A Platform for America

Posted on 2024-12-04 by David

Purpose

This platform is meant to read like a candidate or party platform for a national campaign. That being said,  the purpose here is not to run a national campaign, but to build a template against which to compare party and candidate platforms in future election cycles. I welcome feedback and critique on the platform because I expect that I have blindspots and biases that shape my thinking.

This is only a high-level overview because a legitimate national campaign platform is simply too large to digest in a single post. As I post later about individual sections—providing more specific policy ideas for each—I will update this post to link to those posts.

Introduction

The platform is built on a commitment to empower individuals, strengthen communities, and ensure government accountability. The goal is to create a society where every American has the tools to succeed, the freedom to thrive, and the security to live with dignity. This vision is rooted in principles of fairness, innovation, and shared responsibility. The target is to build an America that works for everyone—today and for generations to come.

Economic Opportunity and Financial Security

Vision: A thriving economy that rewards hard work, supports innovation, and expands opportunity for all.

Education and Workforce Development

Vision: An education system and workforce strategy that prepares every American for the opportunities of tomorrow.

Healthcare and Well-Being

Vision: A healthcare system that prioritizes affordability, accessibility, and comprehensive support for all Americans.

Freedom, Rights, and Community Empowerment

Vision: A nation that upholds personal freedoms and empowers communities to shape their own futures.

Civil Rights and Social Justice

Vision: A society where every individual is treated with dignity, equality, and respect.

Environmental Stewardship and Sustainability

Vision: A future where sustainable energy powers our economy, limits our dependence on foreign powers, and minimizes dangers to health and safety.

Government Accountability and Democratic Integrity

Vision: A transparent and fair government that serves the people and protects democracy.

National Security and Global Leadership

Vision: A secure nation that leads with strength, innovation, and moral clarity on the global stage.

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Navigating the Trump Reaction

Posted on 2024-12-03 by David

In The End of Democratic Delusions George Packer explains that the Reagan Revolution ended in 2008 and its successor—which he is calling the Trump Reaction—is neither progressive nor conservative. If he’s right (which seems likely) we will need to reorient our ideological map to make sense of the new political landscape.

For two and a half centuries American politics alternated between progressive and conservative periods, played between the 40-yard lines of liberal democracy. The values of freedom, equality, and rule of law at least received lip service; the founding documents enjoyed the status of civic scripture; the requisite American mood was optimism. Although reaction has dominated local or regional (mainly southern) politics, it’s something new in our national politics—which explains why Trump has been misunderstood and written off at every turn.

Thankfully Packer doesn’t stop at telling us “hey, this is no longer a struggle near midfield between liberal and conservative.” Here are his most valuable insights on the new terrain and my thoughts on the actions we should take to achieve the best short- and long-term success for the United States.

Continue reading →
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Fixing the Disinformation Age

Posted on 2024-11-22 by David

It is impossible for a democratic system to continue functioning when voters are unable to make informed choices. Unfortunately our social media ecosystem has morphed into something that actively interferes with having an accurately informed electorate. (Not that social media is the only thing working against having reasonably informed voters, it’s just the topic I’m addressing today.)

Aside from the issue of short-circuiting our attention with algorithms designed to promote from scrolling we have seen social media grow in the 21st century from non-existent to hardly influential when compared to traditional media to a dominant force in our information ecosystem. Over the last 3 presidential election cycles we have also seen social media being actively used to manipulate public perception by both foreign and domestic actors, primarily Facebook in 2016 and primarily Twitter/X in 2020 and 2024.

After 2016 and 2020 we concluded that social media companies needed to take some responsibility to halt the spread of disinformation on their platforms but Elon Musk proved in the 2024 cycle through his takeover/purchase and subsequent transformation of Twitter/X that any centralized social media platform is at risk of being used to poison the well of public information.

There are currently two open source protocols capable of powering a truly decentralized social media platform: ActivityPub and AT. ActivityPub powers the Fediverse ecosystem (Mastodon, PeerTube, Pixelfed, Frendica and a host of other platforms). AT powers Bluesky. As Musk has made X progressively less welcoming to a wide range of perspectives users have sought out other options users largely have two unsatisfactory options: Fediverse (primarily Mastodon where the Twitter is concerned) with its lack of a universal front door for signing up which was confusing to too many potential users, and Bluesky which has a lower barrier to entry with its one point for users to sign up and get started but is still at risk of an Elon Musk style takeover at some point as it is not truly decentralized and it is still driven by an algorithm (which many users have become understandably way about after their Twitter feeds were forcibly mutilated by Musk).

One thing we need for social media is for either 1: the Fediverse (or individual Fediverse platforms) to get a centralized entry point for regular users, or 2: AT to be adopted across an array of platforms (similar to the Fediverse) to mitigate or eliminate the risk of someone turning it into X 2.0, or 3: a bridge between the two open source platforms that would allow users on both sides to interact in a robust way with each other. In fact, the perfect solution would be for all three of those things to happen.

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Recess Appointments

Posted on 2024-11-18 by David

I’m still working on the first draft of the Platform for America but there will be a section about protecting and improving our democratic safeguards. Trump’s preemptive demand that Senate Republicans step aside and just let him make recess appointments to get his cabinet in place faster is a great example of why defending our constitutional system has to be high on the platform priorities. While my preference is to establish baseline principles first and then use those to evaluate actions, claims, and proposals as they come up (like that one) I think we need to talk about recess appointments and the constitutional system of advice and consent from the Senate now because we will need to understand that and be ready to defend it before we get to January 20th.

Among the many checks established in the Constitution is the requirement that the Senate vet the proposed members of a President’s cabinet (as well as judicial appointments, but that’s not the subject for today). The idea is that even the leader of the executive branch should have someone looking over their shoulder and checking their homework so to speak. The founders understood that anyone, no matter their intelligence or moral character could make mistakes. They also understood that anyone who operated with unchecked authority could quickly begin to forget where the primary source of their power was supposed to reside and who they were supposed to be working for. (That would be “we the people.”)

Understanding the realities of their day, like the fact that it could potentially take several weeks to call the Senate back into session in the event of an emergency, the founders granted the president the power to appoint people without Senate consent when vacancies occurred during a Senate recess. Tellingly those appointments automatically expired at the end of the next Senate session unless they were confirmed during the session. Recess appointments were clearly not meant to evade Senate oversight, just to keep things running when the Senate wasn’t available.

When President Obama made some recess appointments during a Senate recess the Supreme Court eventually overturned those appointments and noted as they did so that the need for recess appointments no longer really existed. What president-elect Trump is telling the elected officials of his party to do is blatantly disregard the plain intent of the Constitution. That violates not only the oath he will be swearing on January 20th but also the paths that each of them will swear earlier in January.

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From Mourning to Morning

Posted on 2024-11-13 by David

It took a week but I am now finished with my bout of pessimism after the election. No, things aren’t any better than they were when it became clear that Trump would win, and no, I have not concluded that Trump is likely to be any better than my worst fears after January 6th. Instead I have decided to focus on America and the proactive work that we needed to do even if the election had turned out better.

The fact that polls throughout the campaign consistently told us that roughly half of America was willing to vote for Trump no matter what outrageous or nonsensical thing he was doing or saying at the time meant that even if he had eventually lost the election we were obviously overdue for some national soul searching.

Besides searching our own souls and trying to more clearly understand why so many people around us were willing to put a character with no moral character back into the Oval Office, we also need to get about the business of accurately understanding and effectively addressing the underlying causes of so many very real problems that our nation is grappling with. Despite the fact that Harris lost we can take good ideas that she campaigned on and refine them based on what we learn and prepare to implement them wherever and whenever we find a path to do so. (Yes, even with Trump at the helm there will be some opportunities if we watch out for them.)

I was prepared to take a defensive posture and simply try to survive the next four years but I’m done with that. There will certainly be defensive things we can and should do but I’m planning to spend the bulk of my energy proactively trying to build the better America around me that I optimistically believe is still/always within reach. After all, our Founding Fathers concocted a representative democracy that has lasted almost 250 years despite being under the rule of King George when they started. Surely we, who have lived under their republic (“if we can keep it”) can move forward even with these headwinds.

And hey, if you still need to do some grieving before you have strength to stand up—head held high—and move forward with optimism for what America can be, take whatever time you need. I’ll be over here, working and waiting (but not judging anyone) until you are in the headspace to move forward optimistically in creating the America that deserves to be a shining city on the hill for the rest of the world to both envy and learn from.

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Trump’s deportation priority

Posted on 2024-11-11 by David

I had expected to outline the basic policy priorities I think would be a good campaign platform and then use that as a reference to evaluate the actions and proposals of parties, candidates, and elected officials. I’m finding that I may not have time to outline my baseline platform before responding to the actual policy positions being articulated by our incoming president (at least if I want to do it in a timely manner).

I’ve decided to use Trump’s declared Day 1 priorities to give an initial example of how I will evaluate policies and priorities as they come up.

One of my teenagers brought up the fact that Trump has indicated his Day 1 priorities are ending the criminal cases against him, pardoning the January 6th convicts, and beginning his promised mass deportations. Normally I would link to the original article but I don’t have one in this case. I am willing to respond to this because those things are in line with things Trump has said repeatedly on the campaign trail. The other unusual things I will do here is let my teenager respond to the idea instead of responding directly myself.

When we got talking about these Day 1 priorities my teenager said “mass deportations are going to wreak havoc on our economy.”

Knowing that it is possible to arrive at a true conclusion based on daily information or faulty logic I decided to quiz my kid on this subject (which we have not talked about before). I asked, “why would that be bad for the economy?”

The immediate response was “lots of immigrants do low paying jobs that Americans don’t want to do, if we remove them from the country that work will get a lot more expensive.”

I would have focused specifically on the risks to our food prices but all I can really say is, my teenager has a better understanding of our economy and the role immigrants play in it than our president-elect.

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Setting Expectations

Posted on 2024-11-09 by David

My plan with regard to Platform 2028 is to outline the main points before inauguration day in January and then spend the months and years after that drilling down to specifics, modifying as needed with changing circumstances, and pointing out how Platform 2028 would differ from our agree with the actions and proposals of the administration as a way of comparing in real time.

It should be an interesting and enlightening ride—especially if I’m getting feedback and perspectives from others along the way.

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Crafting Platform 2028

Posted on 2024-11-08 by David

Several months ago I decided to craft what I would consider to be an ideal platform for a presidential candidate in 2028. It was much too late to do it for 2024. My idea was to both articulate my ideal platform and use it as a measuring stick to evaluate the presidential candidates we’ll start seeing in 24 months.

I postponed working on it until now because I wanted to devote what limited political capacity I had to promoting a presidential candidate who actually believes in the Constitution of the United States. Her loss makes it that much more apparent that we need to start from the ground to build a winning platform without reference to the past platforms of any party or candidate.

I’m hoping that in this process of articulating what I think the platform should include there will be people to push back, hone my thinking—and maybe even change my mind about some of it—until we arrive at a platform that would lead America forward toward being the shining city on a hill that it was always meant to be.

The fact that voters elected someone who openly disregards the rule of law and grounds himself in a universe where truth and fiction are indistinguishable from each other is not a reason to give up on the idea that we the people can “form a more perfect union, (re)establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”

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What if Trump was right?

Posted on 2024-11-07 by David

A good portion of the presidential campaign was framed around the issue of access to reproductive care. The claims made by the two campaigns were vastly different on the topic—as expected.

Trump repeatedly said that he was proud to get Roe overturned claiming that “everybody” wanted abortion returned to the states. That claim didn’t feel like it had much evidence behind it for two reasons: first, ever since the Dobbs decision abortion advocates all over the nation performed better than expected in the 2022 midterms and I’m ever special election with any abortion access component at play and second, because as soon Roe was overturned the most vocal opponents of Roe went right to work repeatedly proposing various national abortion bans—very much NOT trying to leave it to the states.

On the other side, the Harris campaign leaned into the Aaron that basically everyone agreed that the government shouldn’t interfere with women making their own reproductive choices. That claim did seem to be grounded in reality based on the midterms and special elections since Dobbs along with all the medical horror stories coming out of states with restrictive bans.

After Trump won the election with a surprisingly strong showing it got me questioning if Trump might have been right that voters in aggregate are content to handle abortion policy at the state level. It’s clear that many people are rightly appalled at the results of the more restrictive abortion policies but while activists want to enshrine the protections of Roe nationally the presidential results suggest that either 1) the issue is not as important to voters as the Harris campaign believed, 2) voters might be skeptical about the prospect of passing legislation through Congress (that would be well warranted skepticism), or 3) voters overall are satisfied with (or resigned to) trying to correct the more restrictive abortion bans at the state level even if they are horrified by some of the traffic results of those bans. (I suppose in this era of widespread disinformation that there is a fourth option of voters either being unaware of those traffic stories or of believing that they are exaggerated or fabricated.)

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Assigning blame

Posted on 2024-11-06 by David

Long before Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race I was saying that regardless of whether he started in the race, if Trump won the blame would fall primarily on Biden. Now that the election is over I want to share a slightly more detailed assessment of who bears the blame. (Spoiler, it’s not Kamala Harris. She did as much as could be hoped given the constraints of her situation.)

In chronological order, here are the three people whose choices brought us another Trump victory. (Trump hates each of them.)

Kevin McCarthy

Running down to Mar-a-Lago like a scolded puppy after Trump was impeached because Trump was mad that McCarthy had the audacity to acknowledge that Trump had been out of line (in the gentlest way he could) served to signal to the GOP that even under a second impeachment Trump remained at the center of GOP power. Had McCarthy not paid homage the GOP might have moved on without Trump in those early days while his dishonor was fresh in the minds of the nation.

Mitch McConnell

The political cowardice of McConnell after January 6th allowed Trump to escape when he was most vulnerable. If he had taken a stand immediately that impeachment was an appropriate response to Trump’s insurrection the House and Senate could have excised Trump from any future political power. Instead McConnell dragged his feet and put party over country hoping (irrationally) that Trump would go away without the GOP having to take any action.

McConnell magnanimously told his GOP Senate colleagues that they could vote their conscience in the 2nd impeachment after doing everything possible to hamstring the trial. He then had the audacity after voting to acquit (based on a contrived technicality that he arranged in advance) to declare that Trump was “practically and morally responsible” for January 6th and that “Trump is still liable,” that he “didn’t get away with anything yet,” and that Trump could still be held accountable in civil or criminal court.

In handing this blame to McConnell I don’t mean to pretend that he was uniquely cowardly. I’m confident that many GOP senators would have done the same thing in his position.

Joe Biden

If Biden had chosen not to run for a second term the Democratic nominee would have been able to run a campaign that lasted more than 4 months which would have allowed views to feel like they had a voice in the selection process and would have allowed the candidate to hone their message before the spring of the general election. Even deciding to run and then dropping out after October 7, 2023 to focus on the middle east would have been okay.

While this blame goes on Biden’s shoulders we can still recognize that the Democratic party was complicit in leaving him essentially unchallenged. The person in the worst position to challenge Biden was his Vice President since doing so would not only damage the party but would also have undercut both his work as President and her work as Vice President.

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