(no subject)

[stakebait]

1) Start educating the kids, now, about voting and why it matters and how parties work. Teach them that politicians are not all alike just because they dress alike and have the same mannerisms, about stuff like court appointments and how being able to compromise doesn't mean you're compromised. Every study I've seen shows that Generation Y is uncommonly altruistic and civic minded, as well as traditional enough not to disaffected from institutions just because they're institutions. They're much stronger on the environment and unbothered by gay issues than older people are. And they're the Echo Boom, so there are a lot of them. They're ages 10-27 right now, which mean all of them will be able to vote by two elections from now. We need to get them registered and involved. P. Diddy and Eminem and Rock the Vote are great, but not enough.

2) Work on registering and turning out more black voters in the South.

3) Take a tip from the Cluetrain Manifesto and go for the straight talk approach. I don't mean fake (or real) Jes' Plain Folks, and I don't mean soundbites either. I mean people respect and trust someone who they feel calls a spade a spade. We can still have complexity and nuance when they're called for, but you have to first sketch in the broad outlines in a strong hand. For the last several years we've been letting the other side frame the debate's basic terms and then taking issue with them. Gotta stop. It's like they tell you about dealing with your dysfunctional family -- don't get trapped into letting them define the conversation so that all the options put you on the defensive. Find what *you* think is the real heart of the issue.

4) Pick a candidate that's not from the Northeast. Sorry, I like it here too, but the perception that we're not like the rest of America is strong, and the (understandable) post election venting ain't weakening it any. So far I'm leaning towards New Mexico governor Bill Richardson. He's got a strong record on international politics (former ambassador to the UN, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize four times), knows a lot about energy and preserving the environment while still working with business.

5) Speaking of which... we need to slack off on the post-election venting that paints the midwest or the south as ignorant or bigoted. I have no problem at all attacking the ignorant or the bigoted, or agreeing that both played a role in Bush's reelection, but the Midwest has no monopoly on 'em, we have no monopoly on the informed or the tolerant, and in any case, you catch more flies with honey than with condescension. If we want swing voters in these states to back us, we need to ask them why they didn't and then listen to the answers. I wouldn't vote for anyone who was calling me names either.

6) We need an agenda, which is *not* the same as a series of positions. Positions are "on this issue, I feel XYZ". An agenda is "in four years (or eight, or twenty, or a hundred) this is where we want to be, and this is how I think we can get there." That gives people hope, something to believe in, and something to judge a new guy on compared to the record of the old guy.

Yes, we run the risk that somebody will be offended by something in it. But for the last two elections we've run the risk of people thinking we don't know what the hell we want, let alone how to make it happen, and we can see how well that works. Depending on temperment they then go on to think we have a secret agenda, which won't be revealed till after the election, or we're weak and reactive, or we care about nothing but gaining power for ourselves. Any which way, there's no good there.

Much as I honestly don't see what the hell people are talking about when they say Bush has character and is a strong person and what you see is what you get with him, I do see that people *want* someone who has character and is a strong person and what you see is what you get with them. And really that's not unreasonable in a leader. So we have to do that. Show them we have a realistic plan with some scope and some hope to it, and we can swing the character voters to our side even if they *don't* agree with the details, just like Bush did.

7) Start working now, on the state and local levels, to improve the mechanics of voting so that not every close election hinges on mechanical or human error. Look into the accountablity and security of the new digital machines while we've still got four years to fix it. And make a serious effort to get bipartisan sponsorship and support for the effort.

Comments

[vaspider]

Honestly, I'd like to see a strong push to disgrace Diebold in terms of voting machinery so that we don't have to deal with a company that promised to deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush next time around.

[raincitygirl.livejournal.com]

That'll be accomplished at the state and even county level. It's state and county officials (at the moment, surprise, surprise, in both Florida and Ohio they're Republicans) who make these decisions. Also, try an activism website like http://www.blackboxvoting.org/ for information and like-minded people.

Grassroots pressure works. Strong pressure in California got paper-trail-free machines out and paper ballots back in. If the technological ability to steal elections is taken away, then the real vote can come through.

[vaspider]

Agreed -- but that doesn't mean I don't think there ought to be some sort of coordination of that effort at the national level. And I ::asscone:: Black Box Voting. I'll be interested in seeing what comes out of their FoIA requests for paper trails in this election.

Of course, that didn't stop voter fraud efforts in California -- boingboing had some interesting information on that -- but it does slow it some.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link!

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

*nods* That would be nice. But in general I want some accountability/checkabilty for voting machinery, because at least Diebold was dumbnice enough to warn us. We'd never know if we were dealing with someone who had the same goal but kept quiet about it, so the machines themselves need to be set up in a way that's reliable regardless.

[ros-fod.livejournal.com]

I think you're absolutely right. On all these points. But I have serious doubts as to whether the Democratic party will actually do any of these things. If anything, I expect/fear that they'll do the opposite - that is, that they'll begin to woo the voters that they consider to be "theirs" by party principles: those who voted on social issues.

Except that this time, the social issues aren't poverty or unemployment or education or health care. Or if they are, they're getting trumped by other social issues, gay marriage being one of them. And polls seem to show that amongst the people who voted for Bush, good numbers believe that Iraq is a social issue as well (versus a strategic one).

So, what I expect/fear is that the Democratic party will actually back off on their social agendas instead of recruiting more voters who align with them. Back off on gay marriage and de-liberalize, in a way, on their policy on Iraq.

Man. Washington's made me cynical.

Yup

[thebratqueen.livejournal.com]

The Democratic Party's kinda operating like a battered housewife right now. It mistakenly thinks that if it's nice enough and quiet enough, nobody's going to hit it.

Re: Yup

[ros-fod.livejournal.com]

Heh. Good analogy.

Which is why it's so key to pre-empt that with the kind of grass-roots activism and participation that a lot of people are calling for. Precisely because it's imperative that the Party leadership understand that it's not that they are "too liberal" - which is a fear they've been nurturing for decades, anyways (and that this election is in danger of cementing in their consciousness).

It's always impressed me in a rather annoyed way that the Republicans can totally be like, "That's right. We're for taking away a woman's right to choose and we hate the queers. What are *you* gonna do about it?" and the response from the other side of the aisle has been...tepid at best.

Re: Yup

[thebratqueen.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Plus the Democratic Party (and Kerry's campaign people) have made the mistake of thinking that saying nothing in response to negative attacks equals taking the higher ground. They need to be more like Clinton who understood that when the other side lobbed a mudball at you, you did something to hit it back. That doesn't mean being as nasty, it just means doing something.

I'm reminded a lot of that scene in The American President, where Michael J Fox's character reminds Michael Douglas's about how people crave leadership, and are so thirsty for it that they'll drink sand if it's all that they're getting. Dubya provides bad leadership, but it's leadership. The Democrats in contrast are too passive.

What we need is another Howard Dean (or heck, even the first one) to come out and show what happens when people are given just a tiny bit of encouragement to be hopeful, and have momentum to do good things.

Re: Yup

[ros-fod.livejournal.com]

And it's not even that the Republican party is any less fractured, which is what frustrates me. There are moderate Republicans who are definitely shifting in their seat and there are Republicans who are even stauncher idealogues who are foaming at the mouth.

But it's been a trademark of this Administration to stick to it's guns, no matter what. And as a former policy wonk, that used to make me a) boggle and b) tear my hair out, because there was no.give.whatsoever away from the belief that they were doing the Right Thing, even as it became increasingly obvious to everyone else that they are not (see: Iraq). Somehow though, that translates not towards inflexibility and narrowmindedness (which it is) but decisivenss to the Public (see: results of election).

Sigh.

Still, Bush and his allies are stalwarts not so much of Republicanism but their very own version of Republicanism, and they're still able to generate the kind of support that they have within their own party, despite everything. And yeah, it helps a *lot* that they've amassed a great deal of power and money and they've pretty much got everyone by the balls considering that Bush runs the White House and his cronies run everything else, including the RNC, and the more I think about it, the more suffocated I feel.

I agree with you that the only way to counteract this kind of stranglehold on the political process is to respond with as equally a decisive type of leadership. Now, this means that there might be a guy out there (it might be Dean) and democrats are going to have to band around this guy, and this guy is going to have to convince the Party leadership that he can do it, even if that means that we give a little on specific interests. If there's a Dem out there who can do that, but who's like, say, "we're gonna go for civil unions for now," or "let's scale down the number of troops in Germany first" or whatever, than we're going to have to get behind this guy and stop splitting hairs (and the Party).

Re: Yup

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

*nodsnodsnods* to both of you. And the thing is, I really do think we can be equally decisive without being just as scarily inflexible.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

*nods* I'm afraid of that too, but we'll see. Right now the man on the street reaction seems more to be further polarized against those who voted on those issues, rather than backing off of them. At least in New York.

But I also think, perhaps naively, that we could *make* healthcare or education or unemployment a bigger issue if we proposed an audacious plan to tackle them, which people would then debate.

[miggy.livejournal.com]

Picking a western candidate would do a lot to soothe the fears of mountain state voters, as well. Clinton's forest policies were unmitigated disasters here; they resulted in tens of thousands of burnt acres above the yearly average and a staggeringly high number of firefighter deaths. (And, considering that wildfire control is a way that plenty of college boys here pay for their education, it had the same feel in the local communities as young soldiers sent to die in a needless war.)

Gale Norton being on Bush's cabinet made everyone breathe an immediate sigh of relief, myself included. I do loathe Bush, but during his administration, even the hottest and driest summers have seen their fires contained, and the state environment as a whole is much healthier and more stable. When Clinton's roadless bills passed, the fires burned so out of control that the skies turned dark and it rained ashy mud.

I don't think it's so much a Democrat vs. Republican thing as it is a mountain vs. non-mountain thing. The huge stretches of forest we have are very vulnerable, very expensive to maintain, and very, well, huge. The state governments here have set up mutually beneficial partnerships with companies, and forcing them in either direction will only lead to worse fire seasons. People here know that if an easterner imposes their textbook environmental idealogy on our states, people die and the forests wither.

That's a big issue around here. We don't get earthquakes, tornadoes, or hurricanes. The only major environmental disaster is something that can be directly affected for good or ill by public policy. The Democrat nominee being from a fellow (perceived as) wild state would be a huge deal when thinking over which candidate would be more likely to protect the environments of the states in Mountain Time.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

That's a really good point, and not something I knew much about, so thank you tons for explaining it. I've only done some relatively surface research so far, but I was impressed with Richardson's handling of New Mexico's water issues.

[miggy.livejournal.com]

To go with your Southerner point, another benefit of a western candidate would be a lack of ties to either Civil War side. The Dixie types might not say "well, they're one of us!" but they also wouldn't completely write the candidate off thanks to a Yankee heritage. Northeasterners would vote for a Democrat no matter what, so it doesn't particuarly matter whether the candidate is from there. And for Midwesterners and Westerners, I don't really see that area as having the perceived drawbacks of the Deep South; the only real negative stereotype is of the militiaman gun nut, and that'd be more of a Republican thing.

On a rather fanciful note, I'm surprised I haven't seen talk of a repeat of the Free State Project with Democrats. With the large populations and wide Democratic margins in New England, it'd be easy to move in and capture four more electoral votes here and three there! (No, I'm not serious. I'm just surprised that it hasn't crossed the mind of someone who would be serious about it.)

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

As I see it, from a philosphical viewpoint the Dems can do one of three things: move even closer to the center in an attempt to get more votes from moderates and right-moderates who voted Republican, thus jettisoning the liberal elements of the party (people like me). Or, they can move left, giving up any hope of attracting the right-moderates (who they probably can't get anyway). Or, they can stay where they are, just off to the left of center.

Honestly, though, I don't know that moving left will win them a national election; it may in fact lose them votes. Personally, that's what I's like them to do, but I'm also aware that I'm further to the left than a core Democrat. I wish Kerry had been firm, forceful, and unapologetic about being for gay rights and legal abortion. After all, he wasn't going to get the votes of the Christian right anyway. Mind you, I hear rumors that Clinton (the ultimate pragmatist and one hell of a campaigner) advised Kerry to find a way to come out in favor of the Defence of Marriage Acts that the states had put on the ballot. If that's really the case, Kerry, to his moral credit, refused to follow the advice.

But moving even more centrist and becoming "Republicrats" may not work either... and I'd certainly hate that. That would cause me personally to look at other, alternateive candidates, because there'd be effectively little difference between the two parties.

Staying where they are didn't work this time, but it was close. With the right candidate (which I don't think they had), and with a focused message (which I also don't think they had), I wonder if Bush wouldn't be going home to Texas in January...

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

*nods* I'm left of the core Dems myself, so I'd hate to see us move further right in an effort to out Republican the Republicans. Even my personal views aside, it seems unlikely to work -- unless we were able to pick up the traditional conservatives who want small government and fiscal responsibility, because Bush isn't doing any of that. But I suspect only a few of them are ready to jump ship, and we can pick those up by showing ourselves to be practical, pragmatic leftists as well or better than by being impractical centrists.

I guess my feeling is that a lot of the problems we've had with the last few elections are on some other axis than left/right. And I'd like to see them addressed before messing with the message itself.

[lasultrix.livejournal.com]

What does 'Echo Boom' mean?
And yes, Southern Democrats do seem to be the only ones with a good chance of winning.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

It means they're the kids of the Baby Boomers. Since there are a lot of Baby Boomers, there are also a lot of kids.

Not four years ... two. Actually, less.

[volund.livejournal.com]

Look into the accountability and security of the new digital machines while we've still got four years to fix it.

Two years, actually ... mid-term elections. Which is why the other work has to start as soon as possible, so that we can hope to minimize this administration's ability to cause damage by cutting down or (dare we hope!) eliminating the augmented majorities the Republicans have won in both houses.

The entire House comes up for reelection. There are 33 Senators in the class of 2007: 17 Democrats, 15 Republicans, 1 independent.

Those Republicans range from the likes of Olympia Snowe and Lincoln Chaffee (oh, that Bush might alienate them enough so that they follow Jim Jeffords' example!) to the likes of Rick Santorum and Trent Lott.

Work on registering and turning out more black voters in the South.

See above ... wouldn't it be lovely to "graduate" the absolutely vile Trent Lott out of his seat?

Take a tip from the Cluetrain Manifesto and go for the straight talk approach.

And while doing so, be mindful in how you say what you're saying, watching for how the the lying liar opinion-makers of the right might pull a phrase out of context and twist it, leaving people with the impression that you've said the opposite of what you actually said (viz. "global test").

And when they do that, calling them on it, loudly and clearly.

(Yes, that last is defensive ... but necessary. It shouldn't fall entirely on Air America to do this stuff; the candidates have to do it themselves. By repeating and expanding on the lies created by divorcing sound bites and snippets from context, the Hannitys, Limbaughs, and O'Reillys frame the debate. And as this last campaign has proven, the current administration feels absolutely no shame in repeating those lies themselves.)

Re: Not four years ... two. Actually, less.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

*nodsnodsnods* Good points, all.

more to do...

[miriyami.livejournal.com]

I just received this link (see below) in a philo email.

Go, write, reccommend, etc. And in the spot at the bottom where they ask for suggestions: if you're ready to wholeheartedly do so, suggest Bill Richardson. And sign up for the action reports and emails, and do something. That'll help you feel a bit better.

http://www.democrats.org/feedback/index.html

And yes, volunteer your time to blackboxvoting.org if you can, and do other such things -- as I'm kind of house-bound I'm going to be volunteering my time as an admin and, if they really need it, a code checker -- to check the code for secret lines that add votes to one or the other candidate, etc. And yes, I'll read the damned stuff line-by-line if I have to. As long as it's in C or Perl (or something closely related enough that I have the skills to understand it w/o learning a whole new language.

I also have two ideas of my own, both of which I'm going to post in my own journal. Come check later today or tomorrow.

Re: more to do...

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link!

Already signed up for actions and alerts, thanks. Have been for quite a while, not only with them but also the ACLU, Greenpeace, NARAL, and quite a number of others. There's a new lj community, too -- I believe it's linksforchange. But yes, I need to do more. Can't do much more until mom's cancer bout is over, though. My time and energy are pretty well full just now.

Oh, now that I'm less rushed -- we could always pass the word on LJ looking for an intellectual property lawyer willing to work pro bono. If you're willing to donate the proceeds and/or make it a non-profit, the chances would probably go up quite a bit. And in addition to blackbox, you might try moveon.org.