Falling in the Ice Hole

Falling in the Ice Hole

Reading the “Trump Media,” also called Fox News; my Democratic Party is on the verge of schism. We are torn, divided between the “old line” progressives; Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi; and the “new Socialist-Democrats,” Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and the newest, new poster person, twenty-eight year old Congressional candidate Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez!

According to Fox News, we are forced into a terrible choice:  become a true European Socialist party, abolishing ICE to open the borders, and granting free college and health care; or stay with a geriatric leadership that offers the “failed Liberal ideas” of the 1960’s.  How can we ever have a chance to govern, we are either revolutionaries or fools lost in the past.  We are told that while Trump may make mistakes, the biggest mistake we can make is to choose a different course.

Just as Fox News doesn’t accept my view of the Republican Party and President Trump, I don’t buy their characterization of my political party.  We are a “big tent” party and always have been, ever since Franklin Roosevelt put together the Depression Era coalition.  We are the political party that had a Southern segregationist, Lyndon Johnson, as the President who lead the nation to new civil rights laws and a war on poverty.  You think we can’t handle some diversity in political views?

The Democratic Party is faced not with a schism of ideas, but with a difference in degree.  Ask any Democrat whether health care should be available to all, and they will all answer yes.  Some will see a compromise path through the private market, which is exactly what the Affordable Care Act offered.  Some will see some form of single payer system, which is exactly what Medicare “for all” would be.  Both know that the United States as a nation pays some $3.3 trillion per year for health care, one of the highest costs in the world, for a system great for some, but failing others.  Every Democrat knows there is no such thing as “free” health care; even Bernie’s plan would transfer private health insurance costs into public funds – that’s called taxes.

All plans transfer costs: the plan we should select is the one that gets the best care to the most people with the lowest possible cost.  That’s the Democratic Party’s goal, and it should be the Republican Party’s goal too, if they would ever offer a plan that wasn’t just status-quo, private insurance, if you can’t afford it, tough.

Ask any Democrat whether anyone who works full time should make enough money to live, and they will all answer yes.  Whether that means a minimum wage adjusted to the realities of where it is earned ($15/hour might be OK for Ohio, but not enough for New York City) or some other form of supporting income; the reality is that the American “dream” should not mean working two or three jobs to try to make ends meet, and maybe still not making it.

Ask any Democrat whether twelve years of public education is enough, and they’ll say no.  All Democrats think we need to do more:  more to encourage education beyond high school, more to reduce the cost of college education, more to control predatory student loan practices.  For example: an investment of extending free public education two more years would have a huge return in income earned and taxes paid.  Education is a “pay me now or pay me later” deal, especially when it comes to crime. Keeping kids in school and getting them the education they need to get a job with a living wage, will reduce the soaring numbers in our prisons; numbers that cost many thousands of dollars per prisoner per year.

Ask almost any Democrat whether we should have completely open and uncontrolled borders, and they will say no.  Ask any Democrat (and hopefully anyone) whether the “zero tolerance, child separation” program enforced by the current Administration is acceptable, and that answer is no as well.  Some Democrats have reacted to those abuses by calling for the abolition of ICE, but abolishing ICE doesn’t mean open borders.  It means if an agency of the US government can enforce such a punitive and inhumane program, then we need to look at whether we should have such an agency, or should we abolish and replace it.  Does “repeal and replace” sound familiar to my Republican friends who didn’t like the Affordable Care Act?  Many Democrats feel the same about ICE.

Democrats are agreed on the goals, where we differ are the means to achieve those goals.  And we differ on whether we think the current leadership is effective or whether we need new Party leaders who can lead us to power and achieving those goals.  That’s not a schism:  it’s a generational change, and a matter of degree.

There is an old story of the Arctic.  There are two kinds of dog sled harnesses:  one has a single line, each dog harnessed to the line, pulling together. The other is each dog on a single line, with all of the lines attached to the front of the sled.  The first harness has more power, and less tangles, but is also prone to disaster.  If the single line breaks, or if the lead dogs falls into an ice hole, then the entire team and sled goes with him.

The second harness is less efficient, with dogs pulling at somewhat different angles, and more prone to tangling.  But if one dog falters, or falls into the ice hole, the rest can pull on and the sled isn’t at risk.  That’s my Democratic Party, pulling in different ways but going in the same general direction.  And we all still believe in the same goals, even if sometimes we get tangled, and even if we pull in different ways to get to the same place.

Sorry Fox News, we aren’t breaking up, or falling in the ice hole.