the poor can also actually save the government money.
Financial crises, facilitated by deregulation, haven’t just had devastating effects on the economy, they’ve and added billions, even trillions, to government deficits.
The old “free market” health care “system” Republicans would preserve made U.S. health care by far the most expensive in the world, without making it the best. Decades of skyrocketing health care costs are another major cause of our (state and federal) government deficits. Much of our military spending is also extremely wasteful. And tax cuts for the wealthy are both fiscally irresponsible and grossly unfair. (Does anyone really think the super rich should pay lower tax rates than those who are much less wealthy?)