The Democratic Message: Put the American People First

[Orangepeel]

As we all know, the republican party, aided by the media, is successfully hammering home the meme that the Democratic party has no “message.”

Partly, of course, that’s just a lie. We are not just “anti-republican and anti-bush.” There are a lot of things that the Democratic party stands for. But part of it is our party’s fault, because, for a variety of reasons, our side does not play the talking point and sound bite game nearly as well as the other side.

In my non-unique opinion, we need a simple, proactive message that highlights our strengths compared to the republicans. A “slogan” if you will, that wraps up our policies in a nice neat media friendly bow.

My humble attempt at this is “Put the American People First.” It sounds a bit isolationist, but I think it works well as an umbrella under which specific policies can be placed and is something that will resound with the public. Specifically, I think the Democratic Party should advocate:

1. Economic Policies that Put the American People First
• Health Care Reform
• Incentives for entrepreneurship and job growth
• Policies that discourage outsourcing
• Protecting the future by paying down the national debt
• Policies that side with working families and small business owners over big corporate interests

2. Governing Policies that Put the American People First
• Honest and responsible government
• Appointments made on merit, not cronyism
• A commitment to protect individual privacy rights

3. National Security Policies that Put the American People First
• Strengthen and protect national intelligence
• Deal with terrorism by focusing on terrorists and repairing relationships with allies
• Bring the National Guard home to deal with national emergencies
• Reduce the number of troops in Iraq
• No elective wars

There may be better ways to organize issues, and, of course, not all of the issues may get universal agreement. But my point is that we need one proactive, overarching idea (I hate to compare it to “contract with America” but I’m going to anyway), that can be broken down into smaller, more specific pieces.