Failed Clinton/DNC Campaign for POTUS Contributed to My Volunteering for Ameya Pawar
I’ll admit, my volunteering for the Ameya Pawar for Governor of Illinois campaign has something of a twofold motivation, long-term political strategy and short-term-plus emotional drive. The long-term political strategy has provided me the primary impetus for participation, dry as the explanations may come out. My dry strategy comes largely, as I have said many times before, from my studying, a build up of rage against [45] from the day he announced his running for POTUS that reached a breaking point after Charlottesville and his speeches afterward, and many discussions on social media about the the election, the Democratic party, and how to shorten the scourge of [45]. Charlottesville provided me the final push into action while the discussions and research for them provided me the building materials for developing my strategy.
Three online articles/essays come distinctly to mind for this situation. I didn't have a good organizing system for bookmarking or had thought about the importance of doing so at the time (I recently just installed Google Bookmark Manager onto Chrome, which I think should help), so for at least one of these articles, I had to find the most equivalent or better article to list here. Not much of a loss, though, as I had remembered the facts wrong from one of the articles. The articles/essays are:
I'll start with my opinion on Hillary Clinton and the DNC fundraising scandal. There might be some misrepresentation with the promotion of their plans for funds they raised (even George Clooney had the impression that more money would go to downticket state campaigns!), which could violate an element of trust and maybe even law somewhere. Misrepresenting your goals for funds raised to run an entrepreneurial venture or funds raised for charity or assistance to be delivered can get you into some major trouble, probably moreso than what some people see on Kickstarter.
Mostly, though, I view this activity as misdirected goals that showed a misperception of the politics and opinions about the DNC, Clinton, and the importance of the downticket races and elected positions. Corruption, to me, feels like a hard accusation to stick. Political parties are strange animals, being more of a private entity than a public governmental organization or committee. They have a lot more freedom than we like to think. If anything, look at all the different approaches they have to run primaries. A lot of us know that they can have Open Primaries, Cauceses, and all types of mixed ways of picking their candidate for the general election.
Utah (PDF from a Utah government website about elections) has an interesting process for parties to choose their candidates, which provides two routes. A candidate can get on the primary ballot by being handpicked by their party however the party wants.
The second way a candidate can get onto the ballot is by getting enough petition signatures to get onto the ballot. A party would prefer the first route, but the State made a law requiring qualified parties to accept the petition signature route, too. So, yes, states can make laws regulating Primaries, Caucuses, etc. but they generally don't do much other than providing access to get onto the ballot, as far as I believe. They probably do some election fundraising regulation, too, along with the Federal government doing some of that, too, but it's mostly about allowing people avenues to get into primary elections and caucuses.
I think even in the case of Hillary and the DNC, they skirted by a lot of regulation to avoid breaking fundraising laws. Wrong priorities, as plenty of articles point out (including one that I linked to), along with common facts known by a lot of us and at least one news story I heard on the radio. Clinton and the DNC didn't put enough boots on the ground and campaign enough, person to person. As we all know, she didn't visit Wisconsin during the 2016 campaign and I believe a few other states, too. I believe voter suppression played a part in these locales, but I think showing her face could have done a bit more to sway these voters.
One radio news story really sticks out for me, though. NPR had broadcasted it. It focused on race in the election, as we did in 2016. The reporter interviewed a black woman some distance from a population center in Florida, I believe. She said that she preferred Clinton to win the election, but the woman didn't feel that motivated to go out to vote because she had no real exposure to Clinton. Even if some volunteer had come out, knocked on her door, and talked to her about Clinton would likely have been enough to motivate her to go out to vote Clinton.
Say what you will about we all have a duty and responsibility to vote in our Democratic Republic (and I agree with you to a point), but I sympathize with this woman. Since the beginning of the 2016 Election when discussing with people on social media, especially about Bernie Sanders, I criticized both Sanders and Clinton for not reaching out to marginalized people and that they were so off point with their messaging to marginalized people (especially black people), that neither of them would get the necessary votes from marginalized people, mainly because they wouldn't even bother to come out to vote.
The marginalized vote was essential to getting the win in the General Election. Maybe the the ethnic/racial white still is the majority of the population, but we, for the most part, probably have a roughly even split between parties and motivation to actually vote. This especially is the case if Hispanics, Jews, and other white-skinned ethnicities are taken into account as marginalized people. In essence, the white vote alone wouldn't win for the Democratic candidate.
At an event about engaging in self care after [45] won the election, I overheard a black woman say "Now the liberals know how it feels [when society and the government doesn't reach out and even strikes out at you]!" How much time had passed from police shootings of black people reaching public consciousness and nothing substantially being done to prevent the deaths of black people to [45] winning? How long have black families and heritage been destroyed by slavery with no state-provided restitution or resources being provided to help create stability and support in black families and communities to [45] winning? How long has society ignored schools in predominantly black neighborhoods and pushed scorn and apathy on black children and teenagers rather than taking them seriously as young students to [45] winning? How long have black people been scrutinized morally to receive material support (if they can even get it) to [45] winning? How long have black people and communities simply been tossed aside by society to [45] winning? And this is just the second largest skin-color demographic, though one of the most downtrodden by society. Compared to other demographics, economic class distribution looks horrible.
Arguably, about half of black people in the USA have fought through selection bias, aggressions, and micro-aggressions of society but even these successful African Americans face prejudice and aggression. Who was the sports celebrity who was treated horribly by some cops and worried that he might get shot? Even when they try, black people get shit on because of bigotry. "Merit" only gets you so far or protects so much if you're not white, cis-male, straight, Christian, etc.
There are abstract arguments that voting is an irrational activity, but for most of the black community, I would say it's a-rational. Even if the person they want gets into office, they still will likely not see great results coming from it. Most of us love to have seen Obama get into office, but when it comes to the day to day lives of marginalized people, especially black people and immigrants, things really didn't get that much better. Even the improvements for the LGBT community are getting attacked by [45] and the Right to take away what meager gains they had gotten. At the most, Obama helped expose things to the daylight, so we could all see the inequities and injustices in our country, if we care enough to look.
So, honestly, I think this black woman in the backwoods expressed a lot of charity by suggesting that if a Clinton campaign volunteer had just knocked on her door and talked about Clinton with her, she would have very likely go out to vote for Clinton. Sure, Clinton had gotten a lot of the black female vote, but she needed more distributed throughout the country. Something simple as this, why didn't Clinton do it? Suppression is an argument for her not getting in office, but she also didn't do the outreach to motivate people coming out to vote for her and provide a counterpoint to suppressors.
To me, the success of Obama's campaigns came down to him having volunteers going door to door EVERYWHERE. One of our most popular Presidents ever faced an uphill battle, against Clinton even, and the DNC and Clinton hadn't learned the importance of outreach to people. Sure, she may not have had gotten as many volunteers as Obama, but when just public appearances in a state can make a difference, she should have done so.
I voted Clinton in the General Election. I wanted her to win. I think she would have made a great President (obviously much better than [45]). I think she's very capable and skilled in politics. Heck, I'm impressed with her work ethic when she learned about healthcare, put together presentations, and tried getting healthcare reform through the government during Bill's Presidency. She inspired the hell out of me with her speech and other polticians' speeches about her at the Democratic Convention that chose her as the Democratic candidate for POTUS. I wrote her a four or five page letter to notify her that she had inspired me, I really wanted her to win, and that we needed an inspiration like her to get the American people engaged in the fate of our nation and to strengthen the social fabric.
Unfortunately, these fundraising issues, the lack of support for downticket candidates by the DNC, and lack of outreach just shows how out of touch they were with the Electorate and citizens of this country. I love the fact that Clinton actually got the real majority of the vote, but those votes came from Democratic strongholds, and not even from the states that we expected to be strongholds. She needed to win the Electoral College, not the majority. I know a lot of people don't care for the Electoral College, but I think it has its place along with a proposal that I have to provide it a check and balance.
But I'm going to pause this epic here: Clinton and the DNC were out of touch. I don't think the results had to do with the issues, that it had to do with coming up with policies or promises for the White Working Class alone, the opioid crisis, that she criticized [45] too much, or that she focused too much on identity politics. No, I think the DNC and Clinton were both just so plain out of touch with actual people and didn't know that they had to engage in more face-to-face outreach and to provide a lot stronger support for downticket candidates, in person and financially. If that had occurred, I think the Democratic Party wouldn't have gotten smacked around so bad.
This revelation plays a big part in fueling my action and even provides some of the building materials for my strategy. This part didn't end up so dry, either. I want to get something posted, though, and I'm realizing now that I've got just as much, if not more, material to write about the age/generation issue then also how my history research has contributed to my strategy. Please stay tuned in for more.
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