I'll go ahead and link the most relevant article I've read recently to this topic, even though it's Matt Taibbi. So, going forward, those of us on the left are forced to watch the Republican party get dirtier and dirtier, and more and more effective in the electoral tactics they're using to get elected. Everything from voter ID laws, to posting signs in black neighborhoods that give the wrong day to vote, to trying to get liberal states to split their electoral votes. So, what should Democrats do to fight against this sort of thing? I, for one, am tired of watching the Democrats show up to a gun fight with a wiffle bat and one hand tied behind their backs, while the Republicans show up with a nuclear weapon. I would say there are four different places the electoral game is being played, and I'm going to talk about three of them; the ground game, the fourth, where you have actual people on the ground getting people to polling places and such, I think is someplace Democrats tend to do really well; it's the other three they tend to suck at: the media, legal strategies, and extra-legal strategies.
The media game: this is where Democrats tend to get beat the hardest. Republicans will run an ad for Swift Boat Veterans for truth in a tiny handful of super-cheap markets; that ad will be noticed by a national news station, which will then play it back for weeks on end, giving them a ton of free air time. We need to get Democratic groups running the dame sorts of ads. The Democrats need to do something like run ads in moderate districts pointing out that Republicans endorse candidates who think women should be executed for adultery; flash pictures of Jihadists during these ads. Run ads in conservative districts saying that the Republican candidates think that rich people should give away all of their money. Candidates who say they believe in the literal truth of the Bible are actually saying this shit, and it's such a thoroughly retarded position that it should be brought to light. And it's not like you're going to offend people who were going to vote Democrat, anyway.
The legal strategy: the Republicans are really good about this one, too. First, they pass laws instituting mandatory minimums for possession of drugs that are historically popular among the poor and minorities, and make possession of even a small amount of those drugs a felony; then, they pass laws disenfranchising people with felony convictions. Or they pass laws requiring all voters to have IDs in order to "prevent voter fraud," and shut down a bunch of DMVs in low-income areas as a "cost-saving measure." The thing is, the Democrats could be doing the same sort of thing in states they control. I think first and foremost, progressives should be working to repeal felon disenfranchisement laws, and mandatory minimums. In addition to that, I think we should look at ways to reduce Republican turnout. A few ideas:
*If there is an existent voter ID law in a state, close as many rural DMVs as possible.
*Pass laws allowing online voter registration while simultaneously slowing down the processing of registration by mail and in-person. This will hurt poor people, but it will hurt rural people and old people
more.
*Copy the Republican strategy of advocating proportional splits of electoral votes, just do it in more conservative places. If we can get a vote or two out of Montana or Nevada, all the better.
One
huge thing that would be a big winner on the national level: let the Republicans repeal the Americans with Disabilities Act. This has been a huge pet issue of the Chamber of Commerce for decades. It will be a strategic victory for the Democrats on a couple of levels: 1) All of the disabilities advocacy groups will be forced to completely switch gears. Right now, they spend a lot of their time advocating against abortion, against genetic research, and against euthanasia; this would make them spend all of their time fighting to get the ADA reinstated. 2) It would allow the Democrats to put polling places in non-handicap accessible areas in states like, say, Florida and Arizona, with large populations of old people. This would make it difficult (if not impossible) for a lot of them to vote. 3) This would also cause a huge backlash against the Republicans from the disability community (not that a ton of them are Republican, anyhow, but they've been starting to lean that direction lately, what with the insane anti-science shit they're into). It could help drive Democratic turnout.
Finally, extra-legal strategies. I think we need to get some Democratic groups trying the same sort of voter caging strategies that the Republicans use, things like giving the wrong date for election day, or convincing people that they've voted when they really haven't. Rural voters and the elderly are ideal targets for these sorts of things.
So, I'm sure there will be plenty of disagreement here on how far the Democrats should or should not go, or to what degree any of my ideas should be implemented. Also, let's hear your ideas! Also, you can talk about what a horrible person I am to suggest the Democrats shouldn't just roll over and die when it comes to these sorts of tactics.
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Furthermore, your ideas will ultimately result in Democrats being just as bad as Republicans. When your only code is winning, then the standards and morals that you would like to see as vested traits of our leadership will vanish. "Win at all costs" is where the Republicans started, and that resulted in shackling them with the Tea Monster... which really hasn't been good for the country as a whole.
In short, I do not think this plan of yours will have the intended effect. I beg for you to abandon it.
For example, during the past several national Presidential elections, the right has inevitably hit the Democratic candidate with the charge that they were the "most liberal member of the *insertlegislativepositionhere*"
The typical democratic response is to run away from this charge by saying "No, I was more conservative here, here, and here." The issue with this is that it validates qualifying "liberal" as a bad word.
What they should be doing, instead, is attempting define such terms in a more legitimate, forceful way.
I yearn for the day when a Democrat's response becomes "there's nothing wrong with being liberal" and people actually believe them.
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As for the media, I think it's essentially conservatively biased so their plays are going to inherently get more positive coverage while Democratic ads like those you suggest will be attacked as mean, nasty class warfare or unfair religion bashing and he really loves women. Changing that attitude is one of the larger changes we could make, but I'm not sure how. Maybe being more aggressive and confident would do it. I do know not having prominent Democrats join in the fainting couch (hi Jon Chait! Though this week it's the South Carolina party chair) routine would be helpful. But in terms of a larger media strategy, I think making Citizens United a major target should be one of the top non-jobs priorities of Democrats. Both from a self-interest perspective and from a good government perspective, which is the best kind of political strategy.
Next, I think the job the President has done for the last seven days is generally the right idea. Take their argument directly to people, bypass the media. You'll get local coverage which politically speaking anyway is usually less retarded than cable news and evening news broadcasts on the networks. Moreover he's attacking Republicans as not being interested in governing but rather fucking people over so they can beat him. Which is good. And new since he took the oath of office. :^:
Next, they need to be less practical and more nakedly opportunistic when it comes to Latino voters. If they can secure the Latino vote the way they have the black vote, they won't need to appeal to rural whites that tend to lead to most of our problems with the party. The extreme crackdown on illegal immigration in the vain hope to get an immigration reform bill through this Congress was the worst of the Obama administration's self-inflicted wounds. The way the GOP is behaving, we could have seen 80-20 margins among Latinos with higher turnout, but now they don't really trust Democrats either. I'm concerned we'll see low turnout in that demographic, which could cost Democrats New Mexico, Nevada, and Colorado, which would be less than good.
Finally, I think Democrats need to remind people why they were the default party for 50 years. Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are good programs, that have saved the lives of millions of Americans. My grandfather has been alive without completely bankrupting himself or his children the last 15 years almost purely because of Medicare. That story is pretty common. Democrats should remind people that they're the ones responsible for that, they're the ones who want to strengthen those programs and not destroy them and generally BE DEMOCRATS.
Also, I wouldn't mind if we got some populism, like Elizabeth Warren is almost assuredly going to be pulling in Massachusetts. I hope she wins easily and is looked at as a model, though I know she'll be dismissed because she's running in LOLTaxachusetts.
It's not quite like a city, where you can find some nice, dense, and relatively homogenous populations to fuck over.
More importantly, us regular Joe's don't have any control over what strategy the Democratic elites use. But the strategies that Than proposes are stuff that volunteers can actually do.
The pubs want to disenfranchise poor/minority voters? Fine, then let's see how they like it when their base of senile old voters can't find their way to the voting booth anymore. Yeah it's a dick move, but it's better than the alternative of simply surrendering to one-party rule.
I think the problem is that the words "liberal" and "conservative" have baggage beyond their political meanings. "Liberal" parenting is permissive, letting your children run wild. You get pictures in your head of 60s flower children (who grew up to be Reaganites, of course). "Conservative" parenting, on the other hand, is imposing parental will on the unruly kids, doing it the way it's always been done, to produce well-mannered members of society.
Unfortunately, we're largely stuck with our language baggage, unless we want to re-brand the left somehow. "We're not 'liberal,' we're 'open-minded.' They're not 'conservatives,' they're 'crypto-fascist oligarchs.'"
You know, the truth.
I guess I don't see the reasoning behind electing Democrats if we're assuming they're all going to be Jim Webb. You need good policies too. And I continue to believe that actual good policy is good politics.
Oh right, I forgot one: fix the fucking filibuster.
Sorry Mrs. Dershowitz, if you can't make it up the Voting Treehouse, you can't vote.
My two cents-
I live in Oldpeoplesville, Florida. Obviously repealing voter ID laws and re-franchising felons are excellent strategies for the Dems (as well as ensuring that more of our citizens participate in the political process) but I think they need some way of counteracting all the people that write in to the local newspaper bitching about the U.N. and One World Government, lightbulbs etc.
Where do they get their crazy ideas? Fox News, of course.
The Democrats need a party mouthpiece just as the Republicans/business has one in the form of Fox News and the various A.M. radio hosts. Because, to be honest, Jon Stewart is great, but he's not on all the time.
The new Liberty News Channel could be stuffed full of everyone's favorite "stick-it-to-the-man" types; Olbermann, former Rep. Weiner, maybe Maddow if she ever gets let go, etc etc. This would also go a long way towards dragged the political discourse towards the left again, after it moving rightwards for the last thirty years.
It is so common in debates that a republican will start attacking the democrat for something, usually through accusations loosely based in reality, and the democrats will spend a long time defending himself from a more or less baseless and irrelevant accusation. And when done, the republican throws out another accusation, the D defends yet again. This way the R controls the topic, and thus the debate, and will come out without being overly pressed on issues.
For example: the job situation. Keep pressing them why there is no republican jobs plan after closing in on on year controlling the House. When the defense of "lower corporate taxes" creeps up hammer them on the fact that is didn't work last time, and that any tax cuts in recent time have not produced any jobs.
The Democratic Party needs to figure out how to manage to get some traction in the media or how to route around it and get directly to viewers. Anything that doesn't accomplish that will simply result in more of the same shit we've seen for a decade or so now.
Why's it one or the other?
It just vindicates their perspective, that being elected is the only real goal.
You can run on strong Democratic principals without resorting to anti democratic tactics. And you'll get elected for it!
Because, even though the Democratic party is filled with bad apples, they're still 100x better than the Republican party. If the republicans win control at all levels of government in 2012, they're might not even be an election in 2016. Not a fair one, anyway.
Who said anything about letting them? There's a world of difference between calling them out on their nonsense and prosecuting crimes and doing the very same things yourself like Thanatos advocates.
Take Obama's extremely successful presidential campaign, for example. I often find myself in the minority when talking with friends about it, as I seem to be one of the few people that actually remembers specific issues that he talked about during speeches and whatnot, but they do remember the "hope and change" slogan as well as "The fundamentals of the economy are strong" and other bad sound-bytes from the McCain campaign. I can't help but think that people (at least people that might actually persuadable) are going to pay more attention to those than who wins a complex logical argument or whose plan holds up to greater scrutiny. They need to look at what made the Obama campaign so successful.
There's really no audience for it, though. That's the problem. I've never gotten the impression that liberals have the kind of stomach for that kind of shrill echo-chamber bullshit that Fox peddles. Most people I know could barely stand Olbermann and/or Maddow. Even when they agree with everything they say. I think we've talked about this around here before, but liberals just seem to be wired differently when it comes to that.
We're more than willing to create our own little echo chambers (which, to some extent, this can be) but the sort of cheerleading mouthpiece thing just doesn't often appeal to us.
I'd say it's just related to the type of personality the differing views attract. There are measurable psychological differences across the political spectrum.
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In my experience the average voter doesn't ACTUALLY pay attention to most politics, so they only hear the dumbest, simplest, most repeated soundbytes. They don't KNOW that Rush Limbaugh said he wants America to fail. They don't KNOW that Republicans are championing raising taxes on the poor and cutting taxes on the rich. They don't KNOW that Republicans have openly sabotaged the economy to undermine Obama.
Anyways, Democrats need to talk and act like Elizabeth Warren. But most won't, because that would be biting the hand that feeds them.
Also, the rural DMV thing is just completely off base. If you're rural, you drive. Full stop. This isn't like it is in a major city where "I don't drive" is a reasonable statement and not the mark of an invalid or crazy fucker. All that would do is give ammo to the "Government sucks" argument.
Nothing angered me more than the Weiner thing. Legitimate? Yes. But the instant it happened, Democratic lawmakers were happy to throw him to the dogs. I don't care, whatever. But who exactly do you think that you're impressing when you do that? Because Independent/Republican voters value loyalty over what can be played off as self-serving consternation.
2) Make sure the clip of the "let them die" applause line in the recent Republican debate is conveniently loaded up.
3) Go house to house and tell people that the Republican base wants poor people to die. Show them the clip.
This. It is neither a difficult nor lengthy message. One simply has to articulate it, and get one's audience to understand it.
The problem is that when Ron Paul says things like "freedom is precarious" and "you shouldn't be forced to have healthcare", most people do not conceive of themselves as possibly being in real danger as a result of that position.
People over-esitmate their own self-sufficiency (thanks, Descartes) and so cannot easily think through the repercussions of the Republican / Tea Party platform. Said another way, conservatives (and, probably, most voting human beings in the United States) do not honestly believe that they are, or could be, in a position of reliance.
Sure it could even work if it was directed at the states, rather than the individuals (so the states can decide whether to pass penalties for not voting down to the non-voters themselves or take the penalty) - make a requirement that states have a certain % taking part in elections or they lose some powers when it comes to running them (since they are no longer sufficiently representative).
The people least likely to vote also happen to be the people who are most likely to vote liberal (young, minority, etc).
But how would we enforce compulsory voting? Do we fine or imprison all the people who didn't make it to the polls? Would this law not target the young and minority populations?
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
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We also need to work to get our views in a more repeatable and soundbiteable fashion. Nobody is going to remember a small paragraph on interest rates, or a Krugmanite dissertation on lack of demand. They will remember "Nobody has money to buy anything!" or "We need to prime the pump!" If it can't fit on a t-shirt and be read by a passerby, it's not going to be remembered, end of story.
Or perhaps the parties would shift position, with the Republicans going back to the party that is supposed to keep government expansion in check and government efficient rather than whole heartedly trying to dismantle it. If the republicans really don't make up that big a majority in the total population, then why should they be given power as if they were? And if we're talking about what the Democrats can do to get an advantage without resorting to dirty tricks surely this is a good thing.
Seems like it could easily be spun as making people take responsibility as much as the fear "they are going to try to cheat you out of your vote by making you go where the scary black people are to cast your ballot" angle.
I'd have thought some small fine for non-voters (or voting being linked to some small tax incentive so your not actually taking money directly out of their hands), with the main penalty for non-voters being directed at the state/county/district levels if they fail to get a sufficient percentage of their residents to the ballots. Perhaps even a recount being required if the percentage drops below a certain threshold.
I think an influx of low information voters is surely a better thing that having select demographics intentionally removed from the process, which appears to be the alternative. I'd be surprised tif there wasn't studies showing that compulsory voting didn't also lead to an average increase in political awareness in voters.
I'm pretty sure it could even reduce voter fraud, as there are less 'spare' votes going around. It'd be a lot easier to see if things went missing, or you had more votes than people.
The Republicans continue to win by having large numbers of turnout in blocs of highly uneducated and/or misinformed voters who are normally apolitical, but the GOP has figured out how to mobilize that base by pandering to their unique special interest. It's why gay rights, abortion, guns, and border control have remained such hot-button issues for their elections in the last 15 years despite the fact that little has ever been done or pertinently required doing on the part of those issues by either party.
Every time someone like Michelle Bachmann goes on a wild-eyed rant about abortion or gays, that's one more group of people who A) don't give shit about the economy, don't give a shit about the military, and C) don't give a shit about foreign or domestic policy but will beat a path to the polling station come election day to cast one for the Republicans.
Both parties suffer from the fact that as a two-party system, each party is actually just collections of loosely-affiliated blocs. For Dems, this works far more against them than it does for the GOP because so many of their sub-blocs don't get along and often have conflicting issues. Blacks don't like gays; Southern and Midwestern Democrats don't like abortion; environmentalists attack the corporations that the unions depend on and that congressmen need to boost hirings in sluggish economies. Just look at Obama: everyone under the Democrat umbrella is pissed off at him. The conservative Dems say he's spending too much; the fiscal Dems are saying he's not spending enough; the gays are mad that he hasn't torn down DOMA; the peace-niks are mad that Gitmo is still in operation and that the wars are still ongoing; I've even seen lately on Al Sharpton's show that the Blacks are supposedly mad at him for "not doing enough for the Black community," though I've never seen any specifics on what that actually means.
Progressivism is diffuse and aims for many targets; Regressivism is simply saying, "No."
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