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10 questions to distinguish truly progressive politicians

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I’ve come up with 10 questions that I think distinguish progressive candidates. I’d like to ask each congressional candidate these 10:

1.  Would you vote to repeal the Patriot Act?

2.  Would you vote to repeal No Child Left Behind?

3.  Would you vote for a truly inclusive Employee Nondiscrimination Act?

4.  Would you vote to decriminalize marijuana?

5.  Would you vote for a law saying marriage is between any two consenting adults?

6.  Do you support a woman’s right to choose abortion, without restriction?

7.  Would you vote for a truly progressive tax system?

8.  Would you join the International Criminal Court?

9.  Would you vote for the Kyoto accords on the environment?

10. Would you support a “Manhattan project” scale effort to fund and develop renewable energy sources?

Then what I would do is compare the percentage of correct answers to the share of the vote Obama got, and fund people who were more progressive than their district and more progressive than their opponent.  

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Categories: Uncategorized.

/ 27 Comments

27 comments

  1. Chris Blask

    but has a “litmus test” feel that makes me squeamish. Certainly could identify “truly progressive” candidates this way, but not electable ones.

    Lemme see how I would do…

    1.  Would you vote to repeal the Patriot Act?

    I would study the crap out of it, pick it apart and likely strengthen defenses against parts of it.

    2.  Would you vote to repeal No Child Left Behind?

    I think so, yes. “Studying for the test” hasn’t seemed to help anything. The intent wasn’t imho a bad one, but education has changes so much since it came out – and has so much change to do in the next ten years – that what I would really vote for is a Manhattan Project to analyze and likely remake the entire education system.

    3.  Would you vote for a truly inclusive Employee Nondiscrimination Act?

    Not sure. I am guessing you mean to itemize as many as demographics as possible and make discriminating against each illegal?

    Might be simpler to have a one-liner law stating that discriminating on any basis not related to job performance is illegal.

    4.  Would you vote to decriminalize marijuana?

    Yes.

    5.  Would you vote for a law saying marriage is between any two consenting adults?

    Yes.

    6.  Do you support a woman’s right to choose abortion, without restriction?

    Almost. Late term is outright killing, and only in extreme cases with specific imminent risk to the life of the mother. As the ability to sustain life outside the womb moves backwards in the 40-week scale there may in foreseeable time be a point where abortion is only an option very early, after which external gestation would be the alternative.

    7.  Would you vote for a truly progressive tax system?

    Really hard to say, that’s a very broad statement. It could (and has) been taken to the “that’s one for you 19 for me” stage, in which case the answer would be no.

    8.  Would you join the International Criminal Court?

    Probably not, though I would vote to commit significant resources to finding a way to integrate more fully with international law (a slight variation of “yes”, but significant).

    9.  Would you vote for the Kyoto accords on the environment?

    No. I think they are a decent start and would, like 8, vote to commit significant resources to negotiating a truly workable international system for managing climate and other bioshpere issues.

    10. Would you support a “Manhattan project” scale effort to fund and develop renewable energy sources?

    No. As 8 and 9, I would vote to commit significant resources to energy issues, but “Manhattan Project” is wrong analogy for what I would support. MP was a massive sole-source centralized effort with a single goal. My answer to 9 is more what I think would work, but focused internally.

    Energy use is going to quadruple (or greater) in this century. In itself this is a good thing, environmental impacts will need to be engineered out of the process. This may mean full-capture of carbon for fossil fuels (the nickel research has me a bit enthusiastic atm). It may mean better fission. Fusion would be lovely. A full inventory of potential sources (tidal, geothermal, OTEC, solar – heck, plate tectonic might be a big deal.

    —————

    I would caution – overall, however – progressives from doing these sorts of tests except in purely hypothetical terms. Capital C Conservatives are busy showing the folly of purity tests for politicians, the political left would be wise to avoid even the suggestion of attempting the same thing.

  2. Mnemosyne

    All those questions were so sensible they seemed like no-brainers to me. Of course that’s the way the world should be.

    ::sigh::

  3. zenor

    Persons of interest before joining the ICC formally.

    Otherwise, the inclusion would be very uncomfortable, and embarassing and possibly legally ill advised. We looked forward. Not sure how much of the world did. Some bad acts and obvious exposure make the ICC problematical until our own culprits have been brought down. And we have captives who should have been freed long ago, I think, still.

    Yes women right to chose as general rule. Unless/except there are psych issues found to complicate decisions. There are people who would surgery themselves to ribbons if they were allowed.

    It’s a fair list and shows many choices quite desirable to enact.

  4. IL JimP

    “true progressive” I have a hard time taking it seriously.  Progressivism has a lot of forms, I don’t think there’s any set of questions that could define them.  

  5. sarahnity

    If doctors can be morally fallible, and pregnant women may not be wise enough to make the right decision, then what role do you suggest that government have in this decision?  Should a woman have to get a court order to terminate a pregnancy past a certain gestational age?  Because judges are so much less morally fallible than doctors?

    And even if you do believe that is true, what happens in an emergency when the decision must be made in the matter of hours or even minutes?  Google “interlocked twins” for one such gruesome situation where it might actually be necessary to terminate a fetus in mid-labor, lest you lose both twins.

    Tragic situations such as these are much more common than a woman carrying a pregnancy for 8.5 months and suddenly deciding to terminate it on a whim.  I can’t support any legislation that would endanger the lives and health and cause mental anguish to grieving women who are already facing the difficult loss of a wanted pregnancy just to prevent spree abortions that may be sought by some mythical woman some day possibly in the future.

    While I may agree that a late term fetus may be morally a person, legal personhood should be held to a higher standard, because there are so many difficult corner cases.  There are a lot of physiological differences between a later term fetus and a pre-term baby (heart and lung function are two of the biggies) but there is one simple test that even a layman can perform:  Point at the object in question.  If you are pointing at a pregnant woman, it’s not a legal person.

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