Everyone should focus as much energy as her/he can, both personal energy (and that of the others we may recruit) on truly vital issues and leave the fight about who is really a progressive aside. This bickering is is one way the servants of the 10% who own 90% of the nation's wealth distract the public's attention.
My suggestion is that each of us organize local groups that establish opposition to the Citizens United Decision as a litmus test for defining acceptable candidates for all races (governors, state legislatures, mayors, assembly members, judges, district attorneys, sheriffs, etc.). We will have to move fast to have an affect on the primaries. By doing this, we can begin to use the successful tactics of the Repugnants and their lords and masters.
Repugnant success is due to their short-sighted emphasis on a very small number of issues: "Abortion"; "Allowing Religion in Public Schools"; "Sex Education;" "Big government;" the "War on Terror"; the "Deficit"; and "Jobs". We must not forget the Big Ticket issues of the evangelical wing of the Repugnants, "Family Values;" "the Defense of Marriage;" and "Secular Humanism." They have no need to stipulate real programs to address these issues. All they do is give tirades against or for these issues and attack their opponents by saying they are amoral secular humanists, "Big government" types who support everything that the Repugnants define as bad for America as well as oppose everything that the Repugnants say is good and necessary for America. Repugnant success based on this system illustrates a weakness of Progressive candidates.
Progressive candidates and their supporters tend to carefully build up the facts and rationale for their programs. They then outline a course of action. Unfortunately, a very large percentage of the population does not want facts, figures, and details. All these people want is to be told how they should react emotionally to the issues defined as "essential" by the media, the Repugnants, and the propaganda campaigns created by the publicity machines built by the right-wing super rich and the "Independent Evangelical Christian Right." Breaking this indoctrination requires that Progressives take some pages from the Repugnant playbook and use them against those who created this system by establishing make-or-break, black & white issues and hammer away at them.
1. As I said at the beginning, the first issue must be "Citizens United" and every progressive must mount a very strong and simple way of opposing this -- in the same way that the Repugnants have used "Roe v. Wade" and "Brown v. Board of Education".
2. Progressives must use every opportunity they have to condemn in the strongest of terms the privatization of Medicare and Social Security. Progressives must "tattoo" a very large line in the minds of the electorate that anything that might reduce Medicare or Social Security must be rejected and that anyone proposing to do so must be rejected as well.
3. Progressives need to wage all out war against the petroleum industry. We need to demonstrate to America that "Big Oil" is making higher profits than it ever has and that the compensation packages, perks, and other incentives given to top managers has grown to obscene levels. Levels that actually have a direct effect on the price of gasoline. The second part of this issue is demonstrating that, because of the number of incentives, tax breaks, and other Repugnant support schemes, Big Oil not only does not pay taxes, it actually receives funds from the income taxes paid by the middle class.
4. The next issue should move from "Big Oil" to "Big Companies" in general. Again, progressives must hammer a way at corporate taxes and incentives as well as tax breaks for the top 1%. Here too, progressives need to provoke strong emotional reactions to: "corporate welfare" as well as to the de facto tax-free status of huge corporations and the super-rich.
5. The forth issue should be the loss and exporting of jobs. Progressives need to be very emotionally opposed to this and call for legislation that would tax companies for every job they export or have exported. The candidates should constantly emphasize that the Repugnants not only are not against the exporting of jobs, but reward job exporters with tax breaks. This issue also includes the fact that the Repugnants and their masters are not only interested in exporting every job they can, but want to destroy any kind of job security and basic programs, such as health care, that workers and middle managers currently have. It is here where Progressives need to put a great deal of effort to the promotion of measures that protect the right of Americans to organize and unionize.
6. The banking industry and the financial markets must be re-regulated to ensure that there will no longer be companies that are "too big to fail." Other regulations and tax law must be put into place that would take away existing incentives that allow companies like "Harley Davidson" to shut down as much production as possible because the company can obtain higher profits by dedicating as many of the company's resources to as possible to investment banking,
7. The ability of the EPA and the FDA to regulate the industries they were made to regulate must be increased exponentially. The Repugnants and their masters simply do not care about the world we will leave behind to our descendants.
Finally, these seven issues should be tied together in order to create a very strong emotional certainty that these seven issues prove that the top 1% of the population is waging all out economic war on the lower 90%.
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