That pretty much sums it all up, doesn't it? Being ideologically pure but out of office does not accomplish anything. Plus, though I dislike the ramifications of the citizens united decision, I'm not convinced that the SCOTUS interpretation of the constitution was wrong.

I do not think it is naive to think that Big Money effects every other issue. It is naive to think that it doesn't. How many issues can you name that are not effected by Big Money?

There is a big difference between "effected" and "decided" by big money. But it really comes down to rights. Under our system, do businesses, corporations, non-commercial groups of various flavors or even religious organizations have a right to express their political views and petition the government or the people? Constitutionally, I think they do. I also think that it must be limited or evened out so to not overpower the will of the people, but those groups completely shut out of government is likely just as bad as giving them too much political power.

The other problem I see is I'm not convinced that low donations is a magic bullet to solve the problems you seek solved. Obama and Bernie did quite well with the under $200 donations but so did Donald Trump. I also look abroad at other countries that have strict campaign finance regulations, shorter campaigns and otherwise considerably less money involved in politics and I'm not seeing noticeably better candidates or political outcomes. Why is that?

Field of Dreams was a fantasy. If you built it they will not come unless you have a compelling reason to come. So far I see no compelling reason. National or even state candidates are not going to flock to your idea because they want to get elected. If you have no list, you have no reason to visit. I would find value in ratios of small to large donations or articles about specific politicians and how money has determined or not determined their votes and policies. But as an absolutist idea that I don't necessarily agree with (at least it's absolutist nature), with little behind it: pass. And I suspect I'm not the only one...

Also, tone down that marketing speak. Nothing says "please ignore me" like marketing speak...

I don't think anyone cares to address One Demand until you get off your ass and add the purported list of low donation candidates. We just went through a major campaign season and the only update to your site is a re-brand. I think you are completely naive about how money works and the ability to control it and are tilting windmills in thinking that money is the driving force of all other problems in politics, but I would find value in knowing who are low donation candidates. Too bad it looks like your site will never be a source for that information...

As to Elizabeth Warren's Netroots speech, lots of energizing the base and listing of problems but non-existent on actual solutions. Most of the issues listed are championed by centrist democrats and those that are not don't seem to have any numbers behind their solutions. Bernie's medicare for all, single payer plan sounds interesting but until I see the numbers it's just a sound bite to me. How is it going to be paid for? If I am on a decent partially paid for by employer medical plan, how is my medical care going to change? Is it going to change for the better? The worse? Once you adjust for what my employer pays in, what I pay in, will that equal out to the tax increase? I mean contrary to all the rhetoric, the US does have the absolute best medical care in the world, if you can pay for it. When an Oil Sheikh gets cancer he does not go to Norway for treatment, he goes to the Mayo clinic. How does this change with Bernie's plan? Free college for everyone is another issue, that like medical care, is a devil in the details. I need to see those details before I can support such an issue and I don't think Bernie or Warren have figured them out yet nor have a plan to actually pass them...

The third is the Estate Tax, which the GOP likes to refer to as the "Death Tax" and whine how it affects the middle class and farmers... when nothing could be further from the truth.

Yeah, it's amazing: the debate continues to rage, despite the Republican-caused Recession of 2008 and the resultant Austerity-vs-Stimulus debates that followed both here and in Europe, where the failure of austerity regimes has led to a "Keynesian resurgence" among decision makers.

Not so much in the USA, where a 'mixed' approach to recovery was (by political necessity) applied, with predictably mixed results. Each side blamed the other for 'hindering' the recovery, even as the economy improved, the deficit shrank, and the employment situation improved (in most places).

But while the basic paradigms of left and right remain unchanged (tax the wealthy or not, respectively), there is a remarkable amount of disagreement within each camp on other basic economic issues, such as free trade.

On the Right, Trump and the populists have broken on the issue of Trade with the Reagan crowd and the Chicago School, for whom free Trade was a tenet. Trump's recent attempt to re-write NAFTA has drawn criticism from business leaders, and re-opened an old wound regarding ISDS (investor-state dispute settlement) provisions, which allow investors to sue foreign governments, and have been invoked 59 times under NAFTA. On August 23rd the chief executives of the three largest American business associations wrote a public letter to Robert Lighthizer, the United States Trade Representative, warning him against changing these provisions, but these very provisions are in the target sights of the 'America First' crowd, who view international arbitration panels as undermining American sovereignty.

Trade policy is no less divisive on the left, where for instance, liberal economists Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz disagree about the value of Free Trade and the Eurozone (Stiglitz and Beatle Ringo Starr were both in favor of BREXIT, too). Famously, Bernie was against free trade, while Clinton and Obama supported TPP, because it was viewed by them as a way to counter moves by China to corner markets in the Pacific rim (late in the 2016 campaign, Hillary moderated her position, saying that she wanted to 'see the details' of a finished TPP agreement before endorsing it).

But as I said up front, don't expect the GOP to change it's public stance favoring tax breaks for the rich. It may be, as one pundit said recently, the only glue that still holds their party together.

Democrats have just one play here, IMHO: to remind the working poor that Trump has brought into the party what a raw deal that is for them. To do this, Democrats need to make a plan addressing all of the inequities that I noted in my previous post [7].

Not true. You may have made taxation more efficient or less so. Taxation costs people time and money, filling out forms of course, but more importantly on gathering the information they need to document everything. Taxation also has indirect costs. If the after-tax price of one more unit of something isn't worth paying, even though the before-tax price is, one less unit gets bought (and therefore one less unit gets made). It's typically not that the taxpayer became too poor to afford the thing: if you just took their money outright, they probably would still have bought the whatever-it-is. Rather, you've made it look to the economy as though the thing costs more to produce. You've introduced false information, saying that the thing isn't worth making. This is called a dead-weight loss.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MICHALE!

Poor communication skills.

Remember, "You didn't build that."

What they will do is reduce all of his deductions. They'll raise 'sin taxes' on his beer and cigarettes, and gas and license taxes for his truck. If he owns a trailer or house, his property taxes will rise, as the feds cut funding for education, and states and local school boards scurry to cover the gaps in their budgets with local tax income. If he rents, he gets no mortgage deduction, and no deduction for the cost of utilities. Child care expenses are only deductible in a few states, and the enormous cost of child-raising accessories (from Pampers to playpens) is actually subject to sales tax. (A sign of the times: Toys 'R Us is filing for bankruptcy).

Trouble is, when a payroll worker looks at his paycheck, he sees only a few deducted items listed: Medicare, Social Security, Unemployment insurance. He thinks: "if these things disappeared, I'd be a richer man." That, right there, is the genesis of 90% of the working poor's animosity toward Democrats. Never mind that a third of the money he ends up paying to the government will end up allocated to the Pentagon, it isn't listed, so he doesn't go home seething about the cost of Guantanamo or MOAB bombs. How did democrats manage to allow this slur against the social safety net to become so omnipresent? I can't find an answer, or any indication that anybody's even thought about it.

I think the primary focus of the Democrats should be squarely on the premise put forth by congressional Republicans for whatever their tax plan entails. Which is to say that their long-standing and unproven claim that further shifting the tax burden away from the wealthy (read: job creators) is pro-growth is an argument that needs to be obliterated, once and for all.

https://youtu.be/qp6mXmHNPlg