You have missed one vital, and in my opinion the most important "issue" confronting the next President and that is personal integrity. The candidate that embraces this and makes it the centerpiece of his campaign will bury the competition.
Same, but most of them won't fix our Constitution long term. Too busy straddling the fence. I'm so tired of this back and forth every 4/8 years. We need to make definitive, constitutional changes if we ever want to have anything near the quality of life that we see in allied countries.
Totally agree, Cyn. We need to make sure that the mechanism that allowed them in office be surgically removed from our election process. These immoral people must be eliminated from our political process.
Steven, I agree that we need a president with personal integrity. He/she should have a solid record of integrity; however, it is up to the American voter to insure that record of integrity before they cast their vote. We haven't proven very good at that of late.
I respectfully disagree. Who can fault Obama's or Biden's integrity? The integrity is not nearly the problem (on the left) as making sure they are also fighters who understand that, right now anyway, handshakes across the aisle, compromises that look a lot more like caving (Lucy and that football analogy), are not going to cut it. We have a lot of good people in the House and Senate, also, but they are not cut out for the battle at hand, or so it seems right now. The GOP left their integrity at the gate decades ago. I don't even consider them in our future other than as an obstacle to overwhelm.
And we the people voted for them and put them into these powerful positions. If, as you say "the GOP left their integrity at the gate decades ago", I somehow seem to feel that they were not the only ones to have left fragments of their "integrity" (in some cases whole chunks of integrity) for the chance to enrich themselves.
What happens to "integrity" when the bottom line is (and has been) money and power in America for as long as there was an America?
Remember that slavery built this country. We might start by discussing
You have hit the nail on the head. I wrote book on how to execute this very strategy. It begins at the local level and grows until it can't be ignored. The great thing about this strategy is that it's the voters who are calling the shots, not the candidates or the party leadership.
Trouble is that personal integrity is hard to measure.
But, I CAN guarantee you that if the ones we have in power are not punished severely for what they have done then the flood doors of Autocratic Fascism will surely burst open and America's future as a democracy will be doomed for decades.
Arrest Trump and his cronies NOW. We are at a crossroad.
Yes and no. Yes to personal integrity but no to the "norms" and soft-peddling of pretty words that accomplish nothing. We need courage, also, and a willingness to do what is right with our power, once we have it, regardless of long term support (particularly from the loud-mouths on the right), ie personal career agendas. DO WHAT IS RIGHT and let your career chips fall where they may. Riding the fence has accomplished nothing. In fact it is why we lost the last election. People looked at both parties and saw little difference in their limited scope of interest.
I don't know. LBJ, JFK and FDR were hardly choirboys but they did a lot of good things. Jimmy Carter really was a choirboy but he wasn't always very effective. Ford had integrity but he was a bit of a dud. Lincoln was considered by modern historians to have very high integrity and also considered our greatest president by many presidential historians. John Quincy Adams had lots of integrity-- maybe even too much for his own good-- and it didn't help him govern well.
Of course, Don the Con is as sleazy and dishonest as the day is long (hence the nickname) and it's not a stretch to posit that he will be regarded by historians as the worst president ever.
It seems to me that the correlation between someone's personal integrity and how they performed in office is not that strong.
Very insightful. The political parties are all about the norms. They call them a party platform which shifts the emphasis away from personal integrity while hiding behind issues that change many times a year, or are so vague that they mean nothing - kind of like political ads!
Party leadership is all about platitudes. Specifics make them cringe, because they tend to identify real problems that require real solutions. No party wants to be put in a position where they have to actually fix something. A specific fix means engaging the electorate in an exchange of ideas, and we can't have that. The one voice the leadership is deathly afraid of is the voters voice. This is why they never ask the voters what the want from a candidate.
If anyone had any question about the importance of integrity in an election and how politicians fear it, all you had to do was watch the 5 hour testimony of Jack Smith before the Senate Judiciary committee. Even Republican Senator did the same thing today to attempt to sway public opinion about January 6th and Trumps stealing classified material for his own use. They attacked Jack Smith's integrity. They presented no facts and limited opinions, other than their own. Their fear? If someone of personal integrity does his or her job and the system prevents a charge from going to trial, the only way to sway the public is to attack the credibility and integrity of the people bringing the charges. If you needed any more convincing of the validity of this argument, todays testimony should convince you of the need to have candidates of the unimpeachable integrity. Bottom line: people of high integrity cannot be attacked without the attacker looking like someone with something to hide.
Thank you Steven. "Personal Integrity" is an overall abstract concept, IMO. It would be useful if it is followed by "...Integriy such as ... " Make sense?
This response may be a bit long, so I apologize for that in advance. I wrote a book entitled "How to Fix the Republication Party, Learning the lesson's from our Mistakes" I analyzed the January 6th report to identify what was important to take away froth report. I found that every lesson I identified dealt with the personal accountability and integrity of a politician and no "Issues". I identified 65 different lessons tone learned and identified the 10 most important for voters to focus on when it comes to candidate integrity.
1. Tell the truth and if you are nor sure, tell them what you do know and promise that you’ll look deeper into the issue and get back to them. Then actually get back to them with an answer.
2. Surround yourself with the smartest people you can find in their area of responsibility and expertise and encourage them to tell you what they think and to bring up alternatives. A leader needs raw, unfiltered data to be able to make effective decisions
3.Learn from your mistakes as well as your successes and you reduce the risk of losing party members.
4.Expect the best but plan for the worst. Loss of a battle does not mean the war is lost. Quitting after a lost battle only ensures a lost cause. The greatest leaders are those who learn from their losses and then overcome their own bad decisions and ultimately prevail.
5.Review your speech before you “deliver” it. If there is something in the speech you don’t agree with, fix it or leave it out. Remember, it’s your speech!
6.Volunteers and other supporters will misquote or misrepresent you on occasion. When brought to your attention, acknowledge the statement, take responsibility for not explaining yourself well enough and restate your belief for the record.
7.“I hope” is a closeout to further discussion. If a more detailed strategic discussion is warranted, say you will address it at a later time or direct them to whomever can give them an adequate response.
8.Choose your advisors well. Their advice may mean the difference between success and failure.
9.Be the first to admit failure when it occurs, learn from the errors made and move on. Blaming the process when none of the evidence supports this excuse is the sign of a shamefully weak leader.
10.Politicians are not perfect. If we make a mistake, admit it and move on. Only the most extreme narcissist will refuse to change even when confronted by the facts and with a lack of evidence to support their own beliefs.
There are 55 other lessons, but these are the highlights.
Well, you need to begin right off by recognizing that the gqp is way past saving, and why would anyone in their right mind want to save that bunch of cowardly fascists anyway? Since at least the 1930s, those arrogant, ignorant republican morons have been using their rich people ill-gotten gains to do everything they can think of in their selfish, narrow, puny rat brains to make life hell for the ‘little people’, ie, those of us who did not inherit millions from corrupt criminal daddies. Who do you think caused the Great Depression — and every recession since? After WW2 they started out of the chute with drunk joe mccarthy, his despicable sidekick roy cohn, and his venal ‘red scares’ that broke innocent people and destroyed families. Next up we had tricky dick nixon, that paranoidal megalomaniac of lies and more lies, not to mention Watergate criminality. Followed by dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks ronnie r and his nasty racist misogynist 'welfare queen' lying nonsense. Then of course there were the two rampantly corrupt, stupid bushies, with w breaking all records for number of days for a president to be falling down drunk while simultaneously starting multiple forever wars. Which leads us inevitably and absurdly to the orange menace, ALSO an acolyte of said creepy roy cohn and yet another gqp paranoidal megalomaniac of lies and more lies. So, how’s that again — you want to ‘resurrect’ THAT?? Let it die and save us all the trouble of drowning it in a bathtub. Time to start over and try to be human beings.
I Understand your frustration. I am not saying to try and resurrect the past, but let the voters define integrity and then hold the elected officials to it. There is a lot more than what I wrote here and I am covering it in my Substack series "A View Froth Chap seats, Fixing our Political Parties". I invite you to take a look at theories and comment on what I write.
Many thanks Steven for elaborating "Personal Integrity." You have indeed thought a lot about it. I will keep this note and thanks again. With my warm wishes to you.
Here's what I know for sure: It will take more than one POTUS in 2028 to fix the damage being done now. The damage being done is catastrophic. We haven't even felt the full force of it hit yet. It will take generations to repair.
This is the core truth here. As the old saying goes, it's a hell of a lot easier to burn down a barn than it is to build one. The Republicans have well and truly burned down the barn.
To rebuild a complex rules-based society--especially one that has been strategically polarized by a handful of arrogant billionaires who own, among many other things, a vast apparatus of propaganda and are willing to use it to incite chaos, division and even mass violence--will require generations: or more.
The whole election cycle and structure must be revamped ( maybe start over?). I am so sick of the perpetual call for money and the never ending rant for vote for me. Stop, please! Give us a break! Do your work to show us what you can do. Actions speak louder than words. Funding elections differently should be upfront. Limits on time for “running” for office.
Brilliant column. The next POTUS has to have an extraordinary team. What we need is everyone, everywhere, doing this rebuilding project from the ground up.
Finally, someone providing "the concepts of a plan" to rectify the problems we are facing. Who would have thought we'd need to write laws about how to act & behave as a government & country. I guess all that religion & return to "values" that Republicans have droned on about isn't working.
Thanks for the roadmap. An entity can't change without a guide book/plan/roadmap. This is a great beginning. Thinkers actually thinking!!!
This is a great start, but I say let's write the Democratic Platform right here on Substack. We know how Trump operates. In his first term he simply looked at whatever Obama had accomplished, and tried his best to wreck it. So the roadmap is, whatever Trump did or stood for, we push back against. Let's get the Contrarians, Katie Phang, Joyce Vance, Marc Elias, Pete Buttigieg et al. to write the Democratic Platform for all candidates. And overturning Citizens United is a good place to start.
I’m sure I will sound like a broken record by 2028, but I believe we can move on from the disgrace and disaster of the Trump regime ONLY if the US creates a South Africa-style “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” to weigh the gravity of each and all the crimes and corruption Trump and his MAGA brigades have inflicted on the USA. Democrats are naturally prone to shy from making MAGA cultists angry, but that’s too bad for the angry MAGA cultists. With no accountability—including severe fines and criminal prosecutions—there can be no trust moving forward. Slaps on the wrist and “tsk, tsks” will NOT suffice.
Yes, personal integrity is a must, but we also need to eliminate the excessive cost of electing candidates! This tends to mean that only the already wealthy can run for office and the party that spends the most gets elected.
Yes. Limited campaign seasons would help do this. No media ads, no campaign rallies more than six months before election day, e.g. Of course this will be opposed by those who make money from the campaigns, and by some candidates. But we need to find a way to end our excessively long and costly campaigns.
Great column. We need to remember that POTUS will not be able to do this alone. All of us need to pay as much attention to our vote for senators and representatives. Actually every vote down ticket. Voting is our voice. We need to take the time to try to break through all of the sound bites and biases current journalism throws at us. It is a daunting but necessary task.
Yes, Democrats need to be working from the ground up, starting with local elections - mayors, city councils, boards of supervisors, state offices - I’ve heard Democrats ignored the states and judging by how many state houses are held by Republicans it seems true. Then you have to get into election reform, which is part of how we got here. Do away with closed primaries, switch to ranked choice voting and redistricting by independent commissions.
Off topic but: could ICE agents be charged with breaking and entering with their “warrantless” actions in Minneapolis? And kidnapping as in the case of the 5 year old used as bait? Stillwater, MN here
Good point. No more of this "let's sing kumbaya and move forward together"...and that is exactly what we would get from some of the ambitious Dems with mics. Lack of accountability has put us where we are.
This is important not only for a presidential run. We need leaders, no matter what office they run for to outline a better America for the people.
But I think all these potential leaders need to work together. I think Pete Buttigieg is getting out, listening to people, and outlining a future America. But it feels too isolated, especially since he doesn't hold an office. I would like to see some group effort - because that is what it is going to take. It also gives more hope because the only way we are going to accomplish these efforts if it looks like there is a big enough coalition to actually have power in Congress and in states.
You have missed one vital, and in my opinion the most important "issue" confronting the next President and that is personal integrity. The candidate that embraces this and makes it the centerpiece of his campaign will bury the competition.
I'LL VOTE FOR A YELLOW DOG BEFORE ANY REPUBLICAN.
Same, but most of them won't fix our Constitution long term. Too busy straddling the fence. I'm so tired of this back and forth every 4/8 years. We need to make definitive, constitutional changes if we ever want to have anything near the quality of life that we see in allied countries.
Totally agree, Cyn. We need to make sure that the mechanism that allowed them in office be surgically removed from our election process. These immoral people must be eliminated from our political process.
I'll vote for the granite rock in my yard before I'll vote for any rethug.
Steven, I agree that we need a president with personal integrity. He/she should have a solid record of integrity; however, it is up to the American voter to insure that record of integrity before they cast their vote. We haven't proven very good at that of late.
I respectfully disagree. Who can fault Obama's or Biden's integrity? The integrity is not nearly the problem (on the left) as making sure they are also fighters who understand that, right now anyway, handshakes across the aisle, compromises that look a lot more like caving (Lucy and that football analogy), are not going to cut it. We have a lot of good people in the House and Senate, also, but they are not cut out for the battle at hand, or so it seems right now. The GOP left their integrity at the gate decades ago. I don't even consider them in our future other than as an obstacle to overwhelm.
And we the people voted for them and put them into these powerful positions. If, as you say "the GOP left their integrity at the gate decades ago", I somehow seem to feel that they were not the only ones to have left fragments of their "integrity" (in some cases whole chunks of integrity) for the chance to enrich themselves.
What happens to "integrity" when the bottom line is (and has been) money and power in America for as long as there was an America?
Remember that slavery built this country. We might start by discussing
"the Integrity of slavery".
That should be a very interesting discussion.
You have hit the nail on the head. I wrote book on how to execute this very strategy. It begins at the local level and grows until it can't be ignored. The great thing about this strategy is that it's the voters who are calling the shots, not the candidates or the party leadership.
Trouble is that personal integrity is hard to measure.
But, I CAN guarantee you that if the ones we have in power are not punished severely for what they have done then the flood doors of Autocratic Fascism will surely burst open and America's future as a democracy will be doomed for decades.
Arrest Trump and his cronies NOW. We are at a crossroad.
Democracy, yes or no?
Yes and no. Yes to personal integrity but no to the "norms" and soft-peddling of pretty words that accomplish nothing. We need courage, also, and a willingness to do what is right with our power, once we have it, regardless of long term support (particularly from the loud-mouths on the right), ie personal career agendas. DO WHAT IS RIGHT and let your career chips fall where they may. Riding the fence has accomplished nothing. In fact it is why we lost the last election. People looked at both parties and saw little difference in their limited scope of interest.
I don't know. LBJ, JFK and FDR were hardly choirboys but they did a lot of good things. Jimmy Carter really was a choirboy but he wasn't always very effective. Ford had integrity but he was a bit of a dud. Lincoln was considered by modern historians to have very high integrity and also considered our greatest president by many presidential historians. John Quincy Adams had lots of integrity-- maybe even too much for his own good-- and it didn't help him govern well.
Of course, Don the Con is as sleazy and dishonest as the day is long (hence the nickname) and it's not a stretch to posit that he will be regarded by historians as the worst president ever.
It seems to me that the correlation between someone's personal integrity and how they performed in office is not that strong.
Very insightful. The political parties are all about the norms. They call them a party platform which shifts the emphasis away from personal integrity while hiding behind issues that change many times a year, or are so vague that they mean nothing - kind of like political ads!
True! My gosh I look at posts from people like our new 'leader' Ken Martin and cringe.
Party leadership is all about platitudes. Specifics make them cringe, because they tend to identify real problems that require real solutions. No party wants to be put in a position where they have to actually fix something. A specific fix means engaging the electorate in an exchange of ideas, and we can't have that. The one voice the leadership is deathly afraid of is the voters voice. This is why they never ask the voters what the want from a candidate.
Unfortunately, doing WHAT IS RIGHT is not been the American credo.
" What is best for America is what is best for my pocketbook" seems to me to be the marching orders I have seen most march to.
If anyone had any question about the importance of integrity in an election and how politicians fear it, all you had to do was watch the 5 hour testimony of Jack Smith before the Senate Judiciary committee. Even Republican Senator did the same thing today to attempt to sway public opinion about January 6th and Trumps stealing classified material for his own use. They attacked Jack Smith's integrity. They presented no facts and limited opinions, other than their own. Their fear? If someone of personal integrity does his or her job and the system prevents a charge from going to trial, the only way to sway the public is to attack the credibility and integrity of the people bringing the charges. If you needed any more convincing of the validity of this argument, todays testimony should convince you of the need to have candidates of the unimpeachable integrity. Bottom line: people of high integrity cannot be attacked without the attacker looking like someone with something to hide.
Agree in concept, please explain concretely.
What specifically would you like me to address. Thank you for your comment.
Thank you Steven. "Personal Integrity" is an overall abstract concept, IMO. It would be useful if it is followed by "...Integriy such as ... " Make sense?
This response may be a bit long, so I apologize for that in advance. I wrote a book entitled "How to Fix the Republication Party, Learning the lesson's from our Mistakes" I analyzed the January 6th report to identify what was important to take away froth report. I found that every lesson I identified dealt with the personal accountability and integrity of a politician and no "Issues". I identified 65 different lessons tone learned and identified the 10 most important for voters to focus on when it comes to candidate integrity.
1. Tell the truth and if you are nor sure, tell them what you do know and promise that you’ll look deeper into the issue and get back to them. Then actually get back to them with an answer.
2. Surround yourself with the smartest people you can find in their area of responsibility and expertise and encourage them to tell you what they think and to bring up alternatives. A leader needs raw, unfiltered data to be able to make effective decisions
3.Learn from your mistakes as well as your successes and you reduce the risk of losing party members.
4.Expect the best but plan for the worst. Loss of a battle does not mean the war is lost. Quitting after a lost battle only ensures a lost cause. The greatest leaders are those who learn from their losses and then overcome their own bad decisions and ultimately prevail.
5.Review your speech before you “deliver” it. If there is something in the speech you don’t agree with, fix it or leave it out. Remember, it’s your speech!
6.Volunteers and other supporters will misquote or misrepresent you on occasion. When brought to your attention, acknowledge the statement, take responsibility for not explaining yourself well enough and restate your belief for the record.
7.“I hope” is a closeout to further discussion. If a more detailed strategic discussion is warranted, say you will address it at a later time or direct them to whomever can give them an adequate response.
8.Choose your advisors well. Their advice may mean the difference between success and failure.
9.Be the first to admit failure when it occurs, learn from the errors made and move on. Blaming the process when none of the evidence supports this excuse is the sign of a shamefully weak leader.
10.Politicians are not perfect. If we make a mistake, admit it and move on. Only the most extreme narcissist will refuse to change even when confronted by the facts and with a lack of evidence to support their own beliefs.
There are 55 other lessons, but these are the highlights.
Well, you need to begin right off by recognizing that the gqp is way past saving, and why would anyone in their right mind want to save that bunch of cowardly fascists anyway? Since at least the 1930s, those arrogant, ignorant republican morons have been using their rich people ill-gotten gains to do everything they can think of in their selfish, narrow, puny rat brains to make life hell for the ‘little people’, ie, those of us who did not inherit millions from corrupt criminal daddies. Who do you think caused the Great Depression — and every recession since? After WW2 they started out of the chute with drunk joe mccarthy, his despicable sidekick roy cohn, and his venal ‘red scares’ that broke innocent people and destroyed families. Next up we had tricky dick nixon, that paranoidal megalomaniac of lies and more lies, not to mention Watergate criminality. Followed by dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks ronnie r and his nasty racist misogynist 'welfare queen' lying nonsense. Then of course there were the two rampantly corrupt, stupid bushies, with w breaking all records for number of days for a president to be falling down drunk while simultaneously starting multiple forever wars. Which leads us inevitably and absurdly to the orange menace, ALSO an acolyte of said creepy roy cohn and yet another gqp paranoidal megalomaniac of lies and more lies. So, how’s that again — you want to ‘resurrect’ THAT?? Let it die and save us all the trouble of drowning it in a bathtub. Time to start over and try to be human beings.
I Understand your frustration. I am not saying to try and resurrect the past, but let the voters define integrity and then hold the elected officials to it. There is a lot more than what I wrote here and I am covering it in my Substack series "A View Froth Chap seats, Fixing our Political Parties". I invite you to take a look at theories and comment on what I write.
Many thanks Steven for elaborating "Personal Integrity." You have indeed thought a lot about it. I will keep this note and thanks again. With my warm wishes to you.
Thank you for you questions and challenges. This is what makes America Strong.
Here's what I know for sure: It will take more than one POTUS in 2028 to fix the damage being done now. The damage being done is catastrophic. We haven't even felt the full force of it hit yet. It will take generations to repair.
This is the core truth here. As the old saying goes, it's a hell of a lot easier to burn down a barn than it is to build one. The Republicans have well and truly burned down the barn.
To rebuild a complex rules-based society--especially one that has been strategically polarized by a handful of arrogant billionaires who own, among many other things, a vast apparatus of propaganda and are willing to use it to incite chaos, division and even mass violence--will require generations: or more.
Agreed. The New Deal didn't fix things overnight. It was long work with eyes on the next generation.
I would have included getting rid of Citizens United.
That is already included: "... imposing strict campaign finance rules (let a new Supreme Court revisit Citizens United)..."
The whole election cycle and structure must be revamped ( maybe start over?). I am so sick of the perpetual call for money and the never ending rant for vote for me. Stop, please! Give us a break! Do your work to show us what you can do. Actions speak louder than words. Funding elections differently should be upfront. Limits on time for “running” for office.
And DHS
Brilliant column. The next POTUS has to have an extraordinary team. What we need is everyone, everywhere, doing this rebuilding project from the ground up.
Finally, someone providing "the concepts of a plan" to rectify the problems we are facing. Who would have thought we'd need to write laws about how to act & behave as a government & country. I guess all that religion & return to "values" that Republicans have droned on about isn't working.
Thanks for the roadmap. An entity can't change without a guide book/plan/roadmap. This is a great beginning. Thinkers actually thinking!!!
Remember Jack Smith testifies publicly today at 10 before House Judiciary Committee.
I'll have to wait to read a transcript because I can't abide Jim Jordan.
Like fingernails on a chalkboard
This is a great start, but I say let's write the Democratic Platform right here on Substack. We know how Trump operates. In his first term he simply looked at whatever Obama had accomplished, and tried his best to wreck it. So the roadmap is, whatever Trump did or stood for, we push back against. Let's get the Contrarians, Katie Phang, Joyce Vance, Marc Elias, Pete Buttigieg et al. to write the Democratic Platform for all candidates. And overturning Citizens United is a good place to start.
I’m sure I will sound like a broken record by 2028, but I believe we can move on from the disgrace and disaster of the Trump regime ONLY if the US creates a South Africa-style “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” to weigh the gravity of each and all the crimes and corruption Trump and his MAGA brigades have inflicted on the USA. Democrats are naturally prone to shy from making MAGA cultists angry, but that’s too bad for the angry MAGA cultists. With no accountability—including severe fines and criminal prosecutions—there can be no trust moving forward. Slaps on the wrist and “tsk, tsks” will NOT suffice.
Well, maybe letting the legal system do what it does will work! The lower federal courts have mostly held the line.
This whole regime will be up against a lot of criminal charges and civil lawsuits the moment they are out of office.
A copy of this needs to go to every candidate!!! They should sign on to do their best to accomplish these challenging feats!
age limit and term in ALL government arms....
Yes, personal integrity is a must, but we also need to eliminate the excessive cost of electing candidates! This tends to mean that only the already wealthy can run for office and the party that spends the most gets elected.
Yes. Limited campaign seasons would help do this. No media ads, no campaign rallies more than six months before election day, e.g. Of course this will be opposed by those who make money from the campaigns, and by some candidates. But we need to find a way to end our excessively long and costly campaigns.
We need candidates with a track record of public service.
Great column. We need to remember that POTUS will not be able to do this alone. All of us need to pay as much attention to our vote for senators and representatives. Actually every vote down ticket. Voting is our voice. We need to take the time to try to break through all of the sound bites and biases current journalism throws at us. It is a daunting but necessary task.
Yes, Democrats need to be working from the ground up, starting with local elections - mayors, city councils, boards of supervisors, state offices - I’ve heard Democrats ignored the states and judging by how many state houses are held by Republicans it seems true. Then you have to get into election reform, which is part of how we got here. Do away with closed primaries, switch to ranked choice voting and redistricting by independent commissions.
Off topic but: could ICE agents be charged with breaking and entering with their “warrantless” actions in Minneapolis? And kidnapping as in the case of the 5 year old used as bait? Stillwater, MN here
Good point. No more of this "let's sing kumbaya and move forward together"...and that is exactly what we would get from some of the ambitious Dems with mics. Lack of accountability has put us where we are.
This is important not only for a presidential run. We need leaders, no matter what office they run for to outline a better America for the people.
But I think all these potential leaders need to work together. I think Pete Buttigieg is getting out, listening to people, and outlining a future America. But it feels too isolated, especially since he doesn't hold an office. I would like to see some group effort - because that is what it is going to take. It also gives more hope because the only way we are going to accomplish these efforts if it looks like there is a big enough coalition to actually have power in Congress and in states.
I hope you will run for president. Best thinking ever on this question.