Let me begin this rant on a personal note: I have a hearing test this afternoon.

My private healthcare insurance covers one free hearing test each year, and one free eye test each year.

What my private health care insurance plan (for which we pay about $12,000 per year with a $3000 deductible) does not cover is the cost of my hearing aid ($3000 and up for one aid) or the cost of my eyeglasses ($400 this year because I am both nearsighted and far sighted and need special lenses – I kept the same frames or that would have added to the cost).

Nor do many private health care plans cover costs for dental work. I need work on my teeth. I am missing three teeth, and others have been chipped. This is a direct result of the prednisone I take which leaches calcium from both my bones and my teeth. The result is that I have incurred lots of chipping and fracturing and thus have required teeth to be pulled. However replacing them with implants would run into tens of thousands of dollars but I cannot afford the cost so I do the bare minimum needed. The cost of that still runs into hundreds of dollars each year.

Which brings me to my point.

Why aren’t Democrats running on a program to improve the Affordable Care Act to require coverage for eye wear, hearing aids and dental work? It would be a winner with a lot of folks. Even Medicare does not cover most dental services, or the cost of hearing aids and eyeglasses (although some states’ Medicaid plans do, most do not).

Old people on fixed incomes would be attracted to this as would younger people who struggle to pay for their eyeglasses and thus many who need them do not get them. But do you hear any proposals to change our health system to improve the lives of the less wealthy, who wear designer eye wear, get teeth implants even if they do not need them, and can afford the state of the art hearing aids should they need them.

This would seem a no-brainer to me, but then I thought that about single payer health care or alternatively a public option. Democrats lose elections in part because they fail to distinguish themselves from Republicans, plain and simple. This is only one example of a popular idea that would win them voters, but it is also one they will never promote, at least not in the current political climate, where money rules all.

Even Democrats take money from big corporations with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo that has achieved record profits for those non-human persons and their executives, despite flat incomes for most workers. Lobbyists for the insurance companies had a great deal of influence over the end product of the ACA. While I am thrilled we got anything passed, for all the good the ACA did and does, it didn’t go far enough. Yet who among the Democratic candidates is demanding we do more to make our health care system at least as equitable as those in other developed nations such as Canada?

Crickets is all I hear.

And people wonder why the Dems may lose the Senate and have no hope of regaining seats in the House. Indeed, I heard today on NPR that Democrats in the House are privately saying a loss of only five more seats would be a victory. If that is how they think, it makes you wonder why they are so reluctant to take chances, why they run as right of center “moderates” (i.e., your Grandfather’s Republicans).

I want better Democrats, even if they lose initially. Hell, a lot of them are losing now in many places because they are running primarily on a platform of “we aren’t as crazy as the Republican guy” instead of telling people what they stand for and what specific things they will do to make ordinary citizens’ lives better and more prosperous. So why not take a risk and define the party as one willing to fight for the little guy? It worked for FDR, Truman and Kennedy. It can work today if Democrats stop nominating corporate hacks and quasi-Republicans (such as Gov. Cuomo in my home state of New York, for one).

The GOP ran on a platform that appealed to their base starting back in the 80’s. They defined what they stood for, and why, even if their ideological stance has resulted in immense harm to our nation’s economy while benefiting the few at the top of the economic food chain. They lost seats at times, yes, but over the course of the last three decades they have controlled the political debate, and the Democrats for the most part have been always playing on defense, as Senator Kay Hagan’s debate with her Republican opponent last night proves once again.

When you lack the will to stand for something, when you run away from your own President (hardly a liberal) and when you choose to stand by your donors’ interests as opposed to the interests of the people who would vote for you if you gave them a good reason, you deserve to lose. My hat’s off to Senator Begich in Alaska, who in a tough re-election fight, is calling for expanding Social Security benefits. Too bad we don’t have enough like him in the Democratic party. If we did, maybe we would be controlling the debate, and our base would be the one with greater enthusiasm and determination to vote and reach out to convince on the fence sitters to vote for Dem candidates.

Until that happens, we will continue to bounce around, winning elections big only when a Republican President such as Bush and his Republican controlled Congress screws the nation so badly they have no choice but to vote for Democrats. That isn’t the best strategy in my mind to gain and hold political power. But then I’m not a life-long Democratic apparatchik, like Leon Panetta, who attacks our President during the mid-terms and yet still retains a position of privilege among the party elite. Just remember, what works well for the Panettas of the world does bupkis for you and me.

We need better Democrats willing to take a stand for the 99% like Begich. We sure do not need more of the ones like Panetta and Cuomo whose ilk currently dominate the party at the national level, its message, its election strategy and its agenda.