The most important thing for progressives to do in the 2020 Presidential election is band together so that progressives ideas and leadership can win.
Who are progressives? Bernie Sands, Elizabeth Warren and Tulsi Gabbard are the leaders. Andrew Yang is a long shot. Julian Castro may fall within this group. The leaders should pick the other participants, and every one of them must agree on a single platform in order to remain in the group. The platform would include Medicare for All, debt-free college, a guaranteed Federal job at a living wage, a strong climate change policy (the “Green New Deal”), and perhaps Yang’s Universal Basic Income. They would agree on a single platform.
They would all go out and seek votes in the primaries. Voters would know that a vote for their favorite candidate would mean that their vote would be committed to the leading progressive candidate from the first ballot at the Democratic Convention. Thus, all the votes for all the candidates would be cast for the leading candidate. By doing this, the progressives would be banding together to make sure that a progress candidate would win. Plus if a progressive became president, all of the other progressive candidates would earn a position of power within the progressive government.
The important thing is to have a solid group of progressives and genuine agreement on the platform. No one can predict who will win. Bernie might win, or voters might nix him as being too old. Each of these candidates bring something to the party, and collectively they make a progressive victory more likely.
Personally, I do not support Kamala Harris, because I think she is really too centrist. The same for Cory Booker. I think that if either of them were to join the progressive group, they would have a good chance of winning. But maybe they would just add votes for Bernie or one of the other candidates.
Maybe this group could add an additional rule to their group. They would agree that on any important issue, the majority would rule. Each of them would get a vote based on the total votes they received in the primaries to be cast at the convention. In effect, the primary votes would continue to carry weight into the governing period. So if Bernie received 23% of all the votes of the group in the primary, he would continue to have 23% in the governing group. So if Kamala Harris were the winner, her decision-making would be tempered by the votes of the other progressives.
I favor this sort of system, because I feel that I can trust the ideas of this group of politicians. I would much rather have them collectively than a person like Trump or Pence – for sure.
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