Justice Democrats is a progressive political action committee that was founded in January 2017, the group was co-founded by Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks and Kyle Kulinski of Secular Talk, along with former leadership officials of Bernie Sanders' 2016 Presidential campaign. Justice Democrats political ideology is easily summed up within a few bullet points:
- Implementation of a living wage and tying it to inflation/$15/hr.
- Free and Fair Elections/getting corporate money out of politics.
- Enabling all Americans to have access to healthcare via a Single-Payer system.
- Ensuring all Americans have Universal Education as a right.
- Ending current US wars/end of being the "World's Policemen"
- Ending the War On Drugs/high rates of minorities in prison for drug offences.
- Creating a New New Deal.
- Creating a Clean Energy Revolution.
- Abolishing the Death Penalty.
- Implementing Ranked Choice Voting for elections. + many others.
The priorities of the Justice Democrats are what is known as their platform and as you go down the list of their ideals, you quickly find that they are extremely popular among the American people. Many people within the progressive movement and even co-founder Kyle Kulinski himself, see Bernie Sanders as one of the only sitting politicians fighting for progressive change as of right now, and see Justice Democrats as a force to be taken seriously and getting like-minded people elected in order to give Bernie support in both the House and the Senate in order to force through progressive policies.
Justice Democrats have announced 36 candidates as of yet and all have signed on to their platform, one of those is Senate hopeful Alison Hartson, who you can see pictured above. Alison also has her very own platform which closely mirrors that of the Justice Democrats. Alison stands for progressive ideals such as ending political corruption by banning Super PAC's, ending private donations to politicians and parties, implementation of Medicare For All and raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, all of which are extremely popular with the American people but not so much with the current set of lawmakers.
As Alison Hartson looks towards the Senate elections in 2018, she has been able to amass $250,000 from small campaign contributions, with $100,000 coming within 24 hours of launching her campaign to unseat Democrat Dianne Feinstein, this coming from over 3000 individual donors.
Senator Feinstein has not been what you would call 'Liberal' in her voting record, with Aye/Yes votes for the Iraq War, Patriot Act and is against Medicare For All, when asked if she would support MFA at a rare town hall event, Feinstein said, "If single payer healthcare is going to mean a complete government takeover of the healthcare system, I am not for it." Boo's quickly filled the air with many of the audience disagreeing with her definition of 'government health care'.
Should a policy like Medicare For All be implemented in the United States, it would still be possible for people to acquire health insurance on the private market, but not everyone has that luxury as 28 Million Americans are still uninsured. British health care somewhat resembles what this situation would be like, with a National Health Service funded by a single payer, being the UK government, while the opportunity is still available to purchase health insurance from the private market should you see that as a better option. Many large UK health companies offer health insurance, such as Bupa or AXA PPP, as well as having price comparison websites to ensure you can find the best private health care possible.
The one problem Alison Hartson or any other challenger of Dianne Feinstein may have is that of money. Feinstein has the backing of several large entities, with defense contractors General Atomics donating $62,250, worldwide bank Wells Fargo donating $29,250 and Walt Disney Co donating $24,050 to Feinstein during 2011-2016. With institutions such as these able to essentially purchase politicians with their vast amassed wealth, it is easy to see why they would prefer Dianne Feinstein remain the Senator from California for years to come. Meanwhile, the owning of Feinstein by corporations is exactly what Justice Democrats and Alison Hartson despise within US politics, so they have the added motivation of defeating someone who fundraises in such a way that Feinstein has, preferring to take large amounts of corporate dollars instead of giving the people of California what they desire.
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