What to do

I mean

What to do when you’re running against an administration that’s imperiling the rule of law, the democratic process, human rights, race relations, honesty, international stability, and everything else you’d thought the US could maybe pull off?

You run a first thing’s first campaign:

In this four years, we take care of the threats to democracy, we pivot away from money-driven lobbyist-bought sound-bite image-drunk politics to a thoughtful shared conversation. We make every voting day (second Tuesday in November once every two years) a national holiday and voting obligatory, starting in eleventh or twelfth grade (when you take US Government in high school, depending on how it lines up with the election year). We push against gerrymandering and other distortions of the people’s will. We stand up for for human rights, shared concentration and joy, clarity and honesty, international cooperation,and everything else necessary to avoid idiotic flame outs.

For the nonce, we pick policies that make obvious sense to everyone: shore up Obamacare; pursue a greener infrastructure repair; and so on.

You don’t need free college or free healthcare. We can moderate spending on education and healthcare without reinventing wheels.

We can come up with a humane and workable immigration policy that admits the issue is not dead easy to deal with. We can be free trade without being suckers. We can be decidedly-not-Trump without blowing off all the concerns of those who voted for Trump. We can put together a moderate program that reinvigorates the democratic process and our shared journey, and that addresses our global need to move quickly and decisively towards a more sustainable use of natural resources. We can move sure and clear.

It’s not about giving up on all your big ideas. It’s about picking a few politically doable and existentially necessary issues and spending four years on them. After that, you can think again about the next four years. But for now, help us to get out of this jam!!!!!!

AW/BW
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