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Falling in the Ice Hole<\/p>\nFalling in the Ice Hole<\/p>\n
Reading the \u201cTrump Media,\u201d also called Fox News; my Democratic Party is on the verge of schism.\u00a0We are torn, divided between the \u201cold line\u201d progressives; Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi; and the \u201cnew Socialist-Democrats,\u201d Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and the newest, new poster person, twenty-eight year old Congressional candidate Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez!<\/p>\n
According to Fox News, we are forced into a terrible choice:\u00a0 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 \u201cfailed Liberal ideas\u201d of the 1960\u2019s.\u00a0 How can we ever have a chance to govern, we are either revolutionaries or fools lost in the past.\u00a0 We are told that while Trump may make mistakes, the biggest mistake we can make is to choose a different course.<\/p>\n
Just as Fox News doesn\u2019t accept my view of the Republican Party and President Trump, I don\u2019t buy their characterization of my political party.\u00a0 We are a \u201cbig tent\u201d party and always have been, ever since Franklin Roosevelt put together the Depression Era coalition.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 You think we can\u2019t handle some diversity in political views?<\/p>\n
The Democratic Party is faced not with a schism of ideas, but with a difference in degree.\u00a0 Ask any Democrat whether health care should be available to all, and they will all answer yes.\u00a0 Some will see a compromise path through the private market, which is exactly what the Affordable Care Act offered.\u00a0 Some will see some form of single payer system, which is exactly what Medicare \u201cfor all\u201d would be.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Every Democrat knows there is no such thing as \u201cfree\u201d health care; even Bernie\u2019s plan would transfer private health insurance costs into public funds – that\u2019s called taxes.<\/p>\n
All plans transfer costs:\u00a0the plan we should select is the one that gets the best care to the most people with the lowest possible cost.\u00a0 That\u2019s the Democratic Party\u2019s goal, and it should be the Republican Party\u2019s goal too, if they would ever offer a plan that wasn\u2019t just status-quo, private insurance, if you can\u2019t afford it, tough.<\/p>\n
Ask any Democrat whether anyone who works full time should make enough money to live, and they will all answer yes.\u00a0 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 \u201cdream\u201d should not mean working two or three jobs to try to make ends meet, and maybe still not making it.<\/p>\n
Ask any Democrat whether twelve years of public education is enough, and they\u2019ll say no.\u00a0 All Democrats think we need to do more:\u00a0 more to encourage education beyond high school, more to reduce the cost of college education, more to control predatory student loan practices.\u00a0 For example:\u00a0an investment of extending free public education two more years would have a huge return in income earned and taxes paid.\u00a0 Education is a \u201cpay me now or pay me later\u201d deal, especially when it comes to crime.\u00a0Keeping 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.<\/p>\n
Ask almost any Democrat whether we should have completely open and uncontrolled borders, and they will say no.\u00a0 Ask any Democrat (and hopefully anyone) whether the \u201czero tolerance, child separation\u201d program enforced by the current Administration is acceptable, and that answer is no as well.\u00a0 Some Democrats have reacted to those abuses by calling for the abolition of ICE, but abolishing ICE doesn\u2019t mean open borders.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Does \u201crepeal and replace\u201d sound familiar to my Republican friends who didn\u2019t like the Affordable Care Act?\u00a0 Many Democrats feel the same about ICE.<\/p>\n
Democrats are agreed on the goals, where we differ are the means to achieve those goals.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 That\u2019s not a schism:\u00a0 it\u2019s a generational change, and a matter of degree.<\/p>\n
There is an old story of the Arctic.\u00a0 There are two kinds of dog sled harnesses:\u00a0 one has a single line, each dog harnessed to the line, pulling together.\u00a0The other is each dog on a single line, with all of the lines attached to the front of the sled.\u00a0 The first harness has more power, and less tangles, but is also prone to disaster.\u00a0 If the single line breaks, or if the lead dogs falls into an ice hole, then the entire team and sled goes with him.<\/p>\n
The second harness is less efficient, with dogs pulling at somewhat different angles, and more prone to tangling.\u00a0 But if one dog falters, or falls into the ice hole, the rest can pull on and the sled isn\u2019t at risk.\u00a0 That\u2019s my Democratic Party, pulling in different ways but going in the same general direction.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
Sorry Fox News, we aren\u2019t breaking up, or falling in the ice hole.<\/p>\n
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