{"id":3072,"date":"2004-11-23T10:59:58","date_gmt":"2004-11-23T15:59:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/3072.html"},"modified":"2004-11-23T10:59:58","modified_gmt":"2004-11-23T15:59:58","slug":"crafting-our-own-agenda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/crafting-our-own-agenda\/","title":{"rendered":"Crafting our own agenda"},"content":{"rendered":"

In case you missed it last week, I’d encourage readers to check out John Kerry’s new video and petition<\/a> on an issue he’s going to be championing over the next year: expanding health care insurance to cover all American children.<\/p>\n

The proposal has merit and is worth pursuing, but that’s not the point I want to emphasize. What I like about Kerry’s push in the abstract is the idea that Dems have their own proactive, positive policy agenda that they’ll pursue whether Republicans are prepared to debate these issues or not.<\/p>\n

I’m under no illusions about this agenda’s viability, nor I imagine, is Kerry. To get something done, you need a majority and Republicans run the show, for now. Obviously, offering kids access to quality, affordable health care simply isn’t on the GOP’s wish list. Kerry can talk about this issue every day for the next year, but that doesn’t mean Bill Frist will bring it to the floor for a vote. But that need not be the goal here.<\/p>\n

Republicans have a clear and unambiguous agenda and Dems will have their hands full trying to block it. But instead of a strategy of constant defense, Dems also have an opportunity to offer an agenda of their own, of which Kerry’s “Every Child” initiative is clearly a part.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the public already embraces the Dem approach to nearly every area of public policy. Republicans won’t put our issues on the front burner, so why not have Dems pushing a counter-agenda? In addition to kids’ health care, we can launch initiatives on minimum wage, overtime protection, stem cell research, reimportation of prescription drugs, etc. “Here’s what voters would be seeing in Congress if Dems were in the majority right now…”<\/p>\n

Again, I know these policy proposals wouldn’t go anywhere, but it’s about offering an alternative and creating a narrative. Dems aren’t merely against<\/i> the GOP agenda; we’re for<\/i> our agenda, so maybe we should go out and make our pitch whether it has a chance of becoming law or not.<\/p>\n

It’s not a magic-bullet solution to the Dems’ troubles on the Hill, but it can an effective start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In case you missed it last week, I’d encourage readers to check out John Kerry’s new video and petition on an issue he’s going to be championing over the next year: expanding health care insurance to cover all American children. The proposal has merit and is worth pursuing, but that’s not the point I want […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3072\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}