Democratic Platform Part 1

Last year elections confirmed Democratic Party control over both the Congress and the Presidency. One of the things about American Democracy is that many elections turn more on the personalities of the candidates than on the actual issues. However, I think it is important to re-explore the actual platform of the party we elected to see what they and the American public see as the blueprint for the future. The overall platform theme was "Renewing America's Promise and it had four sub goals, listed below.

Renewing America’s Promise

I. Renewing the American Dream
II. Renewing American Leadership
III. Renewing the American Community
IV. Renewing American Democracy

Of course each of these have sub goals but to repeat them all here would be impractical. The most common theme involves the idea that while individual accomplishment has its place, America needs to work as a community to assure the following:

We Democrats want–and we hereby pledge–a government led by Barack Obama that looks out for families in the new economy with health care, retirement security, and help, especially in bad times. Investment in our country–in energy, education, infrastructure, science. A ladder of opportunity for all. Democrats see these as the pillars of a more competitive and fair economy that will allow all Americans to take advantage of the opportunities of our new era.

The first item in the platform involved stimulating the economy. Of course much of this started during the prior administration, but it does seem to some extent that the stimulus has had some positive impact. Further, a lot of the stimulus has still not really been distributed so the full impact is going to be larger. The unanswered question concerns the state of the economy after the stimulus runs out. The economic cycle is going to have periods of growth and periods of recession. We went through a period of growth in the 1990s that morphed in the first part of this century into a series of bubbles as increased apparent wealth led to rampant speculation. If you eliminate the bubbles, there is a real level of economic activity that is sustainable and from which we can grow. The sudden contraction of the last quarter of 2008 and first quarter of 2009 was probably an overreaction to the panic. This is the normal reaction and that contraction has to be absorbed. However, we see signs that housing is starting to move and that job losses have slowed. It is going to take quite a while if we expect the traditional industries to reabsorb the current unemployed and the best hope for reduction of unemployment has to be a new growth industry. I believe this industry has to be the conversion to renewable resources in all aspects of our economy. Without a tremendous increase in that effort, I see unemployment continuing at high levels for years.