Your DSA Platform Questionnaire

It’s likely to be too little too late. My very limited sample size along the Maple Mile (the mile-long walk I take each day through my Madison West Side neighborhood with my dog, Maple) shows that David Crowley lawn signs have popped up in the last few days. They now outnumber the Francesca Hong signs by about three-to-one. Maybe the recent revelations of Hong’s comments about how she hates Thanksgiving have liberals freaking out about her electability come November.

But consider this. We can expect something just over 500,000 votes to be cast in the Democratic primary and it looks like almost 200,000 of those will have been cast in early voting. So, almost 40% of the vote is already in and many of those were cast during the 10-day period when Crowley had dropped out of the race. In addition, early votes for Mandela Barnes, Sara Rodriguez and Missy Hughes, which might have gone to Crowley if they had waited for election day, are now lost. You can’t get your vote back — which is why early voting is such a dumb idea.

All of which is say that a still deeper dive into what the Democratic nominee believes and what she will have opened herself up to attack about — even beyond her dislike of Americans’ favorite holiday — is in order.

To wit: the DSA agenda. Some have pushed back on my recent blog asking Hong about her positions on some items in the adopted platform of her party, the Democratic Socialists of America. The argument is that Hong doesn’t support everything in that agenda.

Great! So, what items does she support?

To that end I’ve combed the DSA document for each specific policy item. I found no fewer than 51, which may seem daunting, so below I’ve created a handy template so that Fran can just print it off and write “YES,” “NO,” or “MAYBE” beside each one. I’ve also been so presumptuous as to give her my thoughts on each one, but she can just ignore those, as I’m sure you and all people of good judgement will.

Here goes!

You will have no debt.

Really? Somebody’s going to pay off my credit cards both now and every month into the future? Cool! There’s a ton of stuff on Amazon I’ve been wanting. If only I had those latest Taylor Mades I’d be breaking par. I know it.

You won’t pay a mortgage or rent.

Fantastic. I’ve got some mortgage left on my second home on a northern lake. I had been planning on just paying it off on schedule, but it’s nice to hear the taxpayers (or better yet the RICH taxpayers!) will clear that for me.

Food, education, energy, medicine and transportation will no longer be for-profit businesses, but public utilities.

Wait just a minute here. Do you really mean to tell me that all my meals are going to be provided by the cafeteria next to the DMV? And all those private Community Supported Agriculture things will be outlawed? Okay, so CSA’s are pretty pretentious and expensive for what you get, but I can’t go along with this one. If my West Side neighbors want to spend a fortune for boxes of nothing but kale, that should be their sacred right.

Everyone will have paid family leave.

We’re already heading in this direction and you can get this same policy in the Democratic platform. But don’t we want to break down the family unit as a step toward the inevitable end of history? Have you read your Marx or not?

A 32-hour work week with no reduction in pay or benefits

Ok, so pesky economists are going to whine that when you dramatically cut production without a corresponding reduction in costs you’re asking for all kinds of trouble. Sure this will likely lead to an economic meltdown, but then we’ll all get even more time off!

Free college.

Absolutely. The sons and daughters of Wall Street lawyers should be able to go to Harvard and put no strain on their trust funds.

Cancel student debt.

Great idea. All those trust fund kids who got their MFA’s and took a gap year in Barcelona can rest easy now.

Universal health care with no copays.

Just like Britain’s National Health Service. Get in line for the blood-letting as leeches are being rationed today.

All medical education and training would be free.

Doctors, the most well-compensated profession in America, need this equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars in a taxpayer subsidy so that they can buy into a much better country club right from the start of their practice. This will keep them relaxed and therefore sharper when they do that open heart surgery.

Build new public hospitals and clinics.

Where actually needed, perhaps in parts of rural America, maybe this makes some limited sense. Still, very expensive. How will you pay for it? Oh, yeah, the rich. Forgot about taxing the bejesus out of the one percent. Ok, let’s move on then.

Build new “social housing.”

Not sure what social housing is, but I suspect it means there will only be vegan sauce and whole grain pasta at the community supper table.

Universal rent control.

Let’s just work off a hypothetical here. Let’s say I’ve somehow avoided the gulag and, even after the retraining to become a community organizer, I’m still a developer. But I’ve gotten my certificate in Soviet cinder block architecture, so I’m cleared to build workers’ housing. But the pesky bank has the temerity to want to know how I’m going to pay back the money that I need to build my drab, concrete apartment blocks. I tell them that depends on what the government tells me I can charge in rent from year to year. Anybody’s guess what that might be. The loan officer frowns.

Honor all treaties and tribal sovereignty.

Okay. Done. I’m for it. In Wisconsin we just got done honoring tribal sovereignty so much that we’re replacing a 12-mile section of an oil and natural gas pipeline with a 41-mile reroute around the reservation with resulting disturbances of wetlands and other sensitive habitats. Now 12 miles of pipeline risk will be replaced with over three times as much. Great outcome.

Pay reparations.

This was a good idea right after the Civil War. But several generations on it makes little sense. At this point, who would get a check and for how much? Barack Obama? His family did not come out of slavery. His daughters? Their mother’s family did come out of slavery, but they grew up in the White House and have had one or two other advantages along the way. What about people who are one-quarter black or one-eighth? I watch Henry Louis Gates on PBS and it turns out everybody has some trace of African ancestry. Reparations for all!

Demilitarize the police.

If they mean getting rid of some of the goofy Army Surplus tactical gear that they picked up 20 years ago, sure, that was dumb from the start.

Disempower police unions.

Hong is a strong supporter of repealing Act 10, so why would she want to go the other way and decertify another public employee union?

Fully abolish the police and prison system which protects the rich and jails the poor.

The rich live in safe neighborhoods and can afford the fanciest Nest system available. When white activists wanted to dismantle the Minneapolis’ police department the referendum passed only in relatively affluent white neighborhoods while it went down in black wards. The rich can protect themselves. It’s the rest of us that need police and jails.

Treat drug addiction and mental illness as health issues, not crimes.

Agreed. We’re mostly doing this already. If we can move further in this direction, fine. But what’s also needed is to make it easier to commit people with mental health issues involuntarily so that we can get them off the street for their own good.

End qualified immunity.

Why anyone would want to serve as a police officer if they could be personally sued for virtually any action they take is beyond me. But I forget. There won’t be any police, so this is a nonissue. My bad.

Empower police oversight boards.

I don’t know about other places, but the board and police monitor we have in Madison have been an absolute circus and a complete waste of money. They wasted no time in exploiting a tragic police shooting in Madison last month to demand a four-fold increase in their budget. The current monitor even said that she would, “burn this city down.” In a previous budget cycle three brave Madison alders tried to eliminate this office and spend the money on body cameras, which the hard-left has fought tooth and nail. All three of those alders were black.

Ban sex discrimination.

Check. Done. Long ago. The DSA really needs to brush up on their Helen Reddy.

Defund the War Department.

The left’s favorite word is “defund.” They use this to destroy any public support they might get if they used a word they actually mean, such as “reform” or “reduce.” I agree that there is probably significant waste, fraud and abuse in the Pentagon. Let’s go after that, but let’s not imply that we want to leave the nation defenseless.

End all foreign wars and close overseas military bases.

Trump’s senseless war in Iran should be ended ASAP. But you really want to close bases in Europe so that Putin can invade countries to his heart’s content? You want to withdraw troops from South Korea so that Kim Jong-un can impose his ruthless dictatorship on the whole peninsula? Do you agree with Trump that we should weaken or even leave NATO? Should we abandon Ukraine?

Support and fully employ veterans.

I’m for it, but that’s going to be hard if we zero out the defense budget.

End immunity for U.S. war criminals.

I didn’t know we had war criminals or that they enjoyed immunity. Support for Netanyahu’s war is a bad policy choice. It’s not a crime.

Support Palestinians’ right to self-determination.

I’m for it. I’m for the two state solution. This will be made easier when groups claiming to represent Palestinians recognize Israel’s right to exist.

End all military and economic aid to Israel.

The Netanyahu government has gone too far in responding to Hamas’ brutal October 7th attacks. But Israel has a right to exist and the U.S. should do what it can to assure its continued existence.

Prosecute U.S. and Israeli leaders responsible for the genocide in Gaza.

See above and I don’t think “genocide” is a correct use of the term in this case.

End economic warfare against Cuba, Venezuela and Iran.

We should have normalized relations with Cuba long ago. We haven’t because Florida used to be a swing state and nobody wanted to piss off the Cuban exile community. Now that Florida is solid red, the Democrats will do this as soon as they can. But, as a rule, economic sanctions are a use of soft power, better than military action. If anybody thinks these three countries are free or workers’ paradises they’re not living in the real world.

End ICE detentions and deportations.

I tend to agree. Trump’s masked bandits need to be reined in. But there are some bad folks who should be deported.

Legalize migration.

Of course, migration is legal now. You just have to follow the rules. So, this item leads a reader to think they mean open borders. If that’s the case I’m against it. The left loves to point out that we’re a nation of immigrants, but leaves out the part about “who came here legally.” I do agree that we should liberalize legal immigration, however. We’re an aging society and we need the young people and the workers.

Amnesty for all immigrants regardless of status.

Bad idea. But the next idea…

Provide a path to citizenship.

Is the way to go.

End visa caps and quotas.

I don’t know. I’d be happy to hear more from both sides.

Voting rights for non-citizens, inmates and felons.

I suppose the idea here is that they’d all vote for socialists. It seems to me that there should be some basic qualifications to vote and an obvious one is that you are a citizen. As for felons, you want Trump convicted of a long list of felonies, but you still want him to be able to vote? Is that what you want?

Statehood for Washington, DC

This is an attempt to stack the Senate with two more Democrats. But they won’t have to do that once they’ve abolished the Senate (see below), so this is superfluous. Next item please.

End voter suppression.

Sure. But this issue is way overplayed. Republicans’ attempts at voter suppression have been a resounding failure. And the so-called “Jim Crow 2.0”? Georgia’s revised laws left the state with voter rules more liberal than New York’s.

End political corruption.

This is in stark contrast to other party platforms that call for more political corruption.

Get rid of lobbyists.

Even for the Sierra Club? Even for Common Cause? Even for the ACLU? You might find a problem with the First Amendment here, but perhaps that can be repealed.

Get rid of dark money.

I wish we could. But even some of the biggest liberal PACs and advocacy groups are funded by dark money. Here in Wisconsin the most ironic one is A Better Wisconsin Together, which routinely attacks conservative groups for getting money from rich conservative donors.. who they can identify thanks to those groups’ transparency… while Better Wisconsin is funded mostly by… dark money.

Publicly finance all elections.

All elections? County board? School board? Primaries? Taxpayers should be forced to fund a politician’s campaign (even say, Donald Trump’s or Tom Tiffany’s) even if they disagree with their views because…?

Abolish the Electoral College.

Maybe. But be careful Wisconsin. We only matter because of the Electoral College. Once that’s gone (and it won’t go because there aren’t enough states that would approve the Constitutional amendment) presidential candidates will only go to the big states where the most voters are. If you think we’re flyover country now, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Why, the New York Times won’t even bother to send their archeological reporters here every four years to learn more about the strange language and customs of the natives.

Replace the President and Supreme Court with an executive and justices chosen by Congress.

This is a truly extraordinary proposal because it guts the heart of the Constitution. No more independent judiciary or checks and balances. Did it occur to the DSA that maybe MAGA representatives might control the House at some point? And that they could pursue their wildest dreams without any guardrails?

Abolish the two party system and replace it with a multi-party system.

I don’t know how you “abolish” something that isn’t officially created in the first place, but sure, I think more parties would be better. So, here’s an awkward question: why isn’t the DSA running their own candidates instead of trying to take over the Democratic Party? And once they accomplish that, are they still going to think that more parties is such a great idea?

Abolish the Senate.

The DSA doesn’t like the Senate because it’s where a lot of legislation goes to die. Legislation like the bill to end Obamacare? Oh, you didn’t mean that one? Legislation like Trump’s SAVE Act voter suppression bill, which passed the House, but doesn’t have the votes in the Senate? Oh, not that one either? Huh.

Expand the House of Representatives.

To how many? Isn’t 435 ungainly enough? And then everyone will want nice offices and staff (all educated at Ivy League schools). Stationary! Junkets! More of their own elevators! It’ll never end. And here’s a question they don’t answer. Why?

Mandate ranked choice voting.

I don’t really care, except to note two problems that have come up. First, nobody understands it. And second, it takes four years and the biggest computers in California for results to be produced. And by then you’re into the next election and more choices and more ranking and… people just get a headache and want to go out for a beer.

Public ownership of the largest corporations.

This could get pricey. What’s Meta worth? Apple? Amazon? Tesla? Microsoft? General Motors? Ford? Or are we just going to send in the troops and seize them? Oh, damn, I forgot. No military. But no matter how it’s done, who knows how to run a business better than the federal government?

Exact aggressive wealth taxes on the richest individuals and corporations.

Whew. Somebody had too much free trade, shade grown coffee over at the DSA. “Exact!” “Aggressive!” Words like a fist. And here I thought that kindness was everything. I got a better idea. Let’s just take all these people out, line ’em up against a wall and shoot ’em. You kinda get the feeling that this is exactly what our comrades over at DSA Central really want to do.

Protect, expand and enforce the rights of all workers to form unions and strike, regardless of industry.

Except police. Whose unions will be disempowered and destroyed — aggressively.

So, there you have it, folks. The entire DSA platform, annotated. Now, Rep. Hong, all you need to do is print it off, write yes, no or maybe next to each item — and a note in the margins if you wish — and send it on in. We’ll publish your answers verbatim.

I’ll watch the mail.