If you had to focus on three issues important to the Democratic Party...?
What would they be?
I notice that when I read the postings in DU, we are scattered all over the place. Nothing seems to have priority over anything else. Perhaps it is just my impression?
But do we need to be more focused on important issues, rather than gossip and personal attacks?
Just an observation.
For example, I think we should be united against the TPP and the Keystone XL pipeline. Also, I think we should spend more time on income inequality and tax reform. I understand that there are many problems in the world but sometimes we need to prioritize, don't you think?
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"issues important to Democratic voters" should be the question. Which should in turn inform the party platform, rather than the interests of corporate donors.
And the major issues:
1) Climate change. This has significant consequences for a lot of other things; our current fossil-fuel-based economy is basically incompatible with doing anything whatever about climate change, and needs to be changed; our current growth-based economic model is totally incompatible with getting off of fossil fuels; climate change has other significant implications in things such as food security (because of drought and desertification) and in the sustainability of communities in the American southwest and water security more broadly (look at what's been going on with the southwestern drought, the decline in flow of the Colorado River, the decrease in snowpack in the Sierra Nevadas and Rockies, the decline in water levels in Lakes Mead and Powell, et cetera); see also the decline in groundwater across much of the southwestern US, and the frankly insane use of substantial quantities of water for fracking in drought conditions (which goes back to reducing/eliminating fossil fuel dependence).
2) Income inequality and corporate dominance which are as bad or worse than they were in the Gilded Age of the 1880's-1890's (it was the inequalities and economic instabilities of that era that gave rise to things like the Sherman Antitrust Act and income tax and the American labour movement).
3) Reining in American militarism and the rise of the security state, from the use of drones in Pakistan to the mass surveillance of online communications to bloated military budgets (the modern USA is getting to the point of being not dissimilar to Imperial Germany, of which it was said that it was "an army with a country"
.
I doubt you'll get universal agreement on 3 issues...so you can't get a focus on a limited number. Besides the above I would include at least the following, so I would be in the group of scattered DUers!
-Control the people who can possess or use guns.
-Encourage sustainable energy/protect the environment.
-Ratify the ERA.
-Provide free public education from preschool up to a 4 year college degree for everyone (including the unemployed).
-Protect collective bargaining and union membership universally.
-Health care for all (Medicare, single-payer, whatever).
-A progressive tax system that doesn't exempt the rich.
-A path to citizenship for immigrants; and amnesty for those already here.
-Prosecute Americans for torture and other human rights violations.
-Have public regulator check the air pressure in footballs before every game. 
