Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo has a post that extends a theme I have often hit on here — geographic diversity in campaigning. And retaking legislatures is the ground on which to build those skills.
Tom Sullivan, Hullabaloo: It’s not how many they are but where they are many
But we are where we are, in part, because Democrats chasing the “emerging Democratic majority” saw changing demographics as favoring them in presidential and statewide races. They abandoned the countryside, focusing instead on the concentrations of blue voters in the cities. That left the plains and mountain states and rural counties (and their elected seats) to the tender mercies of Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. Ask the South Vietnamese how holding the cities and leaving the countryside to their opponents worked out.
And where the Democratic Party is right now is the inability to hold the urban base and pursue persuadable rural (especially white rural voters) or hit enough issues of all working people to bring in persuadable white working class voters in cities and suburbs. Demographics (and psychographics for that matter, among the Trump campaign veterans) fail when they become the basis of stereotyping. There are a lot of cross-current voters who are persuadable, despite the mythology of the absolutely polarized electorate. That polarization, like Schrodinger’s cat, only determines its state of being when observed at election time.
To reach out to blue collar workers, Dems have to abandon Wall Street and Corporate Money. Bernie Sanders showed that a decent campaign can be run with volunteers and small donations. IIRC, the same was true in the 1930s by Sinclair Lewis
But they won’t. The Democratic Party is based on big city graft and DC sellouts. This hit it’s zenith with the Clintons. The Democratic Party is headed to the ashcan of history.
That might certainly be the case in Chicago, and Chicago is in deep need of a local opposition party that can take apart the system.
If that campaign of volunteers and small donations can take down Rahm and the aldermanic oligarchs in the city election, that might be a model of independent campaigns outside of the factionalism of party. Jimmy Madison would like that.
North Carolina might be a different situation. Sullivan is deeply engaged in local Democratic politics in his county and seems to see his county’s leadership as trying to figure out how get a majority of voters. Graft and sellouts vary in intensity from county to county (because of office occupant volatility if not party volatility). It is a recent factor in Raleigh in fact, enough to merit special reporting. The public here wants its business done before that of donors; it is why Pat McCrory got beat in a Trump year.
The national Democratic party is on life support indeed. The condition of states vary. California’s Democratic Party is in ferment if nothing else and could have the strength to press eastward.
It is easier to abandon Wall Street outside of New York and Silicon Valley outside of California. It is easier to track which corporations to watch in most states; they tend to be the state’s largest employers.
That’s what worries me about Chris Kennedy. His first job in Illinois was working for Archer-Daniels-Midland. OTOH, Rauner has got to go and third parties are weak here as the legislature was bi-partisan on legislation blocking third parties, i.e. orders of magnitude higher petition signatures required.
"It is easier to abandon Wall Street outside of New York and Silicon Valley outside of California. It is easier to track which corporations to watch in most states; they tend to be the state’s largest employers."
When a state’s legislature is beholden or in bed with its major employer, they will never act against its interests unless there is a huge public exposure to danger. The only real counter to that political power were unions, which is why there has been a generation long war against them. But the unions themselves are to blame for not fighting for that power. They were coopted until shrunk to near nothingness.
The Upper Big Branch mine disaster should have seen the UMWA out in force, but they were silent. New mines are opening in the Appalachians Mts but there is NO effort to organize. I speak daily to people whose grandfathers and fathers fought and bled for the Union, but now the current generation won’t due to propaganda and desperation for jobs. Because of dwindling membership numbers they see their parent’s health care and pensions disappearing. They see people killed in the mines due to poor safety practices or demand for increased production; but they won’t stand up for themselves. Its the 1920’s all over again.
Same for other states and industries. Thinking that changing the letter after a local politician from R to D is going to make a substantial change is foolish. It will be change on the margins. Until there is an effective opposing power center; not mainstream political party based, those companies will still be calling the shots.
I hate to beat a dead horse, but Sander’s run was the first real chance and it had broad support in the non-millionaire electorate.
Ridge
First — and last? Where are the heirs to that legacy? Is the only experienced politician that is pro-labor, one single 70+ year old man? No wonder that a majority of voters (outside of California) went for an inexperienced charlatan!
Even here on the blogs we hear “Oh, the voters are racist!” “Oh, the voters are misogynist!” “Oh, Russians hacked the voting machines!”, anything but “The voters are sick of sellout Wall Street/Big Corporation stooges.”
If you want a real difference, then removing Big Money from a political party would be a start. Perot and Sanders showed it could be done. But if you do that, then the leeches that feed off Big Money in the parties won’t get fat every 2 and 4 yrs.
Can’t have that.
R
“You can fool some of the people all of the time and you can fool all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.” – A. Lincoln (yeah the assassinated him too).
The problem is the frame. Abandoning a corporation is not the same as abandoning a corporation’s workers and consumers, and in fact the opposite is often true. But both parties have adopted the equivalence of the 2. And in reality, what is typically sold as pro-corporation is actually just pro-executive.
Because “who knows what business [corporations] need better than its executives”–and that winds up being “incentives” that translate to the corporate bottom line and the executives’ compensation plans at the expense of all other stakeholders in the enterprise–customers, vendors, employees, communities, and governments.