I worry the study from UW will tank this via the $15 minimum wage. I can't count the number of people who are now pointing to that study as PROOF that the minimum wage is a disaster for workers, completely ignoring questions over methodology, or that it runs contrary to every other minimum wage study.
But I can guarantee that by keeping the $15 an hour wage in the platform Faux news and every other conservative media outlet will do nothing but focus on that $15 plank and scream how Democrats are ignoring the evidence. Everything else will be lost in the din.

Skills, Jobs, Wages
J
W

Bit of a dog-whistle there eh?

@2 only to shitheads like you

I thought this was racist?

This agenda is pretty pathetic. No universal healthcare. No free tuition. Some vague plan for "$1 trillion in infrastructure." The same thing trump said. What about high speed rail?

Basically the message is that even if you vote for them, they won't change anything. This guys all need to get primaried.

Letting medicare negotiate drug pricing is important, but it's so basic it's kind of insane the program didn't operate that way from the beginning.

@5: there are no free backrubs either. pretty pathetic.

for me, all the platform needs is a picture of the president and the caption "we'll stop the crazy train".

It would be a hell of a lot better actually if the dropped all of the 'betters' from the slogan. Much cleaner.

Also, don't better skills pretty much translate to better wages to begin with? Shit's redundant, yo.

@8- ".. don't better skills pretty much translate to better wages to begin with?"

Three decades ago, maybe.

It's a good slogan, but an unambitious agenda.

Nothing wrong with the message. For most Americans, those are the issues on their minds when they vote; most other issues slip away then. I just think the slogan could be a little more forceful.

Anyway, who cares if the elites hate it. Or the "more PC than thou" alt-left (the so-called progressives). They're not the majority of American voters, which is the target audience after all.

So this is what nine months of working on a coherent message for the party gets you.

Eight years of losing governorships, state houses, and congressional seats, recently losing the White House and likely unable to stop the Supreme Court being made quite conservative in the near future. According to the FEC, the DNC are about 3.3 million in debt, and they stole their new slogan from a shitty pizza chain.

Is the Democratic party dying? Progressives may want to look into seriously starting their own party.

@5:

The voters to whom I presume this would be targeted don't really give a shit about most of those issues; even "universal healthcare" is a non-starter in the heartland, because SOCIALMALISM! Free college tuition? That's just going to let the kid of some dirt-poor Pennsylvania coal miner or Kentucky tobacco farmer move away from podunk Ruraltown and head straight to the big city. Plus it would mean edjumacating teh Browns and we cain't have that, no sir. High speed rail? yeah, because we're totes gonna hook up Moses Lake or Walla Walla with a HSR line to get to Seahawks games in an hour? That's about the only use it would have to the salt-of-the-earth types in the hinterlands. Hell, just look at the party's 2016 platform; much of this was already articulated in there, and yet an awful lot of rust and bible-belters apparently didn't agree with it, so why would you think they'd agree with it now?

Basically, you conflate issues important to YOU as a relatively affluent (by the standards of rural 'Murka) urbanite with issues important to people who are very much not like you who really only want to turn back the clock to the middle of the last Century, when jobs in resource extraction or heavy industry ruled their rural enclaves, people knew their place (and for everyone except White male adults that meant below the top of the ladder), and belief in the Christian God dictated laws and morality.

@11:

Progressives have been trying to do just that for decades, and all they've got to show for it is the Green Party, so you can see how well that's been working out for them.

"Universal Healthcare! Basic Minimum Income! Free Tuition! Freedom from Poverty... for ALL Americans!"

How about that as a slogan? It's not like the "richest country in history" couldn't afford all of those things and more. Mexico has free University tuition.

Or: Reduce Healthcare costs for ALL! Universal Healthcare!

Or how about: 90% income tax on all Corporations!
You know, like it was in the '50s and '60s.

Or, you know: End Mass Incarceration!

Although then they'd actually have to do something about all those, instead of just lying about it like DJT does. But of course they probably wouldn't. Or they'd try a little, and not achieve anything. Because their rich, wealthy, and very rich corporate donors would be kinda mad about it. You know, can't bite the hand that feeds you.

With the empire in decline, and 45 putting his leaden foot on the accelerator, we might as well ask only for free Mandarin lessons for all, and hope for the best.

Guess I'm just a coastal elite with socialisticisness tendencies... :>(

I dunno, I think this "America" project is kinda doomed.

George Lakoff says that "people vote their values"
The Dems need to articulate positive values... Although since i don't trust them, I can't really offer anything that would sound halfway believable for them to spout.

Welcome to the New Dark Ages...

@12:

You are just listing off a bunch of stereotypes of poor rural whites.

Historically working class whites were the primary supporters of unions and "socialist" new deal policies.

Over time the Democratic Party has aligned itself with wealthy donors and abandoned economic policies meant to benefit the poor and unions. Unsurprisingly, the Democratic party's old base has abandoned them.

Today we have two parties, one economically conservative and socially liberal, and one economically conservative and socially conservative. Even Obamacare was from a conservative think tank.

@18:

Yes, traditionally that was the case, because both unionism and socialism initially appealed almost exclusively to whites at the exclusion of people of color. Samuel Gompers, an avouched capitalist and anti-socialist, formed the AFL in large part as a hedgerow to protect White workers from being supplanted by the large influx of southern blacks immigrating to the northern industrial belt in the post-Civil War era, and of Chinese laborers being brought to the west coast. At the time, the Democratic Party did not exist in its current incarnation, and was seen - at least until the ascension of FDR - as the party of small government, and self-identified as "the white man's party". So, yes, it is possible for a rural white American to be BOTH a supporter of unions AND racially biased, because that's been the history up until only very recently.

"Even Obamacare was from a conservative think tank". Yes, and look how heartily that "conservative" idea has been embraced by conservative voters. Populism has taken many forms over the history of this country, sometimes it's had a progressive bent, ala the Bull Moose Party & the New Deal; and sometimes, like now, it's taken a decidedly reactionary turn.

As for your "definition" of the two parties, you still manage, albeit perhaps inadvertently, to point out a glaring difference between the two. Personally, if that is in fact the choice, I would gladly take "economically conservative and socially liberal" over "economically conservative and socially conservative" in a New York second.

@13: So you are saying that progressives are bumbling morons who can only hope to achieve any sort of "power" by hitching their wagon to a floundering, out of touch, corporate-aligned DNC?

That doesn't bode well. Seems a poor strategy, but let's see how the next seven years goes.

I often wonder if the idiots predicting the death of the Democratic party now are the same idiots who predicted the death of the Republican party when Obama was elected.

@21: I doubt the party will "die" so to speak, but it seems to me that actual progressives and their values do not really line up with the DNC any longer, other than being the best possible chance to get someone who is not a republican elected president, a role in which they failed at spectacularly this time around.

That being said, the DNC is in a much worse place than the RNC was when Obama won his two terms, in terms of viable candidates, funding, and power in state houses, congress, and state governorships.