With each passing day, it’s looking more and more like Democrats are going to stop acting like a bunch of punks and fight for the sliver of democracy this country has left. They appear to be leaving the whiny, defensive approach to campaigning behind and are looking to progress to a more progressive, offensive game plan.
I hope that’s the case. If so, here are a few things to incorporate that – dare I say – I know will guarantee a November 2024 victory for Dems “from the bottom to the top, top to the bottom” of the ticket.
Does my “Nov. 2024 Election Things To Do List” include hammering home the GOP’s overt criminality? Yes and no. Yes, hammer that message home. Hammer home the insidiousness of Project 2025, which seeks to transport us back to 1825. Yes, hammer home “34,” Trump’s new and well-deserved nickname. Yes, hammer home MAGA SCOTUS members gone wild.
But all that needs to be done on GP (general principle). What I’m saying to the Dems, from Presidential Candidate Kamala Harris on down, is pledge, plan, and produce these five things and y’all will not only win in 2024, but in 2026 and 2028 and beyond.
Right now, pledge and plan for the following five things. When in office, make sure you produce.
Here they are.
#1: Transform Higher Education
Start with committing to total student loan forgiveness, a move economists have shown will provide both a short-term and long-term boost to the economy. Then move to creating a free college system.
The U.S. educational system is ranked middle-of-the-road when compared to countries globally. And there’s already a massive shortage of future scientists and doctors coming out of the U.S. because of this so-so education system. That means this land is producing workers who are less and less able to compete with others in the global talent pool. Why? Because white nationalist allow their disease of racism to block them from funding an education system that fully equips the nation’s present and future majority – Black and Brown students. Their racism is dooming this land educationally, technologically and economically. And with global technology, companies committed to hiring the best talent aren’t constrained by country borders anymore.
Free college would pay for itself in the amount of innovation, creativity, expertise, etc. a revamped educational system not enslaved to the profit motive (and to the myth of white supremacy) could produce. One reason is that a truly revamped higher education system would mean a transformational overhaul of K-12 education, including actually bridging the digital divide, ending educational resource deserts, and destroying the classist and white supremacist K-12 funding model that exacerbates the inequalities.
#2: Stand Against Genocide and Neo-colonialism… Period
The youth vote will win this election (after the Black vote, of course). And youngfolk are not here for genocide and/or the continued oppressive mistreatment of countries filled with people of the global majority. Stop allowing the U.S. and its voters to be Israel’s hoe, having to cough up billions of dollars every time Israel screams, “B****, where’s my money?” Hell, the vast majority of the actual citizens of Israel are standing against and protesting the genocide their Zionist “leaders” are perpetrating. Punish corporations that oppress Black and Brown nations via slave labor, child labor, old-style apartheid and/or new-style apartheid.
The reason so many African nations are even open to the “soft” exploitation of China and Russia is because those two countries at least front like they’re treating residents of the African nations they’re currently seeking to recolonize with humanity via the investments in infrastructure, etc. that they are providing African nations in exchange for a foothold in those lands to rob them of their resources.
The U.S. has not even done African nations the courtesy of any such “exchange.” The U.S. has always just gone in and taken whatever the hell they wanted while supporting efforts (military, paramilitary, etc.) to keep those nations destabilized and chaotic so the theft of their resources can go unchecked.
“America the Beautiful” uses this same playbook in Central and South American nations, for the most part. Those Brown nations with large populations who present and “represent” as “white” get much better treatment, though they’re still getting robbed too.
But so many of America’s citizens are either from these Black and Brown nations and/or have people from there. They know of America’s race-based foreign policies firsthand. They experience America’s two-faced, race-based immigration policies. And they are pissed.
The Spring 2024 protests on college campuses across the country proved this. Those protests may have started out focusing on the genocide in Gaza, but those students quickly connected the dots to similar atrocities heaped upon people of the global majority historically and currently (hello Haiti, the Congo, Sudan, etc.).
And with young voters now energized behind the Harris/Walz ticket, they’re ready to vote.
They want and need to see the political party that’s going to reward companies that do business abroad by treating Black and Brown people with humanity. Rewarding those businesses for treating whitefolk from other nations like that isn’t a necessity, since they’re already treated humanely.
The international policies based on the myth of white supremacy model will not allow countries with diverse populations to stand much longer. There are too many people in the U.S. from those very countries that America’s economic hitmen purposefully undermine and knee-cap with coups, assassinations, and neo-colonialism tactics that leave these countries in perpetual economic bondage. It’s a model that’s already teetering on destruction. It can’t last. The nation that recognizes the real economic advantage in treating people with fairness and decency will win the rest of the 21st century and have a mountainous advantage going into the next one.
#3: Transform Voting Rights, the System and Process
Pledge to use an Executive Order to implement the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. But don’t stop there. Countries around the globe that not only say voting is important but back it up with their actions do everything in their power to remove barriers from voting, not create new ones.
Some countries hold elections over multiple days. Others hold elections on weekends so folk won’t miss work. Still, others allow for folk to register to vote and actually vote on the same day of their elections. Other countries allow folk behind bars to vote while they’re in prison. Those countries believe the vote is so sacred that everyone’s voice is required.
The only thing standing between America and a radically improved voting reality is space and opportunity (and America’s longstanding commitment to the myth of white supremacy).
#4: End Prison Industrial Complex
Pledge to crank out an Executive Order to institutionalize criminal justice reform, including instituting measures to hold police accountable for breaking the law just like civilian citizens are held accountable for breaking the law. The only reason that proposition is seen as “radical” and fought against tooth and nail by conservatives is because the mission of the police has always been to protect and serve wealthy white nationalists. Hence, holding cops accountable who beat and kill us indiscriminately is a big deal… but alone, it’s not enough.
For-profit prisons must be outlawed. The profit motive drives the bus regarding our abuse and mistreatment at the hands of law enforcement (that, and the myth of white supremacy). That profit motive incentivizes the school-to-prison pipeline and qualified immunity and any other things that protect those who would oppress us while wearing a badge… or a judge’s robe or a DA’s Brooks Bros. suit.
#5: Fix the broken Supreme Court
And while you’re at it, cleaning out the real criminals from the criminal justice system, pledge to do the same at the U.S. Supreme Court level. These MAGA-fied justices have been “wilding” for far too long. Speak on instituting term limits, adding more justices to the bench and absolutely holding those current gangster MAGA SCOTUS members (and their spouses) accountable for their ongoing crimes and abuses of power.
