Issues need to be discussed more, not politicians

[Baobab]

If the Democratic Party wants to get away from the divisive mindlessness and wedge issue based politics Americans are seeing so much of now, doing so - which frankly is its only hope for continued relevance- people need to make a conscious effort to stop talking about candidates and start talking about issues with the candidates only being the implementers of agreed upon policies to address said issues, not the subject of discussion.

And if something stands in the way of policies being implemented, it needs to be gotten out into the open and discussed, not hidden under the rug so to speak.

I could give a bunch of examples but they would soon devolve into mindlessness. What I am talking about is the wisdom of discussing how to solve our various problems in a win win manner. Something that one would imagine would be the starting point but strangely, happens very little, if at all these days. A very serious problem is caused by dependence on people is the lack of transparency. All the inputs and all the output should be visible to anybody who wants to see it, and the rules guiding decision-making in more and more of the process should be opened to discussion and revision over time, fluid.

Within limits.

In other words, everybody should be able to join in this process. Otherwise, the people will soon be completely excluded from politics and soon afterward, likely excluded from the country. Because automation is making jobs go away, quickly. And that will mean that the electorate, who depend on some form of residency somewhere to vote is likely to be gradually excluded from physical residency in a voting district.

For example, the pending energy deal could seriously impact housing availability.

Nobody even realizes that.

Preventing a large scale disruption in core Democratic districts due to shrinkage of affordable housing stock (as well as the immediate problem of providing heat and or lodging to the displaced people in the interim) if energy export is deregulated is a pressing problem that needs to be seen as such.

What do people think about this?

[noamnety]

1. Issues and character both have their place.

A person's character is part of the package - because sometimes we can trust them to take action based on their stated positions during a campaign; sometimes we can't. Sometimes they have a past history of corruption that we can't get past. Sometimes they display a history of inciting violence or racism.

We should be talking about the issues more, of course - but I'm not able to move away from character and past misdeeds as part of the discussion. An example we can probably all agree on - Chris Christie and the bridge lane closures. Even if he were a democrat and I supported his policies, the bridge thing would make him a nonstarter.