Democrats need real issues; stuff the party stands for, not just the people they’re against.  I know I have said this before, but having goals is getting urgent.  If Democrats want to succeed, they need to be positive and inspirational, and they need to be memorable about it.  Casting Democrats simply as anti-Republicans won’t survive this one election cycle.  Besides, it’s a sucker’s game.  You can’t be anti-Republican when the Republicans you’re mocking don’t hold real positions.  Fiscal prudence?  State’s rights?  Limited federal government?  We already know they’re lying.  Stake yourself out in opposition and Republicans will fade away, pointing and laughing.  We know that already.

Anger won’t last.  Please, Democrats, y’all seem almost eager to fall into that trap.  Yes, the Democratic party will win a majority in the House in 2018.  Yes, I think that’s sweet and good, and I’m happy for all of you.  But if Democrats aren’t careful – if they frame this as anger and revenge – they’ll lose the subsequent war.  If Republicans can pretend Democrats are just in it for the power, Republicans will use that to win.  Face it: Republicans are better at creating and flaming emotional backlash, and Democrats mostly suck at messaging.  Step in that trap and Republicans will use that mistake to push Democrats aside for long enough to cement their power for long enough to end our democracy.  Yes, I think this is an existential danger.

What?  What kind of issues am I recommending?  For god’s sake!  You’ve gotta ask?  All right, all right!  Here are a few that seem obvious to me:

• Heath care!  Damn, do I have to shout?  People shouldn’t be ruined just because they get sick.  It’s on everyone’s mind.  Everyone knows someone with a ‘pre-existing’ condition.  Republicans lie about it daily, most people know that, and everyone – everyone – is scared about their future.  We all get sick.  Does the Democratic party as a whole stand for universal healthcare?  Not yet.
• Start real federal oversight, honestly and transparently.  I started out calling this section ‘anti-corruption,’ but that’s wrong.  The current administration is openly corrupt, but they’re hiding even more.  They won’t tell us what they’re doing with our money in our name.  That’s bad, right?  Don’t offer prejudice, but promise to find the truth and I’ll listen.  Hold honest hearings and then tell us what you’ve found.  Everyone I know wants to hear the answer.  Don’t – don’t – make this election into Democratic revenge.  Republicans will paint it that way since that’s how they work, but if Democrats want us to know they can govern, be painfully honest.  If you shout ‘impeachment’ before you’ve found the evidence, you’re just another goon.  Start with honesty and stick with it; the rest is secondary.
• Stand up for people whether they’re rich or poor. We all know that the rich and powerful have tilted things their way.  That’s the wave of discontent Trump rode into office.  (Well, that and racism.)  And it’s true that things are rigged, except it’s Republicans who stripped the gears.  Show people the truth, and do it as openly as possible.  Democrats have to convince Republicans, not just Democrats.  And once you’ve found stuff, and only then, fix what you’ve discovered, not what you’d assumed.
• Defend equal rights. I have a hard time believing that we have to say this stuff out loud.  If it helps, call it ‘liberty’ or ‘freedom.’  Right now, equality is just a pretense.  But we’re Americans.  We know it’s broken, but we want to be better.  This is a natural issue Democrats can stand for.
  • Women’s equality!  I’m with Nathan: I’m livid.  Teeth-grinding sexism isn’t a surprise for women, of course, but for clueless guys like me, the Kavanaugh debacle showed us the filthy underbelly of the beast.  Sexism and almost dripping hate are much stronger than we admit.  This cannot stand.
  • Address American racism. The Charlottesville riots showed us that the KKK and the Nazis were worse than we knew.  Then Trump and every other Republican admitted they hate brown and black people whether they’re citizens or from shithole countries.  The anti-Mexican bias alone is frightening.  And yes, call the bail system, drug laws, unequal policing, voter ID laws and all the rest the racist excuses they are.
  • Protect all the kids! Fucking hell!  Is it that hard to understand?  I don’t care if they’re Americans or refugees, or if they’re white, Asian, brown, black or goddamn avocado green.  It’s a fundamental requirement for any moral person to protect children.  Any leader who doesn’t stand up for kids is a sick fraud.  Any man who stands by as children are hurt is a coward.  Seventy-five days ago the courts ordered Trump to reunite all the refugee kids with their families.  In response, the Trump administration continues to do precisely nothing about it, and the Republicans in Congress declined to act.  We should discard all of them for their sins.
  • Worker’s rights. Anyone in the workforce knows how we’re forced to kowtow to legal nonsense like NDAs, non-compete clauses, and arbitration agreements as a condition of employment.  How can it be legal to force someone to give away their constitutional rights before they can get a job?  Hell, you have to sign away most of your rights to use almost any software!  And our government won’t protect us, even as bosses require more unpaid work, drop benefits, and impose increasingly inflexible limits.  Democrats might write an angry Tweet.  I was kinda hoping for more than that.
  • LGBTQ rights. They’re people, and they’re our friends, our relatives, or our kids.  It’s the de facto Democratic position already; no reason not to get more explicit.
  • Economic inequality.  We all want to be rich (it’s our favorite fantasy) but instead of opportunity, Republicans spent decades recreating the Robber Barons and the Gilded Age.  Thanks to them, the rich stay extra-rich, the poor are stuck, and the legal system protects the existing power imbalance.  If Democrats think that’s a problem, maybe they should say so.
• Rebuild the social safety net. The existing social programs are fantastically popular despite years of Republican criticism and sabotage.  Republicans aren’t even pretending they won’t gut the protections that most of us will depend on when we get old.  Defend them, fix them, and maybe, possibly, expand things a little?
• Higher education is the gateway to prosperity, and yet it’s so damn expensive that most families can’t afford the cost.  That’s crazy!  More the to point, it’s terrible for America as a whole.  Bernie got that issue right.  People loved him for it, and yet maybe three Democrats followed.  Jesus! Read the goddamn tea leaves!
• Science.  People call it the Republican kryptonite for a reason.
  • Don’t start with climate change. It’s true, and it’s critical to our survival, but climate change has been over-politicized.  I’d love to pretend otherwise, but when Republicans bluffed, Democrats folded like a cheap table.  Start somewhere else.
  • Addiction.  We don’t understand how it works, and we suck at fixing addicts.  If addiction is such a big problem (and yeah, it is), why aren’t we looking at better approaches?  I’ve struggled with my own addictions and watched family and friends crater around me.  So no, don’t feed me hogwash like recriminalization or crap we already know doesn’t work.  Inspire me.
  • We already lock up more citizens than any other advanced nation, dumping big swaths of people into a terrible legal system.  We already know our prisons increases future criminality.  (Just like we know that big Republican donors make a ton of money out of private prisons.)  Look, most first-time criminals are painfully aware they’ve screwed up, and they’re desperate to pay their debt and get back into society.  Instead of mercy, we lock them out of our lives, deny them any forgiveness, and hound them forever after.  Try getting a job with a felony on your record.  Are we stupid or crazy (or racist as shit)?  It’s not like science doesn’t offer better ways to fix broken people.  Other nations have figured it out.  We could be more successful if we wanted, too.  Instead, Republicans substitute the morality of the AntiChrist.  That should be easy to ridicule.
  • Environmental science. Yeah, this is critical, but again, I’m not just talking about climate change.  That’s part, but the environment is more.  Our lives are overwhelmed, washed in a post-industrial bath of suspicious chemistry.  Anyone watching the American epidemic of obesity knows something in our world is causing mysterious endocrine disorders for decades.  Cancer rates and heart attacks are surprisingly modern problems, too.  And instead of research, we’re firing all the government scientists in favor of industrial hacks.  Democrats: do us all a favor; promise to bring science back into our decisions.
• Public science. Republicans have spent decades cutting away the funding for public science and public research.  We need to question that more.  Sure, private research is great stuff, and we should reward people for taking chances, but it’s not all we need.  Investors only focus on high-profit answers.  Yes, Big Pharma found a cure for Hepatitis C, but who’s surprised it costs $100K?  Private science would never develop, say, a $2 malaria cure.  Malaria kills millions of people a year, but they’re mostly poor people, so there isn’t a fast profit.  Public science belongs to all of us.  If we want to become more prosperous as a nation, we should be doing lots more, especially basic research.
• Fix voting! I should have started with this one.  I mean, voter suppression is in the official Republican party platform.  That’s just weird when the biggest problem is that not enough of us are voting.  In the short term, I can see several possible Democratic options:
  • Make voting easier. It’s a pain in the ass right now.  I vote in every election, but I have time, a flexible employer, and no kids.
    • Make Election Day a holiday. It’s hard to spend hours voting on a day most people work.  And there’s no excuse not to.
    • Encourage states to offer early voting, more voting locations, absentee voting by mail, and online voting. Jeeze!  Is this surprising anyone?
  • Work with States to address the security holes in public, open ways.  Keeping security issues hidden only favors corruption and vote-rigging.
  • Fix Gerrymandering in a non-partisan way. I live in Maryland, which is one of the few Democratically Gerrymandered states, but it’s a miserable example of distorted districts, too.  IF Democrats proposed a few ideas that could fix this for everyone, I think that might draw some Republican voters over.
• Talk about immigration. We can’t fix immigration before we know what we want.  We just haven’t had that discussion yet, and we need to.  I think I’m comfortable with immigration (I mean, for a white guy), but that doesn’t prove I’m right.  Other people need the rest of us to hear them.
• Talk about guns. Guns and shooting elicit a weird mix of lust and fear.  They make people afraid, and illogically, protected.  Republicans have mined those contradictory emotions from the moment the NRA first started buying them off.  I like shooting guns, I think they’re fun, and I won’t have one in my house, ever (too risky).  But shooting and hunting are a central part of many people’s lives.  Guns are also incredibly dangerous; a gun increases your risk of death by factors.  It’s those kinds of contradictions we need to work out as a society.  Other countries manage this better than we do.  Canada has almost as high gun ownership levels, but with much fewer shooting deaths.  Literally every other country is the same.  What can we learn from them that would help here?

I don’t mean to pretend that there aren’t gnarly sinkholes to avoid.  Politically, you can get hurt just by taking explicit positions.  Did you ever hear about the tyranny of minorities?  That’s a political problem with single-issue voters that can kill any politician.

It works like this.  Pretend you’re a politician and you speak clearly for (or against) a hot-button issue.  For a certain percentage of the electorate, that one issue is a litmus test you can only fail.  If you’re on their side, they might vote for you, but if you pick the side they hate, they’ll vote against you no matter what else you do.  That’s single-issue voting.

Suppose, for argument, there are several emotional issues that some percent of Americans will be single-issue voters on.  Say, 10 percent for each.  (I’m making up fake numbers; go with it.)  So if you, Mister Principled Politician, speak loudly and firmly on… I don’t care; I’ll pick three: abortion, gun rights, and climate change.  (Could’ve been LGBTQ rights, immigration, and Twitter; it doesn’t matter.)  Whether you spoke for or against them doesn’t matter, either.  With each clear statement you make, you’ve lost those single-issue voters on the other side.  Ten percent for/against abortion, plus another ten percent who bail because of guns, plus ten percent more from climate change equals “You’re out of office.”  That’s the tyranny of minorities.  That’s why politicians struggle not to be too specific.

But we’re in different times.  Look at Republicans and… well, everyone else.  We’re looking tribal chasms, not minor differences.  That’s bad, but it also means that the costs of being honest just got lower.  If a Democrat speaks up for, say, gun violence research, or better support for ex-felons, or discussions about immigration levels, there aren’t many Democrats who’ll suddenly decide to vote Republican as a result.  But if you’re honest and inclusive, there might be some frustrated Republicans who come the other way.

To win more than one election cycle, Democrats need to learn how to inspire people, not just condemn Republicans.