Maybe this is a sign that Arkansas Democrats are finally catching up in terms of technology. AR-03 candidate, Iraq War vet Ken Aden, launched a new and improved website today and he just put an ActBlue Page up. The issues section has some great information on it, and judging from the amount of it I don’t think anyone is ever going to be able of accusing Aden of not answering questions. What’s more, the stuff he’s actually campaigning on is a really great platform. A few examples:
Ken will oppose any attempts to privatize Medicare and Social Security—period. He believes we must honor our commitment made to senior citizens with these programs and will oppose any effort to dismantle the programs or cut benefits to existing program participants.
Ken is a strong advocate for paying off debt and not expanding spending when times are good. However, when we have almost 13 million people in this country unemployed, it’s time to take decisive action to get the economy moving again. There are two basic truths about the US economy that few in Washington are addressing when talking about recovery. The first is that budget cuts will hurt employment, not help. When you fire teachers, police officer and firefighters, those people now draw unemployment (which adds to our spending) and their income is pulled out of the economies of our communities. It’s just the wrong thing to do when the economy is so weak and it sacrifices our security and the future of our children.
The other basic truth is that the only way to really fix our deficit and grow our tax base isn’t by asking the middle class to pay more, it’s by growing the economy. We can’t do that until business begins hiring and that won’t happen until there is strong demand for products and services. Just as in the Depression, that demand should come from the government and tax cuts won’t work. We need spending and the half measures we’ve employed so far never went far enough because they were based on politics, not economics.
Ken believes that America must become energy independent. He believes that green and renewable energy is key to that—and that Northwest Arkansas is uniquely situated to become a leader in helping our country achieve energy independence.
As our next member of Congress, Ken will work to increase tax credits for businesses that develop renewable energy technologies. He’ll also make sure that those tax credits aren’t just for Fortune 500 companies because he believes Main Street can and should play as big of a role in helping America achieve energy independence as Wall Street.
Ken supports strengthening programs to help veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan re-enter the workforce and supports offering tax credits to businesses that hire unemployed veterans.
Ken supports bringing a VA Community Based Outpatient Clinic to Bentonville to serve residents in Bentonville and far Northwest Arkansas that presently must travel to Fayetteville to visit a VA primary care physician.
In terms of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Ken believes that we must continue to draw-down forces in these regions and bring American soldiers home and continue our efforts with smaller, more specialized military forces better suited to fighting the war on terror.
This is good stuff I would be thrilled to hear from any Democratic candidate. One of the worst things about the Democratic Party is that more often than not our candidates in tough districts, many far more winnable than the 3rd, think that the best way to win is by saying as little as possible or by trying to sound like the Republicans and hoping that voters are stupid enough to buy it. That kind of nonsense has cost us far more than it has helped us, and if a Democrat in the toughest district of the state is throwing it out the window it may be a good sign for the future, especially if he outperforms previous Democratic candidates in the third while doing so.
At some point, when time allows, Ken has agreed to a sit down interview. My life is pretty hectic at the moment so that may be a little while before I can squeeze him in, but I always love to see a candidate jumping at the bit to talk to people. The more we see of this guy, the more it becomes apparent that he’s not just a candidate that looks good on paper, he has real substance to back it up with. Again, I doubt the third would be winnable even if we ran Jesus Christ as a Democrat, this year that is. Our party’s future in this state though hinges on us performing better in that corner of Arkansas. If Ken does better than previous candidates, then he’ll have shown Democrats how to win more voters in the district. And if we improve on that performance steadily, cycle over cycle, the day that the changing demographics in the third make it winnable for us won’t slip by us. Personally, I don’t think we could have found a better face to put on that effort than Ken Aden’s.
