If I were Younger I Would Run for President.

Anyone can do it now, and my platform would be simple: Do the right thing.

Photo by Nils Huenerfuerst on Unsplash

If I were younger, I would run for high office—a Rep or a Senator or maybe even President. But I’m not young. According to everyone who works to get Democrats elected, I’m too old now to run for anything. But if I could, okay, I’ll just say it: I would run for president.

It’s the ultimate, right? And apparently anyone can do it.

I would run as a proud Bambi-loving liberal whose first action would be to take down the Trump regime and everyone associated with him in any way that works without resorting to actual crimes.

I would run on my experience as a long-time America-lover who believes in responsible big government and our need to restore humanity, dignity, and a promise of well-being to everyone, including and especially all who are struggling.

I would push for real change going far beyond commiseration and promises. I would demand immediate action:

• A much, much, much higher minimum wage. What could be more shameful than a measly $7.25 an hour when we’re courting billionaires now instead of just millionaires? For a start, I would push for $25 an hour for corporations, $15 an hour for small businesses, with annual raises as the economy picks up.

• I would declare hands off of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Everyone should know by now they are legitimate, long-standing government programs that require our protection. There are no arguments good enough to end them or even to water them down. I would demand that we remove all caps from SS. That would end the argument that it will ever run out of funds. I would work toward Medicare for All and tell the insurance companies and any other blood-sucking ‘providers’, including pharmaceutical companies, that their expectations of making obscene profits off of sick people are about to become pipe dreams.

• Welfare for the rich would come to a screeching halt. My administration would not tolerate giveaways to the wealthiest among us. They WILL pay their fair share of taxes, they WILL give back, they will NOT get away with bribing public servants in order to keep cozy their vast fortunes. They will no longer be able to ‘donate’ millions of dollars to political campaigns. They will become nothing more than citizens. No privileges, no special favors, no bribes. They will come to know the meaning of ‘equality’.

• I would back unions and labor advocates 100 percent. They would have a seat at every table. My Labor Secretary would come from labor.

• I would protect public schools with all my might. Public funds would not go to private schools. My Education Secretary would have an education background.

• I would fund and secure public media services and bring back a form of the Fairness Doctrine. I would personally call out every attempt to bamboozle and disenfranchise the public, and I would insist that every public servant does the same. No tolerance for misinformation, disinformation, or malinformation.

• I would end the abuses of for-profit prisons by abolishing for-profit prisons.

• I would protect religions just as I would protect any other legitimate organization, but religion as a part of government would be off the table.

• I would protect the rights of advocacy groups like Planned Parenthood, the NAACP, and the ACLU, and tax any ‘church’ that advocates hate or exclusion.

• I would restore, secure, and extend every necessary department the Republicans have so casually discarded in the name of deregulation and profit and hire back the people who were fired for doing their jobs.

• I would ram regulations down the throats of those who demand deregulation, just as they rammed greed down ours. I would stop expecting goodness and mercy of people who have none. I would find the good and the merciful to lead us.

• I would secure our borders without terrorizing, without kidnapping, and without ICE.

• I would back candidates and elected officials who promise to work toward protecting our society, as well as our public lands. They would have to show they’ve already been working to protect our citizens and our lands. They would have to be for clean air and clean water. They would have to have clean hands. (No outlaws)

• I would keep the outlaws out by strengthening our laws, demanding they work the way they’re supposed to. If the outlaws have broken the law they must pay the price, no matter who they are. There will no longer be degrees of corruption. All corruption will be challenged and squashed.

• I would insist on due process in every single case, citizens or non-citizens alike.

• My administration’s core principles would be based on Lincoln’s poignant ‘Of the people, by the people, and for the people’. Everyone would have a copy of the Constitution.

• I would listen. I would expect everyone around me to listen, not just to those with power—we’ve heard enough from them—but to those without. The focus will be on the silenced, the misunderstood, and the needy. They’ve been waiting long enough. And then, instead of just thanking them for their time, my administration would move. We would give them priority. We would get them what they need.

• Once I had my administration in place I would tell the world there’s a new sheriff in town. And together we civilized nations would restore what we’ve lost by taking back our formidable power and living up to the promises we’d made in order to get where we are.

The clean-up would be amazing. Shades of FDR in the 1930s. Regulations galore! Laws working as laws again and not just wishful suggestions. Government working as it was meant to work. No excuses. No delays. No giving in to lies, no backing down from those who work to hold us hostage with what they see as the higher power of the privileged.

Shades of wartime efforts in the 1940s. Shared sacrifices for the common good. A national coming-together to right wrongs and build a nation worthy of our respect and admiration. A nation that works for US.

It might seem like a huge project, but it wouldn’t be nearly as hard as having to live the way we’re living now. Doing the right thing takes courage, takes muscle, takes heart. We have those things in us, just waiting for the right time to haul them out and put them to use. This is the right time.

I can’t run, obviously, but I’ll back anyone who wants to latch onto my platform and do what I would do if I could.

Looking for takers.

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I almost forgot that I wrote this piece in 2019, when Trump was ‘president’ the first time. No, I’m still not going to run, but thinking about it seems to be a pattern with me.

Ramona's Voices: I Would Make a Better President Than Donald Trump

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