"Voters in liberal strongholds across the country, from city centers to suburban stretches, failed to show up to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris at the levels they had for Joseph R. Biden Jr. four years earlier, contributing significantly to her defeat by Donald Trump,” the New York Times reports.
“Counties with the biggest Democratic victories in 2020 delivered 1.9 million fewer votes for Ms. Harris than they had for Mr. Biden. The nation’s most Republican-heavy counties turned out an additional 1.2 million votes for Mr. Trump this year, according to the analysis of the 47 states where the vote count is largely complete.”
“The drop-off spanned demographics and economics. It was clear in counties with the highest job growth rates, counties with the most job losses and counties with the highest percentage of college-educated voters. Turnout was down, too, across groups that are traditionally strong for Democrats — including areas with large numbers of Black Christians and Jewish voters.”
Exactly.
Our focus needs to be on class issues: Wealth disparity, healthcare, housing. We need big, systemic solutions, not bandaids.
Top tier income tax rate needs to return to the punitive levels it was at before Reagan: Ultra-high earners need to decide between spending a lot of money on tax deductible expenses (like labor), or giving the majority of that money to the IRS.
We need a wealth tax. Not on all wealth, just certain kinds of assets. Specifically, a tax on registered securities, such as stocks, bonds, and other financial instruments. Exempt the first $10 million held by natural persons, as we do need capital investment. However, that capital should be coming from (and owed back to) the working class. Pretty much every worker should be receiving shares of their company as part of their compensation.
Rent needs to die in a goddamn fire. Hardly anybody should be renting residential property. To that end, we need massive increases on property taxes that are exempted for owner-occupants. Raise the property taxes (and exemptions) and keep raising them, until the landlords figure out they can make more money as private lenders to their (former) tenants than as landlords to those same tenants. The few actual landlords remaining will be owners of duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes, who live in one of the units and rent out the remainder. Apartment complexes will be reconfigured as condominiums.
Universal Healthcare. True universal healthcare. Single payer. You show up at the doctor’s office, urgent care, ER, pharmacy, and you’ll never see a bill. We’ll pay for it with that securities tax. Employer-sponsored healthcare can remain a thing, but there should be no tax benefit or other public support for it.
We do need a minimum wage (around $15/hr today) but we need a “standard wage” that is substantially higher. (Around $22/hr today) A living wage. All businesses must pay at least a minimum wage. Large businesses (Or franchisees of large businesses) must start at that standard wage.
I’d eagerly vote for this platform. Are you running?
Are you looking for a VP?
Edit : also, cap political donations or even better, every candidate that gets a certain amount of signatures gets a set amount of campaign cash from the Fed, and they can’t spend any more than that.