The winds of change have been blowing with force all over the country, and on November 8, 2022, it’ll be Kentucky’s turn to powerfully embrace this tide. As a gallant progressive candidate, Charles Booker is undoubtedly the name voters should look out for on the ballot when the “D-day” finally arrives.
Contesting on the Democratic Party’s platform, his ethos is simple and extremely relatable. As he himself pointed out on the day he announced his candidacy to serve as the state’s representative in the U.S. Senate, “Rationing your insulin, like I've had to do, that's not partisan. Putting food on the table, being safe in your home, these issues aren't partisan. And if we can tell that truth and show that we're actually fighting the same battles, so we should fight together, it's an opportunity to transcend party, to really build this coalition based on those kind of bonds.” All Booker’s doing is simply laying out on the table what every Kentuckian has been thinking for decades.
The incumbent senator of the state, Rand Paul, typifies establishment politics, one of the key things that have slowed the progress of Kentucky significantly in recent years. As a part of the deeply corrupt Washington wheel, he has become little more than a yes-man, willfully blocking policies that can better the lives of the people at the bidding of big corporations. Going into the coming general election, this is a pitfall that Kentucky must not fall into again at any cost.
Booker is a grassroots politician and activist who knows what poverty feels like firsthand. Never at any point in his life has he been far from the people that he plans to represent. Even before he was elected to serve as a Kentucky State Representative in 2019, he had been actively combating the forces of poverty and helping low-income families in his community. Because of this, his agenda as a senator revolves around making the lives of the everyday American less of a constant struggle.
That’s one of the reasons he’s a vocal champion of Medicare for All. Booker understands that health is wealth and that you have to pull out all the stops when it comes to making health care available to all. He doesn’t advocate a free-market solution or a public option plan. Going down either of those roads, it’s inevitable that, sooner or later, millions of Americans will have to live without coverage. He understands that the only real, sustainable solution here is a single-payer Medicare for All health care system. This kind of program will cover every citizen and ensure they don’t have to pay anything out of pocket moving forward.
Booker also sees the Green New Deal as the only viable way to ensure that humanity has a future in the coming decades. The Kentucky New Deal as he fondly refers to it has the capacity to not just stem the negative forces of climate change but also cater significantly to the employment crisis that has gripped the nation in recent times. Left to the incumbent senator, there is every likelihood that this existential threat will wipe out the globe as he will likely do nothing productive about it.
Finally, as a senator, Booker will be sure to rally the chamber to the need for comprehensive criminal justice reform. From the broad decriminalization of drugs and expansion of treatment and support to the legalization of marijuana, he’ll help steer the country on the path to rehabilitation.
Booker’s political zeal and drive are what Kentucky needs to get out of the rut that the state has found itself in. He’ll help set the state and the nation on the course of modernization and sustainability that it needs to be on to survive what’s to come.
A vote for Charles Booker is a vote for the future!
