If what I'm about to describe already exists, please let me know in the comments, but I haven't seen one yet, so here goes:
You and I are aware that when the middle class does well, everybody else does well, too. And yet, there are millions of middle-class Americans who are fooled into thinking that they should vote Republican, because Republicans will bring about tax cuts. Republicans do bring about tax cuts, but they benefit the already-wealthy instead of the vast majority of Americans. That's just one example of the mindset we need to change.
So let's make a not-obviously-partisan Web site, and let the facts speak for themselves on the issues where the Progressive point of view brings about big wins for the average consumer. I don't want a news site, but rather something that relies on national news, the more non-partisan, the better. Here's an example:
- Title: new consumer protections in the Credit CARD Act of 2009
- Date
- Description: here we write a paragraph or five about how the middle class benefits from the Credit CARD act
- Championed by: here we list the names of the Congresspeople who sponsored, wrote, and fought for the bill / cause. We include a mini-chart of their political affiliations. Most of the time, I suspect it will be largely blue.
- News sources: here we list all of the most prominent, non-partisan news sources we can find about the given story. However, it may behoove us to also link to both MSNBC and FoxNews.com in all cases. Believe it or not, the web site for FoxNews is not as hyperbolic or vile as the TV version and you can find some non-radioactive reporting on that site. In my experience, I usually find the least offensive stuff in their Blogs area. Your mileage may vary.
- Tags: tag everything relevant, of course, but always include tags for demographics that represent sub-groups of the middle class. For example: soldiers, nurses, plumbers...
Over time, we can collect information for different audiences, information for people in different states, or people with special causes, e.g. reforming copyright law.
And over time, we can develop a sidebar that includes, among other things, a "bubbled-up" version of the mini-graphs from each entry, so a person can:
- see at a glance that Democratic ideas are usually better at helping the middle class
- drill down to a specific issue if they want more facts
The thing is, we all want to re-elect good Democrats and replace Republicans with better Democrats, but we don't have a go-to site for proof that our platform works better for the middle class.
The site will not collect any revenue. It won't be funded by anybody. It will simply report independently-verifiable facts (hence the need for multiple news sources per story) and illustrate clearly why voting Democratic is better for the middle class, and the frequent reminder that when the middle class does well, everybody else does well.
And here's the fun part:
Each success story will have its own URL / permalink, so anybody who wants to can "donate" by creating a Google Adwords campaign pointing to the story of their choice. Personally I'd focus on credit cards, so as an example:
Consumers protected from hikes Senators fought hard to prevent random interest rate hikes. Find out who pro-middleclass.com
(I haven't decided on a domain name.)
Are there resources like this already in existence? Could they be better? Should I get busy building this?
Tweak my idea all you want in the comments: