When Molly Ivins gits down to bidness, she does it with a vengeance, Texas-style. Let's hear it for Molly, stompin' around and shoutin' in The Progressive. She writes:
As usual, the Democrats have forty good issues on their side and want to run on thirty-nine of them. Here are three they should stick to:
1) Iraq is making terrorism worse; it’s a breeding ground. We need to extricate ourselves as soon as possible. We are not helping the Iraqis by staying.
2) Full public financing of campaigns so as to drive the moneylenders from the halls of Washington.
3) Single-payer health insurance.
Every Democrat I talk to is appalled at the sheer gutlessness and spinelessness of the Democratic performance. The party is still cringing at the thought of being called, ooh-ooh, “unpatriotic” by a bunch of rightwingers.
Take “unpatriotic” and shove it. How dare they do this to our country? “Unpatriotic”? These people have ruined the American military! Not to mention the economy, the middle class, and our reputation in the world. Everything they touch turns to dirt, including Medicare prescription drugs and hurricane relief.
This is not a time for a candidate who will offend no one; it is time for a candidate who takes clear stands and kicks ass.
Why are all these Democratic senators refusing to support Russ Feingold's censure motion? True, Feingold could have taken a few moments before introducing it to let his colleagues in on what was happening, perhaps get a suggestion or two. True, Feingold can be a pain in the gluteus maximus. He is not primarily a cooperator. But Molly's right: Let's stop cringing!
Molly's also right about the three issues. On Iraq, 72 percent of American soldiers there think the US should exit the country within a year, according to a Zogby poll. Another poll showed that 87 percent of Iraqis want their government to set a timeline for US withdrawal. As Molly writes in another scathing article (available on CNN):
So far, no good. After three years, tens of thousands of lives and $200 billion, we have achieved chaos. As Rep. John Murtha put it, "The only people who want us in Iraq are Iran and al Qaeda."
And issue two, public financing of elections, would be the cure for all the DeLay/Abramoff/Cunningham Republican scandals. It's already been enacted in six states, and it's working well, opening up electoral office to public-spirited citizens rather than the current crop of millionaires and friends of corporations. Removing big money from politics would allow democracy to sprout again and clean up a lot of the current corruption in government.
As for single-payer healthcare, we now pay far too much and receive far too little, especially when compared with other developed countries. Paul Krugman and Robin Wells have written an updated primer on the subject in the New York Review of Books. They point out that
medical costs are once again rising rapidly, forcing health care back into political prominence. Indeed, the problem of medical costs is so pervasive that it underlies three quite different policy crises. First is the increasingly rapid unraveling of employer- based health insurance. Second is the plight of Medicaid, an increasingly crucial program that is under both fiscal and political attack. Third is the long-term problem of the federal government's solvency, which is, as we'll explain, largely a problem of health care costs.
Yes, there are at least forty ways in which Bush is dismantling the country and destroying the world. But Molly's three big issues are enough to capture the imagination—and the votes—of most Americans. It's time to offend a few people, on behalf of the rest of us. And let's do it now, in time to win the November elections.
