We* can demand all we want, but he and his cabinet and their GOP enablers in Congress are going to ignore it and instead do what serves their own financial interests best. While we’re asking them to fix our broken systems their work in the next four years will be doubling down on breaking them further. That’s what we can prevent, starting now.
Assuming the best-case scenario, that he pushes for a single-payer universal system that doesn’t turn out to be one of his big scams, his VP and senior cabinet people and the GOP majority Congress would sabotage it every chance they got.
Our first priority is to take back Congress in 2018 and get some Sanders Dems in there. If the DNC can’t manage that we’re all buggered.
[* e.g. people who didn’t willfully vote in someone promising to take away their health insurance]
As it would from Congress, along with total obstructionism.
But yeah, I suppose he’s enough of a wild card that maybe he would do it, as a populist gesture. And then if enough citizens saw that Trump seemed to really mean it, maybe there’d be enough pressure on Congress… who knows?!
I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that endless political campaigning may be part of the problem. This incessant competition for control and anxiety over what’s at stake isn’t putting people in a frame of mind where they’re prepared to listen to one another and work out mutually agreeable solutions to our problems. The government barely governs anymore—an election is hardly over before the parties start working out what style of political theater will win the next election; they just paralyze each other. The more invested we become in who wins and controls what, the less it seems to matter.
I am not saying “Hey, let’s give this Trump guy a chance.” But rather, we need a long-term strategy that isn’t activating the other side’s lizard brain the way a four year-long political campaign would. This reminds me of WWI trench warfare — the generals on each side kept thinking that the solution was a bigger and more costly offensive. When the Germans finally did break the line it didn’t matter because their remaining troops were too exhausted to keep fighting.
Reminds me, again, of the below-linked article. tl;dl: We need more non-partisan engagement in civic life; celebrating and supporting the institutions that make civilized existence possible.
From the list of demands https://policy.m4bl.org/platform/-
Many of us may agree with some of these, but some of them stray pretty far from the original cause
Retroactive decriminalization, immediate release, record expungement, and reparations for all drug offenses and prostitution
Divestment from fossil fuels
Full and free access for all Black people( including undocumented and incarcerated) to Universities, and retroactive forgiveness of all student loans.
Reparations, and a guaranteed minimum income for all Black people
Progressive restructuring of tax codes to promote a radical redistribution of wealth
Direct control of state, local, and federal law enforcement, including the power to hire, fire, and determine disciplinary action
Immediate release of all political prisoners
End to capital punishment
End to money bail
End to all deportations, immigration detention, and ICE raids.
