Issues For This Election

I'm getting very disheartened at the state of the nomination process of the Democrat Party.

The number of presidential hopefuls has exceeded 24 (to date: June 2019.  I don't count things very well anymore, since I retired from teaching mathematics), and shows no sign of significantly slowing down.

Having only a few candidates for president is---in itself---not necessarily a good thing.  Taking the psychology of the population into account, though, practically anything is bad.  The US population that we have today is more conducive to electing an idiot than to electing someone competent; the Presidential Election is a struggle; has been one, for decades, and will be a struggle for the foreseeable future.

Some of these candidates seem to be single-issue candidates.  There are some very pleasant, attractive people who are campaigning for a policy change, or for legislation to accomplish, some very specific goal.

There are those who are campaigning for gun-control legislation.

Some are campaigning for women's rights almost exclusively.

Pretty soon, someone is going to come along to campaign specifically for voting access legislation exclusively.

We need to address the issue of gerrymandering, but do we need a candidate who campaigns only on that issue?

Elizabeth Warren is campaigning on banking reform.  Luckily for us, this is not her only issue.  Honestly, I can get behind this candidate because she supports most of the things I consider important.

At least one candidate is campaigning on a cluster of issues---or the single issue---of the environment.  If ever there was a single issue worth supporting, that one is it.  On a recent visit by Donald Trump to the UK, Prince Charles cornered him, and talked at him for half an hour about the issue of climate change.  He impressed on Donald Trump (who is currently president, in case you're reading this in the distant future, and are confused about why I say things) that his (Prince Charles's) concern for the environment flows from his concern for future generations.  Apparently this angle had not occurred to Trump, who mused on that fact, saying that Charles was very much into Climate Change.  If there is a God, we are being punished for something, being saddled with a president who specializes in sabotaging the legislation and the judiciary, and society in general, and has practically no grasp about things we have all known well for more than a decade.

Abortion rights are another issue that has fired the imagination of some folks.  This is an important issue, but I can't help thinking that the conservatives toss out these quickie landmines to distract everyone from more serious issues.  These issues are by no means trivial.  But their introduction and their timing are trivial exercises in the bullying capability of the administration.

I'm not sure whether anyone is running for President solely on the intention of unseating Trump.  Of course, without unseating Trump no one else can be President, so it is an essential part of anyone's plan to win the White House.  But, so far, it appears to be central to Joe Biden's platform.  Actually, I think it will become fairly clear that, though no one has put it forward as their main slogan, defeating Trump is something on which all the candidates are agreed.

What I would like to see is a candidate who lists all these things as what they want to do.  By far the hardest thing to address is alleviating income inequality, which is built-into the system.  As the New Left (which means Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and numerous folk whose names I still don't know) has emphasized, the powerful ultra-capitalists, who have acquired the ability to use the resources of the government and the nation for their own enrichment, and the privilege of polluting at will, and essentially making choices at will which result in accelerating climate change, are now revealed to be climate-changing bullies, who drain the nation's resources, deprive the people of income, refuse to support government essential services, and force poor working people to pay through their noses to support the profits of the private health insurance racket, all with the same hand.  When the climate fights back with hurricanes and extreme weather, these same oligarchs force the government to withhold emergency services.

What makes a lot of this possible is that Trump and his friends have put a very seductive Us against Them face on these policies, which are ultimately nothing but racism in disguise.  Trump supporters may not support many policies, but they do support racism.

Simply talking about racism doesn't help the problem of racism very much.  It puts everyone on the defensive, which is not good.

Another major problem, and one which is not easy to deal with, is that of US aggression abroad.  At the moment, the US is helping to worsen the humanitarian crises in several parts of the world, including Yemen, and Syria.  We may not be directly responsible, but the developing crisis in Venezuela is soon likely to be aggravated by US interference.

To summarize: there are so many things that need to be fixed that, given the need for Democrats to make nice with people who are hostile to almost any progressive legislation, and given the recent weak performance of Democrats at the voting booth, the repairs must proceed at such a slow pace that we will all be in Climate Crisis mode before we're even halfway through the next president's term, or Democrats will have to be a much more dominant force in electing appropriate leaders.

Arch

See here for a list of candidates as of March 2019.