Things for Democrats to talk about

Ralph Nader - In media appearances and at public rallies, Progressive candidates should authentically summarize what they will fight for—that resonates with left/right voters struggling to have decent livelihoods.

1. Raise the frozen federal minimum wage from $7.25 per hour to at least $15 or $17 an hour. Twenty-five million workers will benefit.
2. Raise Social Security benefits, frozen for 45 years, paid for by raising the Social Security tax on the wealthy. About 60 million elderly people will benefit.
3. Enact an authentic child tax credit, cutting child poverty in half. Over 60 million children will be better off.
4. Catch up with Western countries and Taiwan by passing Medicare for All, lifesaving, far more efficient, and much less aggravating than the present profit-gouging, benefit-denying, corporatized system of greed first.
5. Crack down on corporate crooks stealing consumer dollars, worker wages, and pensions. (Saving trillions of dollars yearly and having 90% approval.)
6. Adopt child care, paid family sick leave, and other humane programs long in place in Western Europe and Canada.
7. Pass labor laws for safety, economic freedom to speak and band together, and pension protections put forth decades ago. (See: pensionrights.org).
8. Invest in crumbling public services and infrastructure in communities. Creating many good jobs.
9. Paying for the above by (1) restoring taxes on the very undertaxed or non-taxed super-rich and large corporations to the level of the prosperous 1960s, (2) by ending huge corporate welfare giveaways, subsidies, and bailouts, and (3) de-bloating the runaway, unaudited military budget, devouring over half of all operating spending by the federal government and getting more wasteful, fraudulent, and controlling corporate contractors by the year.

For more practical ideas, see the attached piece by former Secretary of Labor and current popular blogger Robert Reich, titled 10-Point Plan to Make America Affordable.