Admit Mistakes and Name the Enemy

I'm confused why the democrats are not crushing the republicans. 

I think there are two reasons:
1) the democrats made some serious mistakes and won't admit it.
2) the democrats are afraid to name the real enemy.

What are the serious mistakes. Sadly, there are a bunch. But before I even describe them, you should understand why naming mistakes matters. When we name mistakes, own mistakes, then people start to trust you. Then they might even vote for you.

Our latest mistake is saying that corporations are more important than the people in this country. When we support corporations who move jobs overseas, we say those corporations are more important than the people in America who used to work in those companies. Corporate profits went up while our people lost their jobs and that is OK. And you wonder why voters don't trust us?

Another mistake is praising President Obama's Affordable Health Care Act even though it is the costliest and most poorly run health care system in the developed world. Yes, it insured many people who were previously uninsured, and, of course, that is a GREAT thing. But it is still using an insurance model to pay for health care rather than tax dollars, and that is criminally expensive. The only reasons we don't switch to a Medicare For All system are because the very wealthy don't want higher taxes and other wealthy people don't want to forgo the profits they are making on the insurance that the rest of us are paying. 

We complain about price gouging by food companies when we should be enforcing anti-trust laws and breaking up the food monopolies, and the internet monopolies, and the media monopolies.

There is some good news. We used to be a party of racists, but we are slowly crawling our way out of that morass.

We were racists for centuries....way before there was a democratic party even, but the point is that as soon as there was a democratic party, the people in control of the party continued their racism. You want examples? Slavery for starters. Then lynchings for the next hundred years after slavery was supposedly illegal. Land grabs from Native Americans. Chinese exclusion laws. Japanese internment camps while Japanese-American soldiers were defending America. You've got to be impressed with the chutzpah of FDR to imprison Japanese citizens and ask Japanese American men to fight at the same time. 

We do apologize now for the most egregious internments, and acknowledge that Blacks still face rampant job and wage discrimination and offer up platitudes to Native Americans for living on their lands. But we don't sincerely apologize or offer compensation to the descendants of the Ancestors we treated so brutally. We could do that, offer the compensation. Our government prints money all the time, money for bombs and guns, so don't pretend we can't print money for past misdeeds. We can. We just don't want to. And you wonder why people don't vote for you?

Do you want to know the enemy we are afraid to name? Capitalism Run Amok

Yes, it is Capitalism Run Amok. You can also call it Capitalism Without Government Intervention, but I think Capitalism Run Amok gets the point across. We are afraid to criticize our capitalistic market place, like it is some deity that deserves unwavering praise and adoration. What malarky. We have Capitalism all right. It's Capitalism Run Amok and it is polluting our air waves, causing inflation in our stores, and damaging the trust in our democracy. 

That one company can own hundreds of media outlets in America is Capitalism Run Amok. That one company can own half the grocery stores in a state is Capitalism Run Amok. That private equity can buy up all the hospitals and doctor practices in a state is Capitalism Run Amok. That private equity can buy up hundreds of homes in a city is Capitalism Run Amok. That people cannot run for Congress unless they are millionaires is Capitalism Run Amok.

Do you want voters to trust you? Do you want voters to vote for you? Be honest. Name the real enemy. It's not our neighbors. It's not people who don't look like us? It's not people desperate for a low paying job. It's a system that permits some people to be billionaires while others are impoverished. The system is Capitalism, it has run amok, we created it, and we can fix it. So name the problem and get on with it. I think you'll have the votes.