The guiding rules are even more important than the specific policy proposals. Republicans do this with their stupid destructive ideas. Almost always the Democratic leadership doesn't because if they did, they would confess that their plan differs from the Republicans only in taking enough of the sting out of neoliberal economic policies that we lose interest in politics.
That might have worked for Bill Clinton after the kinder, gentler early assault by Reagan and Papa Bush, but after Baby Bush came after the middle class like a crack smoking monkey with a chainsaw, that's not gonna fly.
To the DLCers at the top, shit or get off the pot and make room for progressives to take the reins of the party.
By the way, FDR would be the first to tell us it's not enough to do something for our base. Here are three other little rules we should follow when we do something for our base:
1.
Keep it simple. The healthcare bill not only did nothing for our base; it was hard to understand. Every initiative should be capable of being put down in a single sentence or two. "Financial reform" is fine, but the Dodd-Frank Act is too hard to sum up coherently to our base on even an index card, much less a bumper sticker.
2.
Make it universal. People on the left have all sorts of ideas for programs that turn out to be available only to a select few. By contrast take FDR's big ideas, like Social Security. Not everyone is on it, but sooner or later we all are headed there. If we're not there, our parents are. Likewise, Medicare: we'll all get there. The public option, which was left out of the healthcare law, was a nice idea and all, but in the end it would have been available only for a few.
Finally, the last and most important rule:
3.
Make it add up to a plan. I mean, let's go beyond "the vision thing" and let people know we have a plan. Obama will not bring back the American economy of golden memory. The deficit will be horrendous. We may have to get used to unemployment of 7 percent, a 7 percent that covers up a bigger percent of people working just three instead of five days a week. FDR did not end the Depression, either. But people were patient because they knew he had a plan. He was rebuilding the economy from the bottom up, and it paid off, not in the 1930s but in the unionized, high-benefits postwar decades after he died.
http://www.thenation.com/article/154607/ten-things-dems-could-do-win?page=0,0
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