1) The mortgage crisis
The crisis in home foreclosure and subprime mortgages continues to plague families across the country and harm economic growth. The New York Times noted the damage on Monday:
The housing bust is in the downward spiral of price declines and foreclosures. Single-family-home prices dropped 7.6 percent from the first quarter of 2007 through the first quarter of 2008, the largest year-over-year decline since the National Association of Realtors began reporting prices in 1982. Conservatively estimated, 2.2 million homes will enter foreclosure this year. An additional nine million homeowners – those with zero or negative equity – are considered at high risk of default because they have no cushion if recession or inflation, or both, make it impossible for them to keep current on their mortgages.
John McCain has rejected an “activist” approach on the housing crisis, allowing only those who “can prove creditworthiness” to receive aid, while Barack Obama while proposed a more expansive program to relieve those who may default on their loans and also prevent mortgage fraud in the future. The approaches of the candidates demonstrate not only show major differences on this particular issues, but about their philosophies about government and the economy generally.
2) America’s energy-environmental crisis
The United States has a fundamental problem with its dependence on oil for transportation and coal power in our homes, which emit greenhouses gases that create global warming and leave the U.S. vulnerable to oil shocks and the whim of terrorists and dictators abroad. Barack Obama and John McCain have each promoted the use of a “cap and trade” system to regulate greenhouse gases, but Obama’s plan is more stringent and is joined with a more robust package for increasing automobile fuel efficiency and investing in $150 billion in “clean energy technologies.” Whose plans will quickly and comprehensively allow the U.S. to move towards cleaner energy technologies?
3) Iraq
The U.S. has been now actively engaged in the Iraq War for over 5 years, the majority of those years as part of an occupation in the midst of a Sunni-Shiite civil war. Barack Obama has proposed that we withdraw all our combat brigades from Iraq within 16 months of his election, while promoting funding for humanitarian relief and and regional diplomacy to end the civil war. John McCain proposes no deescalation of the conflict until 2013 and believes the U.S. can only declare victory when we “establish a stable, prosperous, and democratic state in Iraq that poses no threat to its neighbors and contributes to the defeat of terrorists.” In other words, Obama offers a way out while McCain insists that “victory” is achievable and that the U.S. should occupy the country until that can occur.
Race and gender are important topics and themes which scholars and journalists must continue to probe should we wish to improve justice and understanding within our society. But there are also important economic, environmental, and foreign policy challenges that cut across the divisions that so many people have dwelled upon lately. Democrats will win in 2008 if they keep the discussion on the issues above and other substantive, material issues, rather than the character and identity tropes that the media prefers to talk about because Obama and the Democrats offer approaches that are more effective and more popular. Reality is a troublesome thing for the Republicans right now and progressives should unite and capitalize on that.
Cross-posted at http://politicaldissonance.blo…
when people show they still have brain cells!
Ross Perot didn’t win on the issues even though he shold have.