Where we went wrong…

I look back now at the 2008 Campaign season with the sort of disdain you hold for your worst enemy. Hindsight is 20/20 and as a very strong liberal it’s hard not to feel completely and utterly betrayed by how events occurred. As liberals went we weren’t sure what to make of the field, once deemed the “best field of contenders in Democratic history” by many in the media. Best field for whom?

Aside from Dennis Kucinich the field was lacking any real liberal or progressive candidates. Of the main three, John Edwards was the only one using the populist rhetoric that attacked the central issues that are plaguing this country. But even he was lacking the bonafides to make anyone believe him. Russ Feingold put it succinctly when he said Edwards was using his platform but didn’t have the Senate record to back it up.

Liberals bit their lip and decided to choose the unknown quantity (Obama) who was speaking with hopeful change rhetoric over the known quantity (Clinton) who had in a previous Administration shown that they were as pro-corporation as the Reagan Republicans were.

We’re only a year in and the disappointment and frustration couldn’t be any worse. Any liberal with a brain knew exactly how this was going to go when Rahm Emanuel was named Chief of Staff. Rahm, who famously recruited rich Republican businessmen to run as Democrats because it would be an easy seat pick up had helped (along with Chuck Schumer in the DSCC) to weed out real liberals and progressives in primaries. Specifically intervening for corporate candidates and raising so much money for them that the real progressives had to bow out or face a humiliating defeat.

Rahm kept this process going once he became Obama’s top guy by keeping Progressives out of nearly every cabinet post and purposely keeping them out of policy meetings. Every progressive campaign promise was jettisoned for whatever pro-corporate policy they could support. Gays & Lesbians were given lip service but complete inaction for their rights. Single Payer advocates were purposely excluded from the negotiating table and then arrested at Congressional Hearings by order of the corporatist Democratic allies of Obama’s Administration. Obama also escalated the war in Afghanistan and managed to do so the week before he picked up a Nobel Peace Prize that he won for just not being George W. Bush. Pretty ridiculous.

Health Care “Reform” passed the Senate by a 60-40 vote this week and now goes to committee where I bet the contentious atmosphere between what House Democrats want and Senate Democrats want stalls the process quite a bit.

Still if the bill that ultimately passes resembles anything like what the Senate passed, we would have all been better off with nothing. Mandating people buy insurance when they really can’t afford to and eliminating almost all cost control provisions just means that you fed insurance companies a huge amount of customers that they can continue to overcharge. Sure there are no pre-existing conditions to fear but also no real regulatory methods in which to prevent insurers from jacking prices up any time they would like as well. There’s nothing to really like in this bill.

The whole thing is a byproduct of the Democratic sell out to lobbyists in the Health Care Industry. They spent $1.4 million a day lobbying Congress and by the end they owned them all. It’s sickening.

But it opens up the reality of what the process should have been all along. Health Care, as pressing as it is as an issue for most Americans should have been second on the docket.

Campaign Finance Reform should have been first. Of course this would require a President who wasn’t a complete sell out to corporate interests or Republican rhetoric and Obama is neither.

Still the ONLY way for real reform on the issues in a way that benefits the entire populace and not just the top 1% of this country is to make CFR the #1 issue to change.

And it requires a real overhaul not just a small change here or there like the Democrats pathetically weak lobbyist gift rule changes from 2006.
To me this reform is the one that changes all reform after it because taking private money out of the game makes the Congress accountable to one special interest: constituents.

Before I break down the concept that I propose let me say two things.

1. I think this is a plan BOTH Republicans and Democrats would support. No, not the elected ones but the grass roots. But you have to sell it differently to each constituency. There is something to like for both.

2. This plan is very strict but if enacted I assure you the Presidency and Congress would no longer be stooges to CEOs and lobbyists.

So here’s the plan, point by point.

• All parties that want to participate in national Presidential elections must fulfill signature requirements to be placed on ballots in at least 3/4ths of the 50 states. By meeting participation guidelines they will receive public funding equal to the other candidates and receive equal time on each national debate.

• For local Congressional and Senate elections, candidate must receive prerequisite signatures to receive money and guaranteed debate slot/time.

• To qualify as a candidate all candidates must divest in all stocks, bonds and financial holdings aside from personal home real estate. All assets must be liquid at the time of campaign opening and this includes all immediate family (parents, siblings, spouse, children, grandchildren). This will eliminate any impropriety from being assigned to a committee and steering dollars to friends or companies that you are personally invested in. Failure to liquidate assets will result in automatic disqualification from campaign and should offense not be discovered until after the race is over, a candidate will be expelled from their seat retroactively for such a violation.

• The election cycle is 6 weeks for party primaries and 6 weeks for the national campaign.

• Each candidate will receive the same amount of public funding. This will be used for live campaign events (speeches, travel). Each campaign will additionally receive an equal amount of primetime TV ad time, networks cannot refuse to air any candidates’ ads or they will be stripped of their FCC license.

• Corporations and Special Interest Groups are banned from airing ads. The way the law will be written, these groups will be defined as political parties rather than advocacy organizations and by definition the private money they will collect would be in violation of federal law. A candidate will be limited to only representing one political party so they cannot have an advocacy group represent them, to which that group would then need the prerequisite signatures to receive a spot on the ballot.

• Employers and Unions are strictly prohibited from organizing for or advertising/advocating on behalf of a candidate.

• Political Parties will be granted a specific amount of money, capped to a certain amount, in which they can use to organize grass roots and build party loyalty. They will be allowed, within their financial construct, to advocate for their party’s candidates but due to the limited amount of funds, they would make better use of the funding by building a ground campaign for multiple elections rather than one at a time.

What this does is majorly clamp down and end all outside money from coming into a campaign. It prevents the process from being closed to just two parties and eliminates the need to be one of the financial elite to run for office. It eliminates special interest ads which usually smear candidates and obfuscate facts. It eliminates pressure from employers and union organizing behind a candidate.

When I say this will appease both parties, it will. It takes the corporate money out of every bill. Makes the candidates beholden to the will of their constituents and gives regular people a chance to run for office and make a difference (whereas that is nearly impossible now). The Left will be ecstatic about this. In the Health Care debate this makes Single Payer a legitimate option and eliminated many of these corporate run tea bagger town hall attacks that helped screw up the debate. It would prevent the Max Baucuses and Joe Liebermans from being able to have a seat let alone selling out the entire country for some of their rich buddies. And it opens doors for Green Party Candidates, Libertarians, etc to all have equal time on the main stage and have their views listened to and heard.

The Right will be excited because this all but ends the Democratic stranglehold on Unions and the work Unions do on campaigns. It also eliminates many of the 527 groups they hate, most notably MoveOn.org, from being a serious threat to their way of life.

If you market this for the reasons they would like the bill to each separate group, you can create a groundswell to get this type of reform passed. The media will try to fight it tooth and nail. The elected corporate sell out politicians will as well. But with a legitimate push from the grass roots on both sides, they might have no choice but to relent.

And then we’ll have a system where the laws are made of the people, by the people and for the people. Just as our forefathers seemed to intend originally, or at least they implied as much.