The 2016 presidential campaign began on Nov. 5, 2014, the day after the 2014 election, if not earlier.
The candidates, though, are “campaigning” behind the scenes in front of only one group of people — extremely wealthy people who want to donate lots of money to candidates who are too eager to please the megawealthy even if the interests of the megawealthy conflict with the national interest.
Who are these candidates? What are their policy ideas? What kind of presidents will they be?
I not only want these candidates, who are mostly Republicans according to news reports, to declare tomorrow that they are, in fact, presidential candidates, but I want dozens of Democrats and independents to declare as well. In short, I want people with a wide diversity of opinions to discuss their ideas, plans, and proposed solutions to national problems with ME — and all Americans rather than a handful of frequently selfish plutocrats.
I know what many readers of this blog are thinking — “the presidential campaign is already too long. Leave me alone. I don’t want to hear about politics until a few months before the Nov., 2016 election.”
This kind of thinking is a crucial reason why national problems don’t get solved. The apathetic American electorate is interested in following the plots of television shows week after week, year after year, but mostly shows no interest in ideas about how to create jobs, raise wages, improve the health-care and education systems and on and on and on.
Presidential campaigns — or at least the part of them that involve talking to people in public — is way, way, way…………………………..way too short. The campaign for donors winnows the field from about 30 to under 10, many of whom are underfunded. Then, the voters in Iowa, New Hampshire, and, perhaps, the dozen or so other states that vote on Super Tuesday ratify the donors’ choices.
The Democratic and Republican primaries are often over before voters in 30 to 35 states go to the polls. Thus, they have a choice of one Democrat and one Republican. That’s no way to run a democracy.
In recent elections, the Democrats have been worse than the Republicans. Currently, the polls show that Democrats overwhelmingly prefer Hillary Clinton to be their 2016 presidential nominee, while Rand Paul, Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Rick Perry, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker and others are closer to each other in various polls.
As I wrote on Oct. 27, the Democratic Party establishment often wants to fix primaries so there’s only one candidate. The result has been disastrous. Candidates are often chosen because of their family name and often run personality-driven, substance-free campaigns that are overwhelmingly rejected by voters.
Fixing the Democratic presidential nomination for Hillary Clinton would be a huge mistake. Americans need choices.
I’m glad ex-Virginia Senator Jim Webb unofficially declared he’s running for the Democratic nomination last month. He’s an economic populist with a Republican past.
I want progressives like Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, Minnesota Senator Al Franken and others to run. I want governors who have signed important laws like the governors of Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, and New York to run. I want economic populists who are conservative on social issues like Webb and ex-Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer to run. I even want conservatives like West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin to run.
In fact, I want history professors, business executives, ex-Cabinet secretaries, community activists, policy analysts at think tanks, liberal economists like Paul Krugman and Robert Reich, and conservative economists I have never heard of to run too.
I want all of these candidates to present their ideas for solving the nation’s problems on TV for 30 minutes without having to pay for one single ad. Implausible? Maybe. It will be difficult for TV execs to let Candidate A, an esteemed but unknown professor, speak while they exclude Candidate B, a flaky celebrity.
I’m at the stage, though, where I’m OK with an anarchic campaign. This country is rapidly becoming a third-world nation with a disappearing middle class. We need solutions, and we need them fast.
My major concern is hearing proposals on how to make the United States the land of economic opportunity again. I’m specifically interested in candidates’ thoughts on creating jobs, raising wages, making education and health care affordable, reforming the tax system, and what government investments will help people.
I’m not particularly interested in candidates’ stands on hot button social issues like abortion, gay rights, gun control, race, religion or even their positions on foreign policy. I want Americans’ everyday problems solved before it is too late and will vote for the candidate with the best, most achievable plans to solve those problems.
I’m willing to bet that a sizable number of Americans are interested in hearing candidates propose specific solutions to specific problems. If I'm right, TV stations won't have to worry about losing revenues by providing candidates a forum.
If I’m wrong, TV stations should provide the forums anyway because democracy is too important to be left to the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson, and other self-interested, self-absorbed political meddlers who have made a great contribution into turning what was the greatest nation on this planet into a nation that could soon be split into pieces thanks to decades of failed policies.
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