Our Platform

Propositions for Rebranding

In our opinion rural Democrats need to make significant aesthetical changes to regain some semblance of appealing to rural voters. It is our opinion that Democrats don't need to really change their platform but more or less change the way they propose their policies. Our beliefs for rebranding are as follows:

• Focus on economic populism. Use Democratic beliefs in expanding the welfare state as a means to appeal to working class voters across America.

• Use Republican statements against them. When talking about gun control you will often find a Republicans who says something like, "Guns are not the problem, people are." This is a statement we agree with. We are not coming for your guns, we are trying to prevent people who are problematic from owning guns.

• Call out the Republicans for what they are, elitists. Republicans for year have been calling Democrats intellectual and liberal elitists. We have done little to counter this. The best way we can undo this branding is by projecting it onto Republicans. Republicans have been cutting welfare for everyday citizens for decades and are obviously out just for the wealthy elite, which many of them are. We cannot be afraid of calling out elitism in our opponents.

• Oppose intellectual and political elitism in our party. Many Democratic nominees this year in very red district have been what is known as "resisters." Resisters are staunchly anti-Trump and anti-populist Democrats. They are typically older, upper class, and suburban voters. This group does not appeal at all to rural voters. They often use openly classist attacks against Republicans, often seeing rural voters as uneducated and poor. Many of these resisters attack their Republicans opponents for things like never holding a political position or never going to college, attacks which come off as blatantly elitist. Rural voters want outsiders to shake up the system, they don't want to vote for the guy who campaigns that he is openly establishment.

Policy Platform

HEALTHCARE

• Promoting the expansion of healthcare through either a public option, or singe-payer.

• Expand efforts to remove expired, unused, or unwanted prescription drugs from the public.

• Invest in mobile health clinics and telehealth for rural Americans to ensure adequate access to healthcare.

• Expand access and training for Naloxone (Narcan) training.

• Address hospital consolidation which has taken thousands of jobs, billions in economic growth, and thousands of lives because of a lack of access to quality healthcare in rural America.

• Expand Medicaid in every state

• All medicine essential to survive should be affordable, price caps & controls for drugs like insulin are a must

• Reopen rural hospitals

• Expand federal funding for medical research, especially for ways to treat mental health and combat substance use

• Remove employment as a requirement to get health insurance (public or private)

GUN CONTROL

• Support moderate and sensible gun control based off of preventing unstable people from owning firearms rather than taking away weapons from law abiding everyday citizens.

• Support the GRAM (Gun Rights And Marijuana) Act as a way to protect our constitutional right to own firearms from being taken away by past convictions for marijuana position.

• Expand efforts to get illegal guns off the streets.

RURAL, ENVIROMENTAL, AND AGRICULTURAL ISSUES

• Increasing funding for the Department of Agriculture and reforming subsidies for farms to prevent monopolization of benefits by larger produce corporations.

• Promise the protection of the Department of the Interior from people who want privatize national park land and tax national park property.

• Ensure the safe operation of the EPA to protect the rural environment and to prevent corporations from causing pollution which directly harms rural residents.

• Improve the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), including increasing annual volumes for biodiesel and advanced biofuels and securing implementation of a mechanism for EPA to account for actual RFS volumes waived through Small Refinery Exemptions (SREs)

• Research and development of technologies to produce additional renewable energy products from soybean sources.

• Support a farmers bill of rights.

• Reform the USDA's Risk Management Agency by negotiating with insurance companies directly to lower premiums for farmers.

• Strengthen oversight on income support commodity programs, which have favored large agribusiness over family farmers for decades.

• Break up agricultural monopolies.

• Mandate use of off-farm manure storage for CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) because they are a environmental hazard and a health hazard.

• Double and make permanent the biofuel tax credit.

• Extend full labor rights to farm workers.

• Create new ecosystem restoration programs

• Harsher pollution standards

• Expand the EPAs budget for superfund clean ups

• Promote the creation of new affordable public transit options

INFRESTRUCTURE

• Government funding of rural broadband to ensure every American has access to high speed internet for work and schooling.

• A new Eisenhower Project to repair and expand America's rural infrastructure to smooth out the rural supply chain and to make it easier for rural residents to travel in short time.

• Increase the federal component of the cost-share ratio of Inland Waterways Trust Fund projects to further accelerate timeframe for completion of upgraded locks on inland waterways.

• Modernize our sanitation systems.

• Modernize our electrical grid to lower energy usage and lower costs across the board.

• Pass a infrastructure spending bill of at least $2 trillion

EDUCATION

• Increasing funding for the Department of Education to ensure that every child has the opportunity to get an education.

• Grantee equitable public education funding so we can make sure our rural schools get the funds they need to give children a safe and quality education.

• Universal, high quality preschool programs.

• Community collage and trade schools should be free.

• Modernize K-12 curriculum

• Increase funding for disabled students

• Make urgent repairs to our schools

• Cap class sizes

• Fair pay for teachers

TAXATION AND THE ECONOMY

• No tax write-offs for moving jobs overseas.

• End business expense deductions for advertising tobacco, alcohol, and potentially addictive prescription drugs. No company should be profiting off the misery of working people.

• Ban predatory lending so that people can actually pay back the loans they take out while people who provide nothing to rural and inner city communities suck out what little wealth is left.

• Expand the SBAs (Small Business Administrations) Small Business Development Center Program.

• Eliminate property tax exemptions for multinational companies

• 100% tax deductible union dues

• Clean jobs training program

ORGONIZED LABOR

• Ensure the right for rural workers to unionize and repeal certain "right to work" laws which unfairly weaken unions.

• Ban noncompete and nonpoaching agreements in contracts which are designed to hurt workers for the benefit of the corporate class.

• Prosecute those that participate in wage theft.

• Hold executives personally accountable for interfering with organizing efforts and violating labor laws.

• Blacklist companies who engage in union subverting activities from future federal contracts.

• Double the number of OSHA investigators to enforce the law and existing standards.

• Ban permanent strike replacements.

FIGHTING POVERTY

• Expand SNAP to include hot meals. No person should be punished for being poor.

• Establish a task force to end poverty so that all government and non government organizations are on the same page.

• Enact new public works projects to build up infrastructure, public institutions, energy efficiency, and socially beneficial industries to create jobs in downtrodden communities. This will lower the cost of living, and prevent future poverty by putting money in the hands of those who need it most.

• Create new investments in affordable housing.

• Extend housing and financial assistance for young renters so that poverty doesn't become generational.

• Universal free childcare

• Invest more in communities in the Mississippi River Delta and Appalachia so that no American lives in poverty

TRADE

• Support the Eliminating Global Market Distortions to Protect American Jobs Act. This will reform our system of enforcing trade deals to actually make them fair for everyone.

• Bring small business, consumer groups, and labor unions to the table when discussing trade deals.

• Prohibit currency manipulation in global trade agreements.

• Require robust rules of origin.

• Buy clean, buy America program to use the governments considerable purchasing power to incentivize the market to produce more energy efficient products and to make them in America