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Politics Help
Gigazombie Cybermage
Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
I live in TN's 4th district, and I'm trying to figure out if we any competent challengers. Sen. Bob Corker is up for reelection, but I'm not sure about the House Representative. Yeah, I know it's an exercise in folly, I've seen the polling. But ever since my political awakening I've been yelling at people to go vote, and I want to put my money where my mouth is. Are there any intuitive sites where I can check these things, hopefully all in one place?
Gigazombie Cybermage on
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that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
There isn't any good answer to that question the way you frame it. For one thing, no one ever knows what they hell they're doing the first time they're elected to a legislative office. It takes a while to get a feel for the shifting interpersonal dynamics both within a partisan caucus as well as the legislative body at large to the point where you can feel confident about your ability to shepherd an original piece of legislation through committee and a floor vote. And even if you were to become an expert in a few subject areas, there is no guarantee that those subject areas would be germane to whatever you were dealing with on a daily basis. You could major in international relations, minor in economics and write a brilliant thesis on the global energy market, but none of that will be especially helpful if there aren't any seats open on the relevant committees when you're elected, and so you're given a seat on a Health and Human Services subcommittee, instead.
The larger point, though, is that it's the responsibility of the electorate in any given election to decide for itself what the qualifications for political office should be. Those qualifications vary from district to district; in a rural area like Iowa's 4th district, constituents want to know that their representative understands issues related to agricultural businesses because that's a major segment of their local economy (and their current representative's last private sector occupation was thus running a seed distributor). In Virginia's 2nd district, which includes Norfolk Naval Base, Little Creek Amphibious Base, and Oceana Naval Air Station, constituents are a little more concerned with defense spending and national security issues than citizens from other parts of the country; three of the four most recent representatives elected from the district have either previously served in the military or the state department as a consequence.
Lawyers tend to do well in politics for a few reasons that have little or nothing to do with subject area expertise. Rules of parliamentary procedure tend to seem less arcane to them as newcomers, and they're used to framing an argument, and they're used to learning enough about a new subject to make that argument compelling. The largest benefit, though, is that lawyers tend to know other lawyers. The more lawyers you know, the more likely it is that you know a few who make enough money to donate the maximum limit. Fundraising capacity is important for an aspiring politician; while there is no direct correlation between fundraising capacity and legislative ability (see: Michelle Bachmann), it is impossible to demonstrate legislative ability without winning at least one election, and it's virtually impossible to do that without spending six to eight productive hours per day fundraising.
And yes, you really will be spending that much time per day fundraising. If you start running on January 1st of the year of your election, you will have to average about $4,900/day of intake up until the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November just to have a shot at losing by less than 10%.
What you're hopefully taking away from all of this is the following: success in politics has a lot less to do with how you develop your brain as it does with how you develop your relationships with the people around you. That's true whether we're talking about building a fundraising network, or developing a coalition of voters who will take time out of their day to go to the polls for you, or creating relationships within a legislative body that you can leverage on behalf of your constituents to protect or advance their interests.
So contemplate that for the moment. In the meantime, I suggest getting involved with your state and local democratic committee so that you can find a campaign to get involved with.
Disclosure: I've worked on around 20 elections over the past decade. My challengers win about 70% of the time.
If you want to run for something, you should seriously keep it in mind! It is something that normal people can do. But don't think that Congress is the only thing that matters - a mistake many make. Your school board, your public utility board, your state legislature, your city council, all these are small governments that often don't get attention paid to them, but are super important in determining the government you live under, and they are positions that ordinary folks can get elected to. A great way to learn about it would be to find someone running for one of these small-time positions who you like and agree with, and volunteer with their campaign. A small campaign like school board, you would probably be a volunteer campaign manager, and you would learn a lot about how to run for office and what it takes, and whether it's something you'd actually be interested in doing yourself.
You can run for small offices and work upward, or you can work within the party and become well known enough to start elections at higher level. If you have money, you can skip some/lots of these steps, of course. Doing the party route while wanting to change the party will not get you many favors though. Inter-party politics can be even meaner than intra-party politics. I'm assuming you have seen the Tea Party fights - they do it public, unlike the parties.
That bit about the inter-party politics can definitely be true, although I've also had some incredibly rewarding experiences working for a state party. I happen to know a couple of people at Tennessee's state party, too, and they're both fantastic people who I was always happy to talk to whenever the telephone rang.
When I started working in politics, I felt basically the same way you do today, although it was 9/11, Afghanistan and Iraq that was really driving my desire to help change things. It seemed like kind of a crazy, long-shot idea back when I started, but you know what's really crazy? I totally did end up changing things. I got to start up one of the elections in 2006 that helped swing control of the Senate back to the Democrats. The very next day, Donald Rumsfeld left his job, and the administration that for years had been telling us to "stay the course" was finally forced to come up with a new strategy for Iraq. I obviously didn't do it alone, but I can also honestly say that it wouldn't have happened without me.
So going back to your earlier statement about how you're "yearning for a position of power where I can actually affect things." What I learned from the 2006 cycle in particular was that the chair you're sitting in is less important than what you can bring to the table. Even without putting your name on the ballot or showing up on a Sunday cable news panel, if you're willing to work your ass off, and if you're smart enough to be able to figure out where that work will do the most good, it is almost frightening how much one person can help change the world. It sounds like bullshit, but it happened to me. It can happen to you, too.