Kristoffer said:
I can't remember his name or the name of his organization but there's a guy who's trying to organize what's essentially a presidential election... during the midterms. He's going to run 400 similar candidates at the same time all across the country on the same progressive platform Sanders is running on. And he wants to give it the same attention that a presidential campaign would have, with the same kind of donations and the same kind of energy.
In my opinion, that's very smart! There's all this underutilized energy right now in the Democratic party which needs to be realized during the midterms. My only issue: if he's running 400 candidates, then that means he either needs to run against Democrats during the general or he needs to run them during the primary. If he runs against Democrats, that's doomed to fail. If he runs during the primary, then they become Democrats... and are more or less trapped into the cycle of Democratic politics.
It's an interesting idea but the moment there are differences among the candidates, you might as well just call it a party.
You could probably put together a boilerplate platform with familiar rallying calls (against Citizens United, new Glass-Stegall act, VRA reauthorization/amendment, $15 min wage etc.) but that's not really much different from what we have now. You could either have them get super specific on each and every issue at the expense of shutting certain potential supporters out, or the issues you do address are so broad that it's practically meaningless. Maybe something like a second Bill of Rights including healthcare, housing, college etc. that liberals love talking about so much?
But if Bernie decided to use his fundraising apparatus to prop up candidates across the country in state legislative races, city councils, even Congress, hell yeah I could support that as long as his voters are willing to stay engaged. I'm a bit more cynical than that though.