To rescue America requires a new mindset

It's time to think outside the box, because political change does not happen overnight, but it can occur in a matter of weeks if only someone in the Democratic Party would listen for once.

This week will mark, for some, a welcome change in my writing approach. I aim to be less verbose and deliver information more concisely. I’ll provide a roughly 5-minute read each day, with a longer, more detailed end-of-week post each Friday. The new schedule will see posts delivered Monday to Friday. Meanwhile, weekends will be spent working on the new website, ‘The Truth Portal’, which I’ll preview towards the end of the week. In addition, next week marks the start of a series of short visual pieces to support preparations for the launch of the new podcast and a weekly news magazine on YouTube in January.

THE CHALLENGE

If you'd like to read the whole series of posts on the way forward, for which this is the concluding part, you can use the links below to catch up.

PART ONE | PART TWO | PART THREE | PART FOUR

1. Food insecurity, homelessness and the crippling Medicaid cuts could ALL be wiped out by the value of taxes evaded primarily by the wealthy.

2. Claims that the country can’t afford

   1. To establish a federal living wage

   2. Healthcare as a human right

   3. Affordable childcare

   4. Paid family leave

   5. To pay family members to care for the vulnerable and the disabled at home to preserve a sense of dignity

Are utter nonsense. None of the above is unaffordable in the allegedly most prosperous nation on earth. This isn’t about affordability; it’s about greed and societal abandonment. It’s about out-of-control corporate welfare and the moral collapse of those who have chosen to extort the very people for whom the above list has been placed just out of reach. It’s about sending a message that if you work harder, you can have them all. However, the carrot the rich perpetually dangle is designed to remain tantalisingly just out of reach. The pursuit of happiness has been replaced with a thankless struggle for survival for the bottom 90% of American families.

THE FOUNDATIONS OF A SOLUTION

If we accept that trust in politicians is at an all-time low and that America is in the midst of a culture war, we need a foundation on which to build. That foundation is called TRUST. Unfortunately, the American people have lost faith in the political class. At the same time, the Democratic establishment is trying to figure out how to placate voters while promising its corporate donors they won’t give too much away.

What we have just witnessed in the dead of night is the betrayal of the American people by a hand-picked group of Democratic Senators who are not up for election in 2026. They are Angus King, Tim Kaine, Catherine Cortez Masto, John Fetterman, Dick Durbin, Maggie Hassan, Jeanne Shaheen and Jackie Rosen. This has Chuck Schumer's fingerprints all over it.

Democrats have folded in return for a NOTHINGBURGER, a ‘promise’ of a discussion on ACA subsidies; it’s a worse deal than what was on the table weeks ago. After a 40-day struggle to prevent Trump from aiding and abetting insurance companies to extort Americans, making healthcare unaffordable for millions. Christmas has come early for Trump as the US becomes the global capital for state-sponsored corporate extortion and welfare. There really are no other words to describe this gut-wrenching failure.

The tragedy is that the Democratic Party is the only game in town in a two-party system. The special interest cancer is consuming the party from the inside out, to the point where Democratic leadership believe that the American people are so desperate to escape the clutches of Trump, they’ll happily accept Republican Lite as a solution to the fascism they are currently enduring.

I believe they are fundamentally WRONG. The American people proved last week that they have had enough. They registered a massive protest vote against Trump, and Democratic leadership did precisely what I said they would do: a lap of honour in the arrogant belief that the protest vote was an endorsement of them.

To deliver transformational change, it will require not just a win, but a win so big it makes Republican eyes water. I’m constantly being asked, ‘When will you deliver us some good news, Martin? Well, this is that day. Be optimistic and puff out your chest —ready for a fight —because not only do the Democratic base need to fight Trump, they need to instigate a revolution within their own party and take it from me: THAT’S a good thing and something the voting public WILL support. I believe that overnight, Chuck Schumer fired what should be the starting pistol on that revolution.

The Democratic base is hungry for a fight, but far more than that, they will, I believe, now demand change. Never has there been a greater need to unleash the dynamic, hungry and ambitious political talent straining at the leash to take this fight to Trump. Revolution can be ugly, but there has never been a better time to prove to American voters that a new ‘people first’ Democratic party can rise from the ashes of mediocrity. And this is where my proposal gets interesting.

We are at a fork in the road. The major challenge is that America is unaccustomed to radical change, and I fear that this is what is required in this moment. The move by these Democratic Senators and one independent has fatally wounded a party already on the brink of public life support. America is about to enter a winter of discontent, and this is the perfect time to clean house and reimagine the party as a people-focused democracy movement.

The Democratic base needs to CEASE ALL FUNDING to the DNC and focus on just funding candidates that represent THEIR values. There needs to be a central, easily accessible database containing every Democratic lawmaker. The dataset should identify the source of funding for each candidate or incumbent. This information is already available to incumbents, but it needs to be presented as a simple-to-understand traffic-light system with a graphic badge indicating their exposure to special-interest influence.

There are government APIs (data connections) available to source this data in real time for sitting members, so nobody would need to update the data constantly. AI could then be used to analyse all donations and items in the register of interests. This would identify AIPAC funding and any other PAC or special-interest revenue sources. Step 2 is then to cross-reference their voting record to examine where donations connect to support for legislation. Finally, run a scoring algorithm that yields a RED, AMBER, or GREEN badge.

If the score is red, they get primaried with the best-scoring candidate for the seat from the candidate dataset; it would not be about age or experience; it would be about the threat of exposure to corruption and commitment to the agreed policy agenda. Let’s call it ‘The Democracy Sniff Test Register’. Candidates would be mandated to register with the service before they enter a race. They would sign a written agreement to declare their donations before they could qualify for the party's endorsement.

If they want to get really granular, the party could run a social media data scrape of the candidate’s social feeds to identify past comments that may raise concern. There is no soul-searching about DEI or demographic quotas, etc.; it would be purely about identifying members who had served their constituents, not their donors. In addition, the candidate segment could be adjusted to identify the best-fit candidates for critical races.

Of course, I am providing a simplified overview. However, the dataset could be pretty sophisticated and yield essential insights into what I call marginal gain, because in politics, it’s all about gaining an edge.

It is a straightforward, easy-to-understand system for which the data framework could be put together within a month, at the outside. Of course, you would need to refine the data flow to create a visual dashboard and the opportunity to drill into a database result. Just as Republicans spent years building a database of Project 2025 Trump loyalists, Democrats could expand the sniff test system to identify political. Talent. Once that talent is held in a database, funding can be directed to these candidates, not just at the federal level but also down ballot. This would take longer to implement, but it could streamline the selection process.

Suppose the public were invited to see how the system is developed and how it will work for them, as a public-facing barometer of how their representatives are serving them. In that case, I’m pretty sure that small-dollar donations could once again form the backbone of campaign funding. It’s all about transparency; inviting voters to have a say, too, is an option that builds long-lost trust.

All of the above would need to be developed and hosted in the US. However, I would be more than happy to consult on the design and development of such a system, as I see no plan right now. If the current failures persist, I really do fear for the future of democracy in America and, subsequently, around the world. I consider nothing about this concept as proprietary. Consider it my donation to the preservation of democracy because it could operate in any Western democracy.

In the next post, we’ll discuss the bigger picture.

Since this post, several people have reached out to ask if there is a way to make a one-time small-dollar donation to the project. I’m pleased to say that I have now set this up using the same payment processor as Substack. Click the link below to donate any amount up to $50.

https://buy.stripe.com/8x2fZi5QKdlh6VFgQTawo03