All kinds of crazy idiotic theories will abound tomorrow describing this or that as the “key” reason Democrats lost so many seats or managed to hang on to so many seats. Most of them will be self serving reasons. But the truth is the one thing that really will have a deciding impact on which party takes over what seats in the upcoming elections is really simple. It’s who shows up.

Now I don’t mean that it in the trivial sense. Obviously all elections are determined by who shows up at the polls. No, I mean in particular Democrats have long had this huge problem whereby large swaths of their constituents just don’t show up to the polls. This is especially true of midterm elections.  That’s why, as David Dayen explains here, if you look at the population of the United States who votes, conservatives are correct when they declare us to be a Center Right nation, but if you look at the population of the United States who are eligible to vote, we’re more of a Center Left country.

So all the polls that media analysts, newscasters, and politicians all use to predict who they think is going to win an election are all based on this idea that we can statistically determine who is more “likely” to vote and poll them primarily.  To determine who is a “likely voter” they ask questions like “how likely are you to vote” and “did you vote in the last election” and “how closely do you follow politics”.  Sometimes they even match your identification against your voter history and if you just haven’t voted very often in the past you are excluded from the likely voter poll. This generally works pretty well. The only times it doesn’t work is if there is a large cultural phenomenon that causes a lot of people who were marked as unlikely to vote to vote or else causes a lot of people who were marked as likely to vote to NOT vote. That could happen because there are some last minute revelations about some candidate or another that drives people to or away from teh polls, or if there’s some freak weather event or some other big surprise. Or it could result just from a lot of really hard work and determination on the part of on the ground political advocates pushing really hard to “get out the vote”. 

And each year, polling agencies try to make their models more and more effective at predicting any and all eventualities whilst political candidates try to defy the odds and make the unexpected happen.

Now the group of registered voters who do not vote and are counted as unlikely voters tend to share certain characteristics.  One they absolutely tend to be younger.  Another they tend to be more women and nonwhites. And they also tend to trend poorer and less educated on average. They also tend by and large to be more liberal and vote more often Democrat.

During the 2008 elections Obama managed to turn a LOT of these unlikely voters into ACTUAL voters. Many more people turned out to the polls than people expected. Part of it was his message of hope. Part of it was the allure of being a part of history and electing the first Black President. Part of it was his very very innovative use of modern technology to get out the vote and harness social networking tools to organize activists into powerful mobilizing forces.

And part of it was just that Democrats always get more of their electorate out during the Presidential election year than during off years.

2010 is an off year. There’s no Obama on the ticket. And no matter how much Obama campaigns there’s a lot of people who do support the President who are likely to stay home. They have lives that matter to them a lot more. Feeding their kids matters more. Keeping their jobs. They feel like they don’t have the time or the energy to educate themselves about the candidates and figure out who to vote for. And they are disenchanted and don’t believe that their vote on most years makes a difference. It’s one thing to go out and vote during a historic Presidential election. It’s another thing to go out and vote for somebody they never heard of after they’ve been struggling to survive for the last two years.

Now even though the pool of unlikely voters leans left, there are those among them that are definitely more persuaded by right wing ideology. And compounding the Democrats problem this election year is that large numbers of them have become more likely voters. The right wing message that THIS IS AN EMERGENCY! has resonated strongly and clearly amongst those groups. They are mobilized and planning on showing up at the polls no matter what.

The Obama administration, and indeed the entire left wing movement, needed to focus heavily over the last two years on all those massive numbers of unlikely voters who don’t show up at polls in most years, especially those who DID show up during the 2008 election. Had they been able to ascertain what it is that they could do that would ensure that these voters show up at the polls in 2010 no matter what, it would make all the difference during the 2010 elections. Had the Obama electorate been as fired up and excited about the Democrats in 2010 as they were in 2008, the Democrats would have lost few seats even though historically a President’s party almost always lose seats in the first off year election after they are elected.

But here’s the thing the Left wing activists and bloggers I read aren’t understanding. A lot of them are seeing how effective the message of FEAR has been for the Republican party in mobilizing their base and convincing unlikely Republican voters to vote and are wondering why we can’t mobilize the Left just as well. They perceive a take over by the Right as being no less scary and indeed far MORE scary. And they will speak to you at great depth about all the many ways in which the Right IS Scary whether it be their anti-illegal, anti-muslim, or anti-gay stances; their pro-war, pro-wire tapping, pro-indefinite detentions stances,  or their anti-abortion to the point of requiring a young girl to bear their rapist father’s child stance, or their support for tax cuts for the rich in expense of the middle class, or their anti-science anti-global warming anti-environmentalism, pro-creationism stances.  In the minds of your average liberal who keeps closely abreast of politics, however wrong the Democrats may happen to be on any number of issues, this current crop of Republican candidates running for office is about a thousand times more terrifying and dangerous.  It ought to be enough, they think, to simply explain this to people and remind them of the horrors wrought by the Bush years to get people to come out in droves.

But I think this is a mistake. Democrats and liberals are fundamentally misunderstanding their electorate.

You see the kinds of people who aren’t voting and lean Left are exactly NOT the kinds of people who are easily motivated by a message of fear. Indeed they are the kind of electorate that is fundamentally instantly SKEPTICAL of any kind of fear based approach to politics. That’s exactly WHY they reject Fox News so quickly and so easily. The idea that there are these scary dangerous bigoted racist people out there who are going to ruin the nation is something that to them requires a very HIGH level of proof. They are a lot less authoritarian than the Right. Simply the fact that a resource they trust tells them so is insufficient to convince them.

And what’s more there’s the psychology of it. Whether the horror story described by liberal pundits of what might happen should Republicans cease control is true or not, MOST of the Democratic electorate who will stay home tomorrow certainly don’t WANT to believe it. They don’t want to believe that their neighbors are evil or gullible or being easily bought. They mostly want to believe that the world is for the most part okay. They want to believe that so long as they follow the rules and mind their own business they’ll be okay too.

The fact is the divisiveness and noise turns these kinds of voters off. The negative ads, the dark tone, the fear mongering and the hate fueled rhetoric makes them want to stay home. It reenforces their suspicion deep down that their vote can’t make a difference. When you watch a hundred vicious commercials funded by well paid anonymous political action committees and then get 50 ridiculous robocalls urging you to vote, you can quickly just become disgusted with it all. You throw your hands up and laugh at the ridiculous absurdity of this whole system. It’s a game played by a few elites. They feel that nothing THEY can do will really make any kind of difference in the outcome of that game. They just end up being pawns around for the ride. Why should they vote? Why should they care?  If there’s a battle to be fought for the freedom of the society they don’t see it as being fought in the realm of electoral politics.

By the way, it’s this large component of the disinterested masses that Jon Stewart’s rally was reaching out to and doing so quite effectively in my opinion.

But it takes a lot of convincing, and much more than one rally, to compel them to think that this political process really CAN make a difference. Some amazing political leaders can give amazing speeches that drive  home that message and get these unlikely masses to the poll but it’s always hard. What MIGHT have worked better is bringing home tangible political results to these people that you can point to DIRECTLY and say “Look, this is how YOUR life is better because so and so is in power and THIS is how your life will become even BETTER if you keep them in power”. 

That’s the kind of campaign Democrats needed to be able to at least try to run in 2010. But they had a hard time doing it because they were only able to pass supposedly pragmatic reasonable legislation that has few immediately visible tangible results in real people’s lives. These abstract accomplishments sound good on paper but are unconvincing in the real world.

But that might not have worked either. Not only because it’s unclear whether a dispirited electorate would have responded better even if there were tangible benefits to point to, but also because it’s not even clear that legislation with more visibly tangible benefits could have even been passed with such a split congress and obstructionist Republican opposition.

So that leaves only one real option to me that would have been sure to fire up the base.  BE the outsider President and the outsider party. That is, rather than work with the system, President Obama could have tried to turn the whole system completely upside down.  That’s what they have been accused of being by the Right anyway even though they’ve only made changes within the system many of which are easily reversible.  Had, the President fought instead to try and radically rework Washington from the ground up and constantly called to the people to rally behind him to support that effort, things might have been very different. The people could maybe have stayed motivated for two whole years as they observed people in Washington on their side fighting for THEM, trying to reform the political system so that THEY have more influence and getting stopped by the enormous powers that oppose it in Washington.

Even that probably would not have worked (though I think Progressives would be happier with that outcome even if it had failed, just because it would have started changing the parameters of the national dialogue) Still it might just be a delusional pipe dream. We’ve seen outsider movemetns succeed in the past but they are rarely driven by a President or a traditional Party. They are generally driven by true outsider activists like Martin Luther King. And they are met with enormous opposition BY the President and the party establishment, EVEN that of the party supposedly on their side.

In any case what’s clear is that what will determine the Democrats success or failure tomorrow will be driven primarily by how many of these unlikely voters can be driven to show up at the polls to the shock and amazement of all the pollsters. There’s still a chance that the huge and devoted progressive movement will be able to sway enough voters to mitigate a significant number of the expected loses through their large scale calling campaigns and door to door get out the vote efforts.  Obama’s last minute speeches around the country may also make a significant difference.

But it all might not change anything. A dispirited, very tired, and very sick of politics electorate is hard to convince to come out to vote no matter what’s at risk.  People understand that all kinds of things can go wrong in 2 years true, but they also believe that there’s always another opportunity to fix things after two years should that happen.  As Stewart says, these are hard times, not end times.

It’s truly not the end of the world if your party loses one election cycle.

Probably.

This video basically explains why I intend to vote and who I intend to vote for:

More specifically, I’m voting for 2 Libertarians and all the rest Democrats. No Republicans. It would have to be a pretty extraordinary republican to win my vote, and that will probably be the case for a long long time. (Especially since the Republican party has been trending further and further away from the things I believe in each year.)

One of the Libertarians I’m voting for is simply because Indiana has a crazy rule whereby in order to be on the ballots and debates a party has to win enough votes in the secretary of state election. I’m always pro more inclusion in the political process. There are a lot of libertarians in this State. They should get their say (even if they are all crazy Ayn Randians) I might change my mind and go for the Democrat for the other Libertarian at the last minute. I haven’t quite made up my mind.

If I had to bet, I’d bet none of the people I vote for will win anything. I live in Indiana. This is about as Republican a place as you can get outside of the deep south.

I’m voting against the awesomely dumb State constitutional amendment ballot proposition on property taxes. I’m hoping that might get defeated, but it will probably pass too.

But I still intend to vote.

I don’t believe in telling people they ought to vote or they have to vote or it’s their patriotic duty to vote. All that’s nonsense. You vote when you feel you should and you think it matters and when you think voting is the best strategy to achieve the ends you want to achieve.

I just hope that this year, you think it matters. It matters a lot to me.

I’m 45% Liberal,  25% Democrat, 20% Libertarian, 10% Conservative.

I’m 0% Republican.

I’m -100% Tea Party.

What are you?

This post should probably be a tweet. But then I couldn’t fit the cool title.

We all know and have known for a long time that consumer spending spurs economic growth. Without consumer spending, businesses don’t make enough money to invest in growth or hire new employees. And without that growth the unemployment rate increases and people who have no job have no money to spend so there’s even less consumer spending and even less economic growth! It’s a vicious cycle.

And today I just had an epiphany. This is all my fault!  Why?  Because I HAVE a job but guess what? I’m not spending crap! Seriously. I’ve gotta be one of the very WORST culprits in this entire nation. Let me tell you how bad a citizen I am.

A month ago, I dropped my iphone. The screen got a nice giant crack on it.  Now a good citizen would just suck it up and buy a new replacement iphone. It’s only $200! Or heck buy a new shiny iphone4 for like $600! Or barring that, I should AT LEAST buy a new phone of some kind. Android? Blackberry? Even a cheapass no-name phone. But no. My iphone still works so I’ve kept it and I just deal with the annoying cracked screen. What’s more I’ve canceled most of the plan features on the phones on my family plan that I share with a couple of friends to save money. And I’m very likely to switch to a different carrier with cheaper service in the near future! If it weren’t for the stupid termination fee I would have already done it. And since I know I’m going to switch to new plan I’ve likewise stopped buying anything on the app and itunes stores and Kindle stores. If I were a GOOD consummer I’d not only stick to it and buy all the popular apps, I’d also buy an iPad to to further use those apps.

A month and a half ago similarly my xbox stopped worked. It just randomly freezes. Now for years I’ve been dutifully chucking out my hard earned cashed to build up a library of something like 34 games and three controllers. Now any TRUE citizen would immediately run out to BestBuy and chuck out $350 for a new fancy pants slim xbox with its shiny finish and built in Wifi and massive hard drive. Right? It’s out of warranty so that’s the only proper thing to do! In FACT I should pick up a few games while I’m there, like the much acclaimed Halo REACH.  I should also re-sign up for Xbox LIVE Gold a service I canceled years ago. Alternatively I could skip BestBuy and order it all through Amazon and get an expensive Amazon Prime subscription to expedite the shipping.

But what have I done?  Not a damn thing. I just stopped playing xbox. The games sit unused on my shelf.  I’m contemplating selling my game library and just saving the money. If I can get somebody to buy a really old broken xbox, I’ll sell that too.  And even though I’ve wanted a PS3 since the dang system came out, I won’t shell out the money to buy that either! Aren’t I TERRIBLE!?!?

But here’s my truly ultimate sin. My car. Now back in the old days when I was a good old “responsible” citizen I did buy a fancy NEW car (though I probably shouldn’t have) and paid it off in like 2 years.  But 3 years ago, I dented up the side of the car. And guess what?  I haven’t fixed it! It works just fine. The dent aint hurting anyone.

What’s more, my car could probably use new wiper blades and the air conditioning fan just stopped working at the height of the summer. What did I do? I just rolled down the windows! I’m sure my car has a dozen other little issues too that need looking at. But right now it drives fine. So I haven’t bothered with it.

Now if I was a REAL AMERICAN I’d take that car right to the shop RIGHT NOW and pay whatever exorbitant price they charge to get every tiny problem fixed. Then I’d get it detailed and a nice car wash until it shined! Or better yet, I’d sell this bad boy and buy a nice over priced made in American Plug in Hybrid even though I have no place to plug it in and would have to run it on gas. And then I’d drive that shiny new car randomly around the city showing it off and wasting gas and likely accruing speeding tickets so I can help support the police department.

That’s not all of course. When my PC got fried in an electrical storm I never bought another one. My printer was sitting inkless for months until my roommate demanded I order new ink since she needed it for her classes. My television I’ve had for 5 or 6 years, doesn’t even have 1080P resolution and has a problem where every once in a while it just randomly won’t turn on for a couple of hours. Still haven’t bought another one.  I get almost all my books from the library. I canceled my Netflix account ages ago. I called DirectTV and Comcast and haggled with them until they gave me large discounts in order to keep me as a customer. If they hadn’t, I probably wouldn’t have any TV service now. I don’t own a land line. I don’t own a couch. Bean bags work. I don’t even own a bed. It’s just a mattress on the floor. (I do own a lot of bookshelves, but they are the cheapest I could find) And I constantly try to save electricity by turning out the lights and running the air conditioning less. All my light bulbs are CFL too. I’ve also put off going to the doctor for any reason for years.  I’d rather just deal with allergies, psoriasis, depression, etc. etc. then spend a dime treating these concerns.

Really the only major consumer purchase I’ve made in the last year is a new laptop because my old one broke, and without internet I feel as if a part of my soul is missing. Even that was painful. I bought the cheapest I could find on short notice.  And nowadays I’m thinking do I really need both a phone with internet AND a laptop? Really? hmmm….

You might wonder then what the heck I am doing with all that money I’m saving? Well for one thing it sounds like a lot but it really doesn’t add up to that much. At least it doesn’t seem like a lot to me. But the answer is, I’ve been paying down all my debt (of which I have way too much). Everything I owe to anyone for whatever reason has been getting paid back. Also I’ve been helping friends deal with THEIR debt. And the rest is going into an emergency fund and into saving for my retirement. Eventually I’ll also buy life insurance, just in case.  Of course all of those things are things economists say have the LEAST beneficial effects on the economy.  Also of course I spend money on food. So at least I’m a proper consumer in at least that area. These days I eat pretty well. My days of experimental bread and water diets are behind me.

So as you can see the verdict is clear. I AM GUILTY. The recession is wholly and totally my fault.

So whenever you are feeling bad about your economic state, forget about blaming wall street and the politicians. Instead just think about people like that stingy bastard Kellen who created this economic disaster! And feel free to send all your hate my way.

Right now in the world of democratic/liberal/progressive politics there’s a big huge debate raging. You see what happened is that we’ve examined the polling and realized that there is a gargantuan enthusiasm gap between Democrats and Republicans that will almost certainly result in Democrats being utterly clobbered in November.

So now of course you have a lot of people pointing fingers in trying to determine who is to blame for this measurable lack of enthusiasm.

Some are blaming Left wing commentators for complaining too much about the Obama administration creating an atmosphere of disenchantment and despair in their listeners and readers.

Others are blaming Left wing activists for setting too high and unrealistic expectations for what the Obama administration could accomplish.

Others are the Obama administration for not fulfilling the promises they made to the people which makes voters more cynical.

Others are blaming Democrats in Congress and the Obama administration for not really causing any major change that directly effects individuals lives. The economy still sucks they say, so that’s why people are unenthusiastic.

Still others are blaming the Obama administration for just not fighting hard enough. The argument there is that they have been accepting and allowing right wing frames to dominate the media landscape making Democrats feel outnumbered and as if they have no voice.

Still others are blaming the Republicans and the Tea Party for creating and spreading a bunch of false narratives, ridiculous controversies, and lies. False scandals like acorn, climate gate, Van Jones, the 9/11 Mosque, and Shirley Sherrod depress the Democratic base whether they believe them or not because they feel as if they are under assault.

And still others just blame the people who aren’t showing up at the polls for being a bunch of stupid lazy whiny babies.

Now of all of those, I think blaming the people is the most absurd. People have lives. Sometimes their lives are hard. Sometimes they aren’t paying attention. And sometimes they don’t vote. That doesn’t make them “whiny” or “lazy” it just means they aren’t as deeply devoted or dedicated to politics as the class of political elites who follow every eb and tide of the political landscape.

But all the rest of those explanations? They could all be a little bit true. The truth is, nobody KNOWS why so many Democrats are not enthusiastic about elections. There could be a lot of reasons. There could be a lot of DIFFERENT reasons for different people. We don’t’ have any good polling that shows exactly why the majority of unenthusiastic democrats are unenthusiastic.  So lacking any factual basis to decide, we’re engaging in pure speculation just in order to make ourselves feel better and to strike at whichever faction we feel deserves our ire.

Meanwhile the Historians will tell you that this situation isn’t really all that unusual. That it’s always generally the case that the opposition party is more enthusiastic after the first two years of a President’s term and they always gain seats. So one wonders whether there should be any freak out at all by the political analyst intelligentsia.

But what I found particularly interesting though is that nearly everyone on the left of any level of influence no matter who they happen to blame for the enthusiasm gap has closed ranks under the single proposition that asserts:

“You should ALWAYS vote”

Now it’s understandable why every political pundit and politician who wants their side to win would want their audience to always vote no matter what. It entirely makes sense for them to make it seem like a fundamental moral wrong NOT to vote and say to people that “if you don’t vote, you’re just working for the bad guys!” But the reality of politics is far more complex than that. 

What I would say, a much more reasonable proposition, is that you should always vote unless you have a really good reason not to vote.  So are there any such good reasons? Especially now, when the Tea Party is so strong and pervasive. Could there ever be a rational argument for not voting?

I’d say, YES. But you’d have to have laid the ground work well in advance.  Just not voting yourself because you don’t like whatever certain politicians are doing or because they didn’t pass whatever pet peeve piece of legislation you wanted to get passed is DUMB. It doesn’t bring you any closer to getting your legislation passed and it cedes your fate with regard to all other issues to the whim of the masses.  Now if you’re fine with that and don’t care and think the will of the masses, corporate funded or no, is just dandy for you then fine. Go ahead and not vote.  But in all other cases, you should probably choose to vote for the lesser of the two evils. Or barring that, if you don’t have strong opinions, at least vote for the person who you think is smartest and most open minded and most moral and would make the best leader for the country. Or vote for the person you think you could maybe change the mind of on the issue you think is most important.

Now if you can’t come up with any difference of opinion in any of those factors or on any policy grounds both at a party level and an individual candidate level, then maybe you don’t vote for either candidate or vote for a write in candidate.  But even THEN you should probably still go to the polls. Why? Because nearly every state has significant ballot initiatives that could have a huge impact on how you will have to live your life and how your fellow citizens will have to lead their lives. You should probably go vote JUST for that if for no other reason.

OK, so if you’re just by yourself you should almost certainly do everything within your reasonable power to vote if you care at all about the political future of your society.  So why did I say there are circumstances when it might make sense NOT to vote? Well because, sometimes you need to make a decision whether or not to vote not based solely on your own judgment but as a GROUP.

This is how the political game is played. Every single issue imaginable has groups advocated and agitating on all sides of the issues. Whether it be Election Reform or Gay Marriage or Pro Life or Environmental Justice or Health Care Reform there are groups out there tryign to push their bills through Congress. The problem is, most of these groups have very little influence. But that’s not always because they couldn’t have influence, it’s often because they utterly cede their ability to influence politics by being bullied into supporting whichever party they think of as being “better” on the issue.

What that means is that when Pro-Public Option advocates were agitating for the Public Option the Obama administration gave lip service to caring about their concerns but in the end they decided that ensuring that the hospitals and doctors and insurance companies didn’t pour money into the Republican Party and kept pouring money into their party coffers was far more important to them than pleasing the Public Option supporters. Similarly they didn’t want to alienate the Blue Dog Democrats or the Republicans in Congress they might have to work with in the future. At the same time though they had to play both sides of the game a little cuz they didn’t want to piss off the Liberals too much. So they kept saying they wanted a Public Option if it was possible but at the same time they kept downplaying its significance to alienate and weaken its supporters. And they keep doing that to this day.

Now some Liberals are, understandably in my opinion, pissed off by this. It’s not so much that they think the Public Option was the one and only important thing in health care or that it was impossible to pass a good bill that lacked one (though some probably thought the latter), but it’s more how the administration totally treated them like shit about it. It’s how the administration belittled them and talked to them like they are childish babies for wanted, what most think is a substantive reasonable health care reform proposal.

But here’s the thing, whether or not you think the Public Option was a great idea, here’s why it never had very much of a chance.  The Democratic administration had zero reason to support it. The ONLY people who would be angry if no Public Option were in the bill were the very people who were never in a million years going to support a Republican candidate. The fact is the Republican party has for generations been totally against “public option” type concepts and have painted them as the evil devil that is destroying our very society. The Liberals who wanted a public option had nowhere to go but to support Democrats. And so they would.

But of course, they didn’t have nowhere to go. They could also stay home.

Now staying home can be a strong political statement if done by a large enough group in tandem. It can easily swing an election.  But most importantly though it creates a STRONG incentive for both political parties to take heed of them and cater to them. If the election block is organized coherent and exact and precise in their arguments they can totally use the threat of not voting in order to influence greater consideration of their ideas. 

Imagine, for example if, at the very beginning of the process, every single Single Payer or Public Option supporter swore not to vote for any Democratic candidate anywhere in the country in the general election unless they had a seat at the table during the Health Care Bill and they got a vote on the Public Option before the bill got passed. 

That’s not an unreasonable demand.  That’s a fair and rational demand. It doesn’t say they need the bill to be passed exactly the way they want it to be. It doesn’t say they even require that the Public Option be IN the bill. All it says is that they want a say in how the bill is crafted and they want people on the record as to where they stand on the public option so that they know who to support and who not to support in the elections. That doesn’t mean they’ll get the Public Option. Chances are it would still get voting down. Chances are some of the 51 members of the Senate who said they supported the Public Option were lying. But at least then, we’d know WHO was lying.

But here’s the thing.  If they had done that, they might have gotten their demands. But also, they might not have. And here’s where the no voting thing comes in. If you’re going to make a demand like that, an ultimatum as it were, you’d better be willing and able to follow through with it no matter what.  Cuz if you don’t then both political parties will not take you seriously. They’ll see you as a joke who when push comes to shove can easily be manipulated and compelled and scared into to voting for the right party anyway. And if THAT’S the case, why should they ever listen to you again? 

The answer is. They won’t. They’ll ignore you and your issue and do whatever THEY think is right regardless of what you want. And they’ll justify it by saying to themselves that they are giving you want you REALLY want in that patronizing way as if they know better than you stupid normal person could ever possibly know about policy.

So under those circumstances, if I were say the leader of a pro-Public Option group, and the Obama administration or any other Democratic administration just totally ignored my demands, by signatures, and my petitions even though I explicitly stated that IF you do this, THEN we will not vote for you at all, well then I’d go for broke in not voting. Heck I’d have phone banks calling people to stay home. I’d do everything in my power to make it clear that we are not voting and that THIS is the reason. I’d have my constituents calling Senators and Representatives just to express to them how we REFUSE to vote unless you hold a vote on a Public Option RIGHT NOW.

And similarly we would also hold a donations strike and an advertisement strike. So no bumper stickers from us. No $5 paypals to any candidate. Even the candidates we LIKE.

How much you want to bet in that game of chicken who will blink first? Politicians need their job. First and foremost they want to be elected. Sure they’ll be PISSED at us. In fact I’m sure they’d call us all kinds of nasty names and try to shame us into voting. But we’d stay firm until and unless we got our policy aim.

That’s just one election though.  And while everyone will tell you that 2 years can ruin the country that’s just nonsense. The following election we would again support whichever candidate both talks the best talk and walks the best walk.  BUT… if the party screws them again and again disrespects the advocates after the first statement and belittles them, well then now it’s time to play REAL hard ball. That means not just not voting, but DELIBERATELY running third party candidates against them in every state you possibly can. Or if that is impossible then yes, holding our noses and doing a protest vote for the OTHER guy, no matter how bad that person seems.

That last would be tricky. You’d have to carefully vet each race and decide where you can make the biggest statement whilst not turning the country over to the most dangerously anti-your agenda candidates out there.  But not all Republicans are equal. And I’m sure there are some who could be supported who BELIEVE in Health Care reform at least as much as the Democrats and are not entirely opposed to using Government to help bring about a more equitable health care system. If you can find those candidates who you feel you can talk to, why not support them over the Democratic candidates who have shown zero desire to listen? That’s just good tactics.

But on the other side we’d also have to have a BIG carrot. So IF the Democrats do what we want or even if the Republicans do an about face and support our position or if a third party signs on to our position when the other two won’t, well then we’d go for broke in the OPPOSITE direction. We’d use all our people power going door to door, phone call after phone call, running ads, signs, and doing everything possible to get out the vote for whichever candidate that happens to be. The group would have to demonstrate that they are either a huge asset or a huge detriment that cannot be simply ignored come election time.

So under those circumstances I think it might make sense to not vote or even to vote against your interests if you are doing it strategically as part of a large group of activists trying to bring about REAL change. There is simply no reason to give up “not voting” as part of your arsenal in advance for some ridiculous concept of the moral necessity of voting. Of course not voting shouldn’t be your only weapon. Nor should it be the one you immediately jump on right away. But it IS a possible strategy that COULD compel real change when all else fails. 

Still you have other weapons in your arsenal you should probably turn toward first. Petitions, Phone-a-thons, and of course supporting Primary opponents are essential weapons in your arsenal as well. It just depends on the circumstances which strategy is best.  And sometimes, because the “not voting” is considered sooo taboo and soooo off-limits if you have enough people engaging in that strategy openly and clearly it can have an even bigger impact the first time you try it. No WAY should you give up that weapon in advance. It has far too much potential.

Now I imagined this strategy with regard to an abstract issue like the Public Option but it has even more potential as a powerful tool in the hands of very large already well organized constituents of the Democratic party. For example,  imagine if Unions demanded a vote on Card Check or else they would tell all their constituents not to vote? Surely that would put the fear of God into the Democratic Party.  What if the Hispanic Community demanded consideration of the DREAM Act or Environmentalists demanded some kind of Environmental Regulation before they would consider giving them their vote.  Such types of tough unyielding politics would create a massive earthquake in the political landscape. Democrats need every one of those constituents in order to further any of their agenda.

But there is sort of a reasonableness caveat even to this tactical consideration.  It entirely could be the case that even after making that ultimatum and even after deciding and swearing up and down that you’re going to mobilize a no-vote block… you might still have to change your mind and support the candidate that screwed you anyway.   I mean obviously if you see the other party has gone to a crazy dark place and are on the verge of ushering in a new kind of terrifying fascism, well then at that time your petty differences with your party will HAVE to take a back burner. You have to be to some degree reasonable in this.

But at the same time you have to understand that parties CONSTANTLY try to paint the other side as the evil fascist nazi maoists.  Just because people are saying that doesn’t really mean they’re anywhere close to that. Sometimes you have to be careful enough to see the forest through the trees. So yeah you might have to give your own party a set back in order to further your long term agenda just so long as you are sure that set back will not in actuality be the end of the world as we know it no matter how many people are telling you that it might be.

The other reasonableness consideration here is that constituent groups that have aligned goals need definitely to build coalitions so that they can coordinate their strategies.  It would be EXCEEDINGLY counterproductive if EVERY constituent group of the Democratic party gave their demands as an ultimatum to their party and jumped ship if their party didn’t follow suit.  Because in that situation, it just becomes, literally impossible for any party to fulfill all of those goals in just a 2 year time period no matter how determined and well meaning they are. So for that reason the strategists in these groups would need to carefully assess what’s most important now and what gives their overall movement the most long term strength and what the Democratic party seems to be draggin gt heir feat the most on and then sort of tag team issues. So first one idea would be for Environmentalists and Unions and Public Health Advocates and Gay Rights Advocates and Pro-Choice Advocates and Civil Rights Advocates and Civil Liberties Advocates and Immigration Reform Advocates all work together with one another to get  the Democratic Party to pass one really easy thing that only one of their groups really cares about, say for example say Card Check which is really the issue that matters to unions. The others agree not to give any ultimatums on other issues but to support the Unions in this issue. Then the following two year legislature maybe everyone focuses all their effort on the Public Option and the next time on Environmental Reform, etc. etc. 

Obviously you wouldn’t have to do one issue at a time, but you might have to put some on the back burner so that there isn’t any mass flight from the Democratic Party.

The other benefit of doing it as large coalitions is that if and when the Democratic party takes their constituents for granted there’s an even BIGGER hammer they get struck with as the entire coalition can strategically punish the party for its intransigence.  What’s more,  the bigger the coalition the more credible the threat. It’s much easier, say for example for a large coalition to credibly support primary challengers or third party candidates if it ever comes to that.

The problem with Ralph Nader’s presidential run in 2000 wasn’t that nobody should ever run a third party candidate. The problem is he had no sense of long term tactics or strategy. His running didn’t really affect the Progressive Movement or get any policy initiative passed. Similarly if Democrats all just randomly individually choose not to vote because they happen to not be “feeling it” this time around they’ll similarly accomplish nothing but to hand power over to the Republican party.

But that does NOT mean, contrary to what everyone is saying, that it is impossible for it to ever make sense not to vote or to vote for a third party candidate.  Sometimes doing that makes PERFECT sense if doing so will impress upon the establishment how seriously you are treating the issues you care about and how far you are willing to go to see them through.

But having said that, right now I don’t see anyone who has laid any kind of serious groundwork for a “not voting” campaign based on any issue. So that means if people don’t vote, the establishment will simply through up their hands and shrug and have no idea why you didn’t vote. In fact, most likely they will attribute it to the crazy idea that the Democratic Party “went too far Left” because contrary to all reason that’s the prevailing opinion in Washington these days.  Then you’re “not voting” will only result in handing power over to people who are working against your interests and at the same time pushing party that is supposedly on your side in the direction away from your interest. In other words it would be a total failure.

So in short. I understand why it might be tough. And I get wanting to send a message and why you might feel discouraged and all that. And under other circumstances I might even be wholly with you and on your side. But not under THESE circumstances. The plight we’re in right now.

So Vote you idiots. This politics stuff might be boring and annoying and infinitely frustrating and even a little scary. But it really matters. We can’t afford to have the silent majority “opt out” of the process without a good reason.

The main reason I despise the way our society’s education system works can be exemplified by this account of how Justice Scalia chooses clerks:

The story says the data support Scalia’s comment. In the last six years, about half of the Supreme Court’s 220 law clerks attended Yale or Harvard law schools, respectively ranked first and second by U.S. News. About 50 others came from Chicago, Stanford, Virginia and Columbia. None hailed from American University’s Washington College of Law. Scalia acknowledged there are some exceptions, citing the case of Jeffrey Sutton, now a federal appeals judge on the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals based in Cincinnati, according to the Times account. Sutton was first hired by Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr., and then worked for Scalia.

“I wouldn’t have hired Jeff Sutton,” Scalia said. “For God’s sake, he went Ohio State! And he’s one of the very best law clerks I ever had.”“

What a sad world. How many Jeff Suttons never get to clerk for a Supreme Court Justice and as such never gain the credentials to be considered at the highest echelons of elite society because they never did hold a high profile clerkship.   Maybe if boneheads like Scalia actually took the time to look at more than what school a person attended there’d be a lot more Jeff Suttons in positions of power and our court system would work a lot better.

Basically, isn’t Scalia just admitting here that he’s too damned lazy to evaluate the merits of various candidates and just wants to let the law school admissions process do all his work for him? And the irony is, he’s trusting these law school admissions processes even at the same time he’s condemning the schools for poorly educating the students! If they suck at educating so much, what makes him think he can trust their selectivity in admissions? How does he know they aren’t just passing the buck on down to the undergraduate school admissions who in turn might be basing their decisions primarily on other ridiculous and arbitrary characteristics. That sounds like a great way to determine the future of our legal system!

And I actually think the courts are one of the better, more merit based power structures in our country. Certainly rising through the ranks of the media, politics, government bureaucracies, and of course the corporate hierarchy are substantially worse. At least admissions are at least partially based on something you yourself are doing that is at least mildly related to your ability in the field at hand.. In most of these other systems it’s who your friends and family are and how well you network that counts even more than what school you managed to get accepted into.

My roommate told me a story about one of her teachers in her school who told the story of one of her sons or nephews or something who basically was able to retire as a millionaire by age 40 primarily on the basis of how well he networked. He kept getting offered really good high paying jobs because of the people he knew. This was supposed to be an inspiring story for the students in the class I guess. 

Sure really inspiring. All this education stuff doesn’t matter. Just make a lot of friends, especially rich and well connected friends, and all will be well!

And if you are shy, introverted, or just don’t like people very much. Oh well. Too bad for you. Your hard work and intellect is nothing compared to their l33t social skillz!

Meritocracy for the win.

The other day I was listening to the radio and only half paying attention when I heard this particularly depressing sequence of words being used in the context of a news story:

Oh, let me count the ways in which this is an absurd statement!

1. “publicly”  -  Punishing people publicly is an archaic barbaric practice in and of itself. It turns law and order into a spectator sport.

2. “stoning” – Stoning is a particularly cruel way to punish anyone. It’s also inefficient. If you want to cause someone pain there are much faster and easier ways to go about it. But those ways don’t have the visceral effect of having your community coming at you with hate and rage in their eyes tossing stones at you. Undoubtedly being stoned is terrifying and embarrassing beyond almost any other conceivable punishment whether or not it is done in public or to death.

3. “to death” – Death penalties are themselves ridiculous and should be phased out throughout the world. Death by stoning is a particularly heinous method but even if it were hanging or guillotine or lethal injection it would still be sick and barbaric. Death is the last recourse of a society that has lost its imagination. It also doesn’t actually reduce crime.

4.”adultery” – It’s ridiculous that adultery is a crime anywhere on this planet. The idea that the state should directly interfere with people’s personal life to the point of assigning criminal liability for simple infidelity is insane. Even if you judged adultery a crime and said society had a right to assign it as such, how on EARTH can it be a crime deserving of such a severe punishment? This likely makes consensual adultery a worse thing to do than rape, molestation, theft, assault, embezzlement, reckless endangerment, involuntary manslaughter, environmental desecration, and a host of other crimes.

5. “alleged” – Even if you were to accept that adultery is a crime and that it should be punished by death by stoning in public, that would still be completely irrelevant since the crime in this case hasn’t been proven. It’s merely alleged! Certainly with a punishment that is that heinous and monstrous and cruel, you should be damned sure that you have the right person and that they really did commit the acts for which they are accused! Otherwise your justice system is just a sham.

6. And last but not least “a woman”.  And herein lies the rub. The purpose of this legal system is to repress and suppress women.  How often do you hear about a man being publicly stoned to death for “alleged” adultery?  It doesn’t happen. (though to be fair sometimes the man with whom the married woman had an affair is also stoned with her) Because the man in the marriage makes the accusation and the authorities in those societies take the man’s word for it. This then is used to lock women into relationships that can be abusive and to ensure that they remain subservient to the male dominant class. The woman is made an example of so as to ensure that the society continues to see sexuality, particularly female sexuality, as a shameful thing that should not be expressed, at least not in public. But of course violent stoning of unarmed defenseless persons to death is perfectly fine to express publicly.

That’s all I could see off the top of my head. But geez. How could just 9 words be so utterly deprived of sense and reason?  It sickens me that there exists places in this world where people can make such utterances without any realization of how absurdly wrong their actions are and how twisted their world view is.  And why does not the entire world rise of the decry such behavior with one voice and bring it to an end? Surely good people everywhere know better than this.

Or do they?  Is it really so easy for people to be mislead into thinking something is right when all logic stands stoutly against it?

What am I saying. Of course it is. It happens all the time.

What kind of strange twisted world do we live in?

I was already leaning in his direction but this one cinches it for me:

Recall that this is the guy who fought for Gay Marriage in court and showed definitively that Proposition 8 was unconstitutional. Judge Walker agreed and struck it down.

He’s also the guy who said this when pressed to defend his actions:

And here’s another clip from him on the same issue:

Dude. Ted Olson is pretty awesome.  If I ever said or thought a bad thing about him in the past or was ever tempted to, I take it all back.  If most of the Republican party were where he is, I might be tempted to be a Republican.

digby documented this video that played on Fox News:

Now I feel sick just posting that cuz giving it even one additional audience member it shouldn’t have would be a crime against human decency.  However, watching this lead me to a burning sense of curiosity, so I’ve got to post this and ask you my readers this burning question I have.

Is this your history?

I especially ask of those of you who grew up in the South or who grew up in heavily conservative towns or conservative areas. I’m not talking about various small factual details, most of which are undoubtedly true, if badly misinterpreted. I’m talking about the overall world view being expressed here. The value judgments being placed on the ways in which the history transpired. How much of this tracks with what you learned about the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Gilded Age? Was it similar?  Was Lincoln a dangerous tyrant in your history books? Was Cleveland a hero? Did blacks suffer because they were freed from slavery? Was laissez faire capitalism what brought about the advancement of human society?

Because this shares no resemblance whatsoever to the history I learned from my family and during my schooling. Not in grade school, not in high school, and not in College. I grew up and went to school in Delaware. While I wasn’t a history major in college I did take a few history classes one of which dealt with US history. Since then I’ve always remained a healthy curiosity for history and have read many books and online resources related to it. And I’ve watched my fair share of the history channel. I’m certainly by no means anywhere near an expert, but I’d like to think I have a bit better of a grasp than say Glenn Beck whom I know of at least one well respected history scholar and professor considers “doesn’t know anything” about American history.

But I’ve never before encountered a history quite like this one.

So if this is what you have always learned in school then we’re going to have to hash this out somehow. One or the other of us has a very very false notion of the history of the United States. And I’m going to have to try my best to explain to you, in excruciating detail, why I am confident that the person who was badly deceived is you.

But if you didn’t learn this in school then Good. I’ll trust that you and I both can agree that while the truth might not be exactly what we learned in school, it certainly isn’t this. I won’t have to go into detail explaining to you the obvious internal contradictions inherent in this presentation and the things that make me think it is a wholly opportunistic attempt to twist history to serve the whims of a few billionaires. I won’t have to describe all the details of misery and suffering conveniently left out of this account as if they don’t matter. I won’t have to dig out the accounts of real scholars of history and quote their analysis of primary sources that invalidate this total and utter BS.

Instead, I’ll just hope that this kind of twisted history story dies away and nobody sane or of any level of knowledge and intellect ever comes to believe it.

But if there really are these two vastly different conflicting histories already well known and believed by large swaths of the population, then I think I’ve finally come to a true understanding of why this world is so fucked up.  If you come from that tradition that had engrained in you this false history and you never were exposed to an alternative tale, well then I don’t see how it would ever be likely for you and I to come to common ground on anything. You’re simply basing your understanding of the universe in totally different terms than I ever will. 

Because if you believe in THIS history then you manifestly believe that ending the misery and suffering of millions people with my skin color who were living without rights as slaves is far less important than the right of States never to have a central government impose its will upon them.

That’s a contradiction I can’t accept. If you believe that at the core of your being, then I don’t even know how to begin to communicate with you.

And that’s why I find this video so terrifying. Because even if nobody currently believes this claptrap, there is obviously an effort underway to ensure that as many people as possible start to grow up believing this. Fox News has a huge reach. As do right wing radios. Those parents and grandparents teach their children. Those children attend schools like Glenn Beck University and are told not to trust anything they learn from anywhere else.  And soon…. we end up with a permanently divided society that can find no common ground on any point. Defeating that ingrained ignorance with the undeniable truth will be a slow and painstaking process that will take decades. That will leave us in a sad state indeed.

Propaganda is a very scary thing.

Is Obama a Muslim?

One Pew poll that came out before the whole mosque business showed that 18% of Americans now think President Obama is a Muslim. That was a doubling from the year before. A Time poll came out later showing that 24% of Americans now think Obama is a muslim. More Republicans think he’s a Muslim than think he’s Christian.

President Obama’s administration came out and replied with something along the lines of “he’s not a muslim, he’s a christian, he prays every day.”  If we ignore the part of that statement about praying every day (which you might have conflicting opinions about), it’s clear that that was the correct response. It’s true. It’s factual. Can’t complain about telling the truth.

But I wish he’d instead given the REALLY right answer.  For that, we have to go to our old friend retied general Colin Powell who got it right way back during the election campaign:

I’ll repeat that. THIS IS NOT THE WAY WE SHOULD BE DOING IT IN AMERICA!

Muslim is the latest created “bad word”. Like communist, socialist, liberal, lefty, progressive, black, atheist, secular, environmentalist, feminist, community organizer, etc.  And I really really HATE that.  There is no thing I hate more in the rhetoric of the conservative radio and television personalities than their tendency to pervert language to serve their twisted purposes. It would be as if liberals were like “Oh he’s just one of those despicable soldiers. Warmongering bastards out to destroy the country!”  Of course liberals don’t do that. Because it’s sick and wrong.

I’m thinking of converting to Islam just to spite them.