(this platform will be written in drafts, updated for a time. When I’m done, I’ll let the world know)
Class Struggle: I label myself as a populist Democrat who is moderate to conservative on social issues. I avoid the Republican Party precisely because of their extreme positions on economics. I used to label myself a socialist, but realized that in America, socialism tends to be associated with championing the foreign and alien instead of championing the poor and oppressed. Hence the more recent gravitation to the “populist” label. PEOPLE BEFORE CORPORATIONS! We no longer have a gold standard and print currency, so we should just indulge that the whole way and start to take out poverty. Poverty is a political decision, not a failure of one to pull up by the bootstraps.
Abolish Electoral College: No. Getting rid of the electoral college would encourage people to import immigrants just to get their votes, because more established multi-generational Americans tend to live outside of cities. I don’t want parties recruiting people from other countries. If you think Russia or Israel have too much influence – it would get worse.
Role of Government: Government is not simply a fireman putting out fires, but a house developer preemptively being proactive. It’s not a sit and wait and then fix it when in trouble thing, it is actively involved in making life better. This philosophy is highly at odds with Republicans. Crimes happen for a reason, abortions (next topic) happen for a reason. Usually it is a hopeless economic outlook.
Abortion: Middle of the road position. Not willing to set up a police state to monitor abortion. Ideal number of abortions is zero. Banning abortion is something that cannot be enforced without massive privacy violations on every sexually active women. Are you going to monitor every women to see if they’re pregnant? That’s the only way you could realistically criminalize abortion. However, I do not champion abortion.
Guns: Guns designed to mass murder should be outlawed, guns that could reasonably be used for self defense should be federally permitted. Rural and urban areas handle guns differently. Overthrowing the Government is already illegal, by definition. if you’re doing that, you’re already operating outside the legal system anyways.
Free Speech: Our free speech laws are antiquated and still allow someone to be fired, deplatformed or financially harmed for their political views. In an increasingly factional and polarized nation it is a problem and I want to end at will employment in incorporated entities so that employees can only be fired for cause or for consistent reasons. Political ideologies should become protected categories although terrorism is not a political ideology. I do not support thought policing. For example, I do not consider ALL antifa or ALL white nationalists to be terrorists, only a small number are.
Public display of politics on the job can be a disruption therefore not allowed. These rules should not apply to sole proprietorships, partnerships, family business etc. A personal business is a different animal and there you can fire employees to guard your personal reputation, but NOT in a corporation.
Right to disassociate or be forgotten: Closely related to free speech, I support the right of people to distance themselves from a controversy, such as a political rally that turns violent, given that they’re not guilty of the conduct. I want people to be employed, not out of work.
immigration: Cautious support of some immigration, but not in such a way as to “replace” the American people. Culture and language have to be learned young, unless you have a very special gift. I realize that if we mass import immigrants, they bring their background with them. I thus will proceed with caution as in a way to not radically alter the institutions of society, but the door will not be totally slammed shut.
Asylum Seekers: Asylum seekers will not take jobs that other Americans want. If they can’t find a job, they will get public benefits.
Monopolization: I believe that monopolization is a law of capitalism. If you’re going against monopolization as a peasant or in a non-incorporated business, you’re fighting upstream against that law. Therefore the Government must govern because otherwise these monopoly corporations will govern if the Government doesn’t govern. Our biggest threats to freedom do not come from “big government” as a Reaganite may say, but from big corporations. Unless Government is pro-active in its intervention in the economy, it is not possible for this to be balanced out.
Job Guarantee: Employees are no longer in the driver’s seat and I’m going to put them back in that seat. To undo the damage that was done by union busting, I am going to push for guaranteed government jobs, as to allow employees to not negotiate from a position of weakness and have a realistic exit from their private sector job if they are not happy there. This is a more moderate solution, as the most ideal solution would be to essentially strip corporations of their autonomy and force them to guarantee jobs, but such an approach is not pragmatic given American views towards freedom of association.
This idea can coexist with a UBI. Public support is only for a small UBI. Most people do not believe that a UBI should totally replace a job, at least not yet.
Climate Change: Have you ever noticed that most of the maskers ended up catching the virus, despite their belief that reality changes with perception? I don’t like ad hominem arguments, but most maskers are also climate change deniers. If they were wrong on the mask issue, why would they be getting the climate issue right? The job guarantee can be green oriented.
Crime: I believe in a dual wielding approach to crime.
- Get people out of poverty. Absolute Majority of crime is caused by economic hopelessness.
- After that, fund the police. Secretive Super criminals like Ted Bundy could have essentially killed forever if there was no police infrastructure to investigate.
War on Drugs: End it for softer drugs like marijuana. On harder drugs, keep drug use out of the public eye. Confine open drug use and needle exchanges to a few neighborhoods in major cities as that is better than spreading it. Hard drug use should technically be illegal, but police should only enforce it when it endangers the community. Suspected drug use should not be probable cause for an arrest, but if you commit another crime, then you can be charged for drugs. Basically if you don’t cause trouble you can get away with it, to be brutally honest. People should have option to serve jail time in rehab instead of jail and in some cases house arrest.
Vouchers: As a Conservative Democrat, I do not take such a hard position against this. Private education can be a good thing for some more independent minded people. I don’t oppose funding that option.
LGBT: I oppose discrimination against LGBT people. At the same time, I biologically define sex. The sex you are born is your sex. If you want to claim otherwise, you aren’t going to get fired from a job. But at the same time, I do not have to agree with you. I would prefer the term civil unions, but it’s ultimately semantics between civil unions and gay marriages. It is hardly something worth fighting against.
Race and Racism: we do have racism, but I allege that instead of having systemic racism, we actually have systemic capitalism and racism is how some people respond to justify their position in capitalism. Racism is no longer enshrined into American law, but with the collapse of religion, racial identity becomes the next logical identity after that and it is easy to make scapegoats. (This position separates me from liberal Democrats – I know that, I’m owning the term Populist Conservative Democrat.)
Racism is something that comes from the people, it’s not something that is forced on the people. That’s because race is real and when you have race, it’s easy to have racism. But we shouldn’t be scapegoaters who blame others.
Affirmation Action: I would make sure that affirmative action helps all the underemployed and unemployed which may require modification. An underemployed white male needs a job more than a black female who already has a good job. It is possible that with a guaranteed job policy, affirmative action would sort of wither away.
Conspiracy Theories: “Once you learn how business really works, when you get those gut business instincts, you stop believing in illuminati style conspiracy theories. You realize that what other people think is an orchestrated conspiracy is just business as usual, it’s the norm in capitalism. ”
Court Packing: As long as the supreme court is not vetoing legislation for political reasons and is in fact reasonably interpreting the constitution, I do not believe the court should be packed as a response to the Republican nomination. If power is abused, rational solutions will be considered. Only the most flagrant violations of the constitution would make me even consider it.
Healthcare: I seek rural voters and only a small majority of rural voters want medicare for all. I have to consider the minority. Considering that: Automatic enrollment in Medicare upon termination of a job from a private sector employer, with no questions asked, with no questioning whether your severance was your “fault.” Ideally modify Obamacare to include public option, because it sets a price floor, it prevents cross corporate collusion to rise prices. If an overwhelming majority of people decided they wanted medicare for all, “all” to me would not mean undocumented immigrants, who would not get full benefits, but limited benefits.
Foreign Policy:
AIPAC: There are no permanent allies and there are no permanent enemies. Support for Israel is not something that cannot be revoked. I am aware that Israel is an ethnostate. I am aware that it is in a dangerous neighborhood. The goal is safety. America is a sovereign nation.
War: I believe in large cultural gaps between different areas of the world and oppose “naive realism” or an unrealistic idea that globalization has undone these gaps. I therefore reject the idea that we can transmit our system of democracy to areas outside of western civilization. Therefore, I oppose regime change wars.
Generally speaking, America should under most circumstances not strike first. The only reason America should strike first is to prevent a mass murder and this has been abused by falsified intelligence in past, such as the non-existent WMD program in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. I am not a naive person and will not be played a fool by people who want to ignite conflicts and then ask for forgiveness instead of permission.
Iran Deal: I take the position that the deal allowed peaceful nuclear energy and that revoking the deal only caused Iran to not abide by it. Secondly, we did not “give them money,” we returned frozen assets that were already theirs. I outlined earlier that I don’t believe we should strike first. By taking the deal down, we struck first, when they were abiding by it and it was us who failed to abide by it. Should they unwind the deal after it is reinstated we can then retaliate. We cannot take a side on the Shia Sunni split. The murder of Soleimani was an unnecessarily escalation and caused Iran to basically enrich more uranium to be defiant.
ISIS: Trump did not destroy ISIS, ISIS destroyed ISIS. ISIL depended on the support of other factions who were aligned to it for geopolitical reasons, eg the Naqshbandi Army. When those aligned factions discovered the true horrors of Wahabi rule, they revoked their support for ISIL, causing it to lack the backing it needed for long term political survival. It is a past issue and I rarely name drop Trump, but I find it necessary to discredit the idea that Trump made policy decisions that actually defeated ISIL. He merely killed off its leader in hiding. Simply not continuing to engage the Syrian Civil War was the good decision, since it intensifies the Sunni Shia split and we can’t take a side in that split.