Nix the Six

Last week the Democratic Party unveiled its campaign plan for this year’s election. There’s nothing like a little foresight and planning, but no one’s going to accuse the Democrats of looking too far into the future. One would think that they could have come up with a plan before now. There are only four months left until the November elections, you know. As for the plan itself, it goes something like this:

• National Security
• Jobs and Wages
• Energy independence
• Affordable healthcare
• Retirement security
• College access for all

Actually, that’s it. That’s the entire plan. There’s nothing more and there’s no explanation other than this is their campaign plan. It doesn’t seem like a whole lot to unveil this close to election time especially when I can’t even tell what it actually means. They don’t actually make any kind of statement about what they plan to do about any of these subjects. In fact they don’t even state what needs to be done. We, the voters are just left with the vague sense that something must be wrong and the Democratic Party plans to do something about it. Just don’t ask them what exactly they plan to do.

We can make a few assumptions about several of the six items. For example, we can be pretty sure that energy independence means not purchasing oil from foreign countries and that affordable healthcare means cheaper prices. Of course how those things will actually be accomplished is still a mystery. The rest of the items are a bit harder to decipher; just what exactly does the phrase “national security” really mean as a campaign plan? Do they want to increase it, decrease it, change it, or perhaps re-name it? We could just continue to assume, presume, and theorize, but that wouldn’t really tell us anything about what the Democrats are planning. It would only tell us what we think the issues at hand might be.

Ultimately, there are no details, no answers, and no real purpose behind the list other than make us think there might be answers. If there really were a workable plan, they would have told us already. Actually, if there were really a workable plan for any of these things, they would probably have already been implemented. The key word in all of this is “workable”. If the plan is not workable then it’s not much of a plan, and there’s nothing workable about the statement “retirement security”.

So what do we have in this plan that has been unveiled? Well, we’ve got a list of abstract thoughts with no substance or significance behind them. What we have is nothing more than a list of thoughts designed to make people think that the Democrats actually have a plan when in fact they have nothing new to share.

They’re going to have to work a little harder to get my vote. They could start by coming up with a plan.

Date Added: 31-07-2006