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Sunday, July 29, 2018

Yo, Establishment Democrats, It's About More Than Trump

Today I went to the monthly meeting of a small political group that borders between activism and advocacy. They had an Establishment Democratic member of the US House of Representatives there to provide an "update" and answer some questions that people might have. I choose not to identify the group or the Representative because at this point, they're the best opportunity in this area to keep things from getting worse and I don't want to discourage at least minimal support for the political defense of the United State's spirit and soul.

As much as I don't want to hurt the pragmatics of the current realpolitik, I feel the need to comment about the encounter I had with the Representative. No personal threat, altercation, or anything like that occurred. This story has nothing to do with harassment, violence, or anything like that. This purely an ideological and political encounter. I feel the need to make this kind of dislosure because I want to provide commentary that may sway some small segment of the population but to make clear no violation of anything occurred, just some disappointment and questioning of faith.

Many readers and those I interact with on social media know that I've stood up for the Democratic party and the importance of getting enough of them into office to stem the disintegration of United States political institutions and society. I have also tried encouraging as many people as possible to get out to their primaries and to the general election in November to vote Democrats into the US Senate, US House of Representatives, and into local and state positions.

Heck, even after today, I'm still helping put together some postcards to be mailed to registered Democrats in a specific district with a VERY conservative Democrat. These postcards have the aim to get out the vote. I'm participating in this venture because the Republican is THAT MUCH WORSE. . .and there's other important candidates on different levels to vote for.

I have even felt guilt and despair about not doing more politically to try stemming the tide of injustice in our governments, society, and culture. Last week, I had started the process of signing up for texting out the vote for Beto O'Rourke, US Senate candidate down in Texas, facing off against Ted Cruz (please people of Texas, get out the vote for Beto. . .but, heck, do your civic duty, either which way) and originally wanted to participate in the texting campaign today. This activist/advocacy had caught my attention, though, and I figured participating locally was important, and I wanted to get involved "in real life". The important part: I didn't feel like I had done enough, all the information had felt overwhelming, and I wanted more of a support network in these political endeavors.

Some social media encounters with friends have also done a fair job of getting me thinking deeply about politics, politicians, and the intermixture of them with everday, normal people. One friend and I agree on some general ideas of where we'd like to go, even though we have traveled different roads (he has come from a Republican background but has become something of a radical left populist while I've gone from Green that voted Nader in 2000 to trying to figure out where to fit on the Left). Another friend has challenged my activism from the standpoint of a moderate who's sick of the partisanship but loves how wonky I get. A third friend and I go back a LOONNNNGGG time (I'd pick him up on the way to high school, and he provided a tape or two for the car), and he has challenged me with disaffection, questioning my ardent activism with arguments about the country not having inspiring or motivating candidates, which motivated me to investigate and post essays and articles on social media with the following hashtags: #VoterFrustration #VoterApathy #TurnoutSuppression #VoterSuppression.

Listening to the In The Thick podcast episode "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Interview" probably keyed me up, too. They did a lovely candid interview with Ocasio-Cortez, including a line that I had to paraphase in a Tweet:



So now that I've built up my needs and desires for politics in the moment, I went to the advocacy/activism group meeting this afternoon. The presence of the US Representative came as a surprise, but it provided the prospect of getting some useful information. He explained the current state of the fight against Trump, praised Mueller all over the place, touted the importance of the people in the fight (he at least struck that correct note, actually reminding me fondly of the In The Thick episode from last night -- and his argument that there wasn't a Blue Wave out there, that Democratic voters had to get out there and cast their vote, they couldn't depend on others to vote Blue struck my as a good note, too), and how the Democrats had to get more seats in Congress. The fight against Trump wouldn't amount to much without more Democrats. Watergate took 28 months for Nixon to resign, and it couldn't have reached that point without a hostile Democratic Congress. . .and Watergate was child's play. Methinks this Representative has his opinion of someone's guilt. The Representative even made sure to say that the fight isn't over in the House of Representatives.

Everything sounded fine and good, maybe very process oriented and wonky, but sure, whatever. The Representative took some questions, pretty much some more process and wonky questions about gun control, the collusion investigation, and other questions on common issues today. His questions came all process oriented, wonky, and pressing the importance of people voting to get the Democratics in control of Congress.

Actually a couple things didn't sound so good:

  • The Representative said that he would love to legislate in a world like the '50s, when things were calm. Errmmmm. . .maybe for white straight men it was fine
  • Then he praised politics during the time Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his rescue program against the Great Depression. . .except for the Japanese that the government locked up and also the black service workers and agricultural workers who the government legislated out of getting benefits from the social programs. Once again, errmmmm. . .maybe for white straight men it was fine
Lately, I've gotten sick of all the wonk and process oriented discussion of government. I listen to a lot of political podcasts. I see all these posts on Facebook, Twitter, and other places getting all wonky, process oriented, and weighing down in facts. Frankly, I've stopped reading them in depth unless it's an article that I've actively found myself. Even then, I've started snoring or scanning to look for the main point. It just gets old after awhile. And if I'm thinking that way, someone who gets pretty wonky on his own (shut up, friends from high school), how do busy, workaday people react to it?

Throw in the latest discussions and good challenges I've gotten from friends, I felt the need to raise my hand. I would give the last question. I asked, "This will be more of a touchy feely question, but what can you provide us for hope to be realized?" I got emotional, so I got shaky (I actually felt a little desire to tear up, like I have a bit lately when I've been feeling things getting real, like on TV, in a book, or in an article/essay when I feel what characters or the author feels in that moment), the room got a little confusing, so I restated to the effect of: "What concrete hope do we have for the future, coming from you and other Democratic politicians?"

I can't remember the exact answers but it came down to pretty much gaining control of Congress and, this one really boggled my mind, the Democrats had gotten people together like this activist/advocate group together. That people coming together was enough of an accomplishment, a hope. He also went into some story of working on appropriating funds and rules for the Courts (actually interesting wonk there as I didn't realize that Congress had that kind of control over Courts) that eventually ended up with him having hot chocolate and cookies at some Justice's home. Well, that's cuddly, isn't it?

The part about the Democrats getting people together to be activist/advocates felt disingenuous to me. Calling people coming together disingenuous coming feels like a lot, especially coming from me. Three things, though:

  1. Arguably, the existential threat of Trump, the Freedom Caucus, and the enabling GOP has gotten people off their asses to become advocates and activists. You can easily find articles that state as much, and I've encountered plenty of people at political events and situations that state that it was this threat that caused them to get off their asses and find out how to fight it and make a difference

  2. This level of advocacy and activism should have been and should be the status quo. Frankly, the Democratic party has fallen flat for years, focusing on getting Federal political office instead of working on the State and local levels to motivate people into active participation and engagement with the civic and political order

  3. Our political and civic leaders need to do more to provide messaging, policy ideas, reasons, and causes to fight for rather than working to disrupt the enemy political party in power, to put their chosen party into power, and once the chosen party is in power to make coalitions to then figure out what to do with the government. How much is the Right arguing the Left isn't seeing sense and not willing to form coalitions to figure out the bipartisan way of figuring out the direction of the country?
Even though the Representative adorned the discussion with coalition building and bipartisanship, his language felt more like gaining access, influence, and process. I felt the same about the activist/advocacy group. Frankly, the weighing toward access, influence, and process is what led me to find the term advocacy group when I got home. The discussions about the processes of fighting for these Democratic causes, through the Representative in the halls of government and the rank and file of the group working on

  • Sending out postcards
  • Making phone calls
  • Getting people on the street registered to vote
  • Reaching out to their representatives
  • Even coming together to meetings like this
It felt like the causes didn't matter, that it was the processes that mattered. Did the process matter because it brought them together and gave them reason to interact and have common cause with other people, no matter the cause. I know the causes have a lowest common denominator, but by being so focused on the trees of access, influence, and process, it felt like the Representative and the group didn't want a forest of a message, an image for the future, of something to hope for.

The Representative and the group already had their concrete wonky processes to reach their particular causes. They had hope that just by following through these processes, they'll get their people into office. These people will execute their "common sense" legislation or will work to create bipartisan coalitions to figure out the "common sense" legislation after receiving input from their people.

The process orientation and discussion of building access and influence felt like that wonky talk that turns off independents who have little motivation to vote in the first place. The emphasis on building access and influence came off as too much, almost on the route to backroom deals with the possibility for corruption. That's how we ended up with Trump and the Freedom Caucus, the everyday Right had gotten sick of "business as usual." Spending all that time building access and influence by the politicians made the everyday people feel ignored and that their elected officials had gotten out of touch with their constituents.

Heck, I understand that process orientation, building access, and building influence is a part of government. I made arguments that Hillary Clinton would have proved more effective with policy and legislation than Obama because she could work the bars and rooms with other politicians while Obama wanted to just go home and spend time with his family (which, honestly, I find more endearing and what I would like to see in a leader). That legislative stuff, the process orientation, the access building, the influence building, though, especially when shared so bald facedly doesn't make for good leadership. Maybe I'm not cut out for these aspects of advocacy groups.

We need more leadership from our elected representatives. We need inspiring and motivating messaging and reasons for hope, not stories related about how their kicking ass at process, building access, and building influence. We don't need our elected officials to tell us that things suck and that only our votes can fix things. . .especially when the voters want motivating and inspiring leaders in office to get them off their butts and engaged. We shouldn't need an existential threat to get us

  • Engaged
  • To volunteer for service opportunities
  • To get us interacting with each and coming together to make our neighborhoods, our towns, our cities, our states, and our country a better place.
As a part of my searching for articles and essays about #VoterApathy #VoterFrustration #TurnoutSuppression and #VoterSuppression, I made the conclusion negative campaigning against an opponent has one main goal: getting the opposite party voters to self-suppress. It might bolster the negative campaigner's own party voters to vote, but not by much.

The biggest side effect of negative campaigning that hurts our country and possibly a candidates own chances to win, especially if both/all candidates negatively campaign, it encourages independent voters to self-suppress. Even today, I hear plenty of people say that they didn't like any of the candidates in 2016 enough to vote. Plenty of people say that

  • Both parties are just as bad as each other
  • Their vote doesn't matter
  • They aren't interested in politics
  • Politics doesn't affect them
  • That all politicians are bad and no matter who's in office, the life of that particular voter will suck (especially for marginalized people)
so they don't vote. I believe that after years and years of negative campaigning, a lot of people eligible to vote, especially independent voters, have given up and decide not to vote for any or all those reasons, all because of despairing, negative campaigning.

Us people are failing the country by letting people like Trump get into office. At the same time, though, the people who volunteer and put themselves forward to become our leaders fail us. They don't inspire us. They don't motivate us. They don't provide us messages that we can connect to. They don't provide us a future to live for and to build together.

I think Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez put it perfect in that "In the Thick" podcast. I'm not going to quote it word for word, but she pretty much said that she (and all of us, frankly) made the mistake of thinking we didn't have to do anything more after Obama got into office. Obama provided us hope we could believe in. Obama even dug into his community organizing roots and told us that if we didn't like what we saw, we had to get out there and stir things up. We, the People, need to stay active and civically engage with our country. We need to become activists, take to the streets, talk to people, engage with them, and work to make the world into a good place.

Maybe on some level, Obama failed us by not reminding us that we had to work to maintain that better world. I know I've run into plenty of young people on social media who argued that the momentum of history would take us to the more just world we have envisioned.

So today, this advocacy/activism group and this US Representative have disappointed me. They didn't provide me with inspiration, with hope, with a vision for the future to motivate me, to enervate me, and to give me support to keep going. I don't plan on giving up in despair, but this encounter has frustrated me.

I still plan on getting my vote out in November. As much as my Establishment Democratic candidates don't inspire me, they're still much better than the existential threat of Trump, the Freedom Caucus, and the GOP. Please, please, please, readers, for all that is

  • Good
  • Loving
  • Compassionate
  • Empathic
  • Just
  • Pluralistic
Please also get out there and vote, no matter who you vote for. I would hope it's Democratic because Trump feels like he's pushing for authoritaraniasm, but frankly, right now, I just want people to start getting involved, getting the hang of it, and realizing that We, the People, do have the power to make the world better. Maybe some of us just have to become leaders at some point (please don't make it me. . .I feel like if my essays get popular, I might end up there. . .but I really don't want to. . .someone else would definitely be better fit and a better vessel for justice).

For today, though, we need more leadership that provides concrete

  • Messaging
  • Motiviation
  • Inspiration
  • Images
  • And hope for a better future
For the future, us people have to get

  • Civically engaged
  • Involved in service
  • To support leaders that embody us and keep us doing more of what keeps this country going
And we can't quit. The new status quo has to be us coming together to work together to truly make a country of justice, hope, and authentic empathy.

It's about more than Trump. It's about the future. We need a hopeful and empathic vision to keep aiming for.

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Posted by The_Lex at 1:38 AM 0 comments

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Wednesday, July 25, 2018

Ruminations: Voter Frustration/Apathy to Self-Suppression to Blaming Negative Campaigning

For the last few days, I've tried to get a better understanding of dynamics between the electorate, candidates, and politicians. The first inspiration for this exploration came from the latest FiveThirtyEight Politics episode, "Democratic Socialists are Here to Stay". The hosts discussed what different metrics and polls could help predict polls the best. The podcast had generally discussed the Congressional Generic Polls up to this to see the sentiment of the nation.

In the discussion, though, the hosts opined that the Likely Voter Polls would provide more accurate metrics. Makes sense. As I understand it, the Congressional Generic Polls doesn't necessarily screen out non-voters or those with a low chance of voting, for whatever reason, so allowing this data into the polls can skew the results by giving irrelevant noise credence. Likely Voter polls, however, should screen out those non-voters and unlikely voters, thus generating more accurate predictions of an upcoming election.

The Internet doesn't have that many Likely Voter polls published or shared on it. The closest I could find was this Vox article: "Poll: only 28 percent of young voters say they will certainly vote in the 2018 midterms". Being a big social media user, I shared the article with some comment about needing to increase that likely voterhood of young voters to 100%. It felt great until someone made a comment about not having an inspiring candidates that would motivate young people to vote, so why even bother?

I first responded to that comment by going off about Trump being an existential crisis that could lead to the destruction of the United States and the world (the fires all around the world this year are really freaking me out, then add in the belligerence of Pompeo and Trump with regards to Iran this week, and so many other things). Candidates that make a modicum of sense and can bring order back to Washington and society by putting a stop to Trump is worth it, even if they're bland in other ways. Stopping this trashfire is more important now than pushing for social and economic progress. We can move onto those good things once we return to steady pluralistic peace that we don't feel gaslighted all the time.

That whole response felt hypocritical to arguments that I've made in the past -- except that the more voters that vote, the more we hold our elected officals accountable. I want our candidates, politicians, and leaders to motivate and inspire us to vote and get out in the world to actively mold it. I do a hyperfocused search with terms a variety of terms about Americans not voting and the reasons for it.

Since this search came in reaction to an expression of voter apathy, disillusionment, disaffection, and frustration rather than active suppression by the powers that be, I screened out straight up voter suppression. I believe voter suppression contributes a lot to results I disagree with and goes against the spirit of America. Nonetheless, other than the $5 per month donation I send to Let America Vote and other token efforts here and there, I can't do much about voter suppression (you should also contribute to Let America Vote and also help fight voter suppression, too).

Plus, voter suppression in the form of laws, rules, and so forth isn't very complicated. Corrupt Powers that Be put "legal" roadblocks in the way of people that obviously don't support them. Simple, but difficult, solution: get those Corrupt Powers out of office, replace them with Agents of Democracy that hate voter suppression as much as me and want as many voices to participate in Democracy to have the power to do so. Simple to imagine the path to the destination, but difficult because it involves so many human factors, which I only have a limited power over. The most power I can possibly have pretty much comes down to influence people around me and who I have in Internet reach to get out the vote and value candidates that will fight voter suppression.

The biggest issue in motivating and influencing that way: voter self-suppression, a complicated and still difficult scenario. Here's a sample of articles that I found:








All of that Internet searching combined with a bunch of surfing I did this weekend about the ideological alignment of the Alt Right and Russia (epitomized by this quote: "Classic Soviet propaganda always treated Democrats and Republicans as essentially indistinguishable and interchangeable components of the bourgeois power structure, both equally worthy of denunciation", which basically made me think of Green/3rd Party and a few disaffected voters I know who either voted 3rd party or didn't vote in 2016) motivated me to end this latest social media blitz with the following:



A connection provided me a good challenge, stating that even though those factors aren't good, it didn't strike them as "voter suppression" since it lacked intentionality from The Powers That Be. The challenge to my claim sent me on another tear to narrow down terms and try to make an argument of intentionality on the side of politicians to encourage voter self-suppression (term I discovered in ths tear through the Internet).

My thought processes haven't gone much further than the following Tweets:




I'll finish these ruminations here. My mind contains more fuel for rumination, especially in regards campaigning and leading more positively. I also have some thoughts about presenting political information/arguments in ways that cut down on information overload. This ruminative essay fails at that level of succinctness, but I'm OK with that. At this time, I'm fine with throwing shit at the wall, seeing what sticks, and also seeing if anyone else has any useful responses. So. . .anyone else have anything to add?

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Posted by The_Lex at 10:06 PM 0 comments

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Sunday, July 22, 2018

Overtsimulated Mixed with Conspiracy Twittervism

Whereas, I'm too muddle minded right now to put together an articulate essay; Whereas, I also have a lot of things to do; Thus, Twittervism.

Also an interesting note that I get into a little conspiracy-minded in the end, though I'm more willing to accept that Alt Right and Russia is more ideological convergence that makes the Alt Right feel a bond. Nonetheless, considering the last week and discussions in the air, this kind of conspiracy doesn't seem too out of whack.



















































































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Posted by The_Lex at 1:45 PM 0 comments

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Thursday, July 19, 2018

Protest Sign Pictures, Ambivalence of Really Desired Third Parties, & Michigan Electorate as Microcosm of the United States

I finally made it out to a protest, or in this case, Confront Corruption / Demand Democracy Vigil. Click here to go down to the bottom of this entry if you just want to see pictures of signs at the protest vigil.

Between work and going to the protest vigil, though, I got poked into having a pretty big reaction on the topic of demographics Trump supporters and two-party supporters. The poking pushed me into a big rant into having to support the Democratic party because, at this point, the United States has come under existential threat by the xenophobic conservatives who fear the loss of national identity (or, in my eyes, status anxiety and loss of receiving material and civic embrace just because they are born into a privileged situation). The Democratic Party isn't perfect, but I don't see 3rd party or independent candidates getting much traction in national elections.

I ended up an hour late to the protest vigil, but I didn't waste that time. Maybe the rant I made on the comment thread would fall into a "wasting time" category. It did, however, allow me to get closer to articulating some thoughts in my head about the issues.

A couple articles I looked into obsessively trying to get a better handle on people having a faith in 3rd parties and independent candidates proved worthwhile reads. They expanded and complicated the issue for me. Maybe not the desired result -- because we all just want to win arguments on social media, right? Expanding my understanding of issues can help me formulate better questions, though, which will provide better answers for winning on social media.

I'll just link to the articles and provide commentary:

"Does America Want A Third Party? (Or Is It Just David Brooks?)" - FiveThirtyEight

The FiveThirtyEight crew explored some useful statistics about the partisanship of the parties, discussed the idea of a 3rd party that embodies the radically "Reasonable Center", Duverger's Law, and also the sheer difficulty of getting a successful 3rd party up and running in the United States two-party system. I won't get too much into the article, but it's a good read.

My main takeaway comes down to this: people who want a successful 3rd party need a lot of patience. They need to start in local and state elections and in building up party organizations from the ground up all around the country, hopefully at the same time. My biggest problems with the Green and Libertarian parties is that they run too much on cleaning up elections in the future that they don't do the groundwork needed in the present to build up a successful party organization that has the trust and support of the people.

Try to clean up elections is laudable, sure, but without the support of the people, candidates in the party won't get into office to make the changes. Neither of the two big parties will make those changes because either (a) they will lose power and/or (b) they fear the other party has gotten so strong that if they ignore the big issues that voters want solutions to NOW, the other party will get into office and put an alternate view of reality into policy.

Sadly, we had the final result happen in the 2016 Election because we had two of the most hated candidates in modern history, then we got this atrocity in chief. If you've read my blog loyally, you know my feeling of how Clinton lost the Election.
Even though Clinton won more of the marginalized vote, she still didn't understand the marginalized vote enough to motivate more people to come out to vote. In addition, Clinton undercut the local and state Democratic organizations, after Obama had basically bankrupted the Democratic National Committee to win his re-election in 2012. . .corruption or not, bad strategies.

Third parties need more organization, again mostly started with a lot more wins on the local and state levels. Otherwise, candidates scatter themselves around the country with disorganized platforms that don't necessarily work together with synergy. Then they throw a candidate on top as a candidate for President. Without building up the trust and dependency of local and state party organizations, that Presidential will amount to little, mostly people disenchanted with the two parties and/or purity voters that appreciate the actual platform of the candidate.

Most serious, pragmatic voters will see a 3rd party with little organization and little track record of how well that candidate can govern. They just see a can do attitude and maybe some well thought out arguments. Unless that candidate gets tons of money from fundraising or has some amazing knack with social media, public relations, and marketing, however, their results will be horrible.

The most "success" I've seen have come from Ross Perot in 1996 and Ralph Nader in 2000. Arguably, Perot split the vote with Bob Dole and Ralph Nader split the vote with Al Gore. Both Perot and Nader had a lot of money and a lot of clout. Either way, in both cases, the third party just ruined a major party's chance of winning. Not much else.

Now if two or more REALLY REALLY strong third party candidate entered a race for President, we could have some interesting results. I don't see that happening, though. We can't even seem to get all that inspiring candidates for a whole population bubbling up for 2020 in the two major parties yet.

I might be modeling the course of candidacy to successful election on an outlier, though: everyone could feel from Obama's speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention that he was a rising star and would run for office some day. We need that kind of inspiration, or four more years of the buffoon we have in office now.

Either which way, if you have an interest in understanding the dynamics of getting a third party into the American political system, this chat among the FiveThirtyEight crew can provide some perspective. The chat also does a good job to illustrate that along with the very partisan political atmosphere we find ourselves in, we also have a very segmented atmosphere that could be served by more voices and caucuses, just maybe not the means to make it happen tomorrow.

And on the note of segmentation in our political atmosphere, the following article provides some good insight into the current state of politics:

"Friction among Michigan Democrats might pose threat to victory in November" - Bridge: News and Analysis from The Center of Michigan

I stumbled onto this article because I researched the adversary that poked me. It feels a little embarassing to say it, but I scanned through their profile to look for clues to explain why she disagreed with my "truthiness". I think it comes down to them being from Michigan.

Seeing that fact, I reached a conclusion: I don't mix well with people from Michigan. I don't have a ton of acquaintences/friends that I know of from Michigan, but I seem to make a connection with them up to a point, then it gets weird when politics come into the picture.

This article paints an interesting picture that feels a lot like the whole country. I remember reading somewhere that Illinois, Cook County, or Chicago actually provides a regional population make up that practically maps to the rest of the country when it comes to group identity ratios. Nonetheless, despite that proportional ratio, the area comes out pretty loyal Democrat with the occasional aberration when it comes to statewide elections (we've got Rauner, and we had Mark Kirk before Tammy Duckworth -- thank goodness for Senator Duckworth, she sometimes provides so much light to dark dark days).

However, after reading the above article about the Michigan elections, I'm starting to see that Michigan provides a fairly representative picture of the country. The people from Michigan feel very disillusioned with their politicians, statewide and Federally. Michigan, one of the highest populous states in the country (I didn't know that until a few months ago), has a lot of viewpoints and a lot of interests, and they don't seem to know how to form a coalition that will work for everyone.

Do Michigan Democrats want to focus on group identity interests, on class interests, on jobs? How can they combine all these interests under one umbrella to create a coalition that can please everyone, especially with the size of the state, the different conditions that everyone lives in, and all the different populations? Do they go progressive, moderate, can they combine the two, what does all that mean anyway?

I've heard a lot of commentary from the news and political podcasts about how different types of Democrats fit different parts of the country. Doug Jones in Alabama is personally pro-life but other aspects make him amenable to respecting pro-choice. Connor Lamb in Pennsylvania practically campaigned against Nancy Pelosi, supports some of Trump's iniatives to help steelworkers and coal miners even if those initiatives hurt the aggregate and is pro-gun. Do I even have to say anything about Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic Socialist Pluralistic darling of the Progressives that beautifully states that she can't see any situation in which class and economy doesn't enter into a discussion about race or any situation in which race doesn't enter into a discussion of class and economy?

The GOP keeps a tight, disciplined ship in their party platform. Members of the party need to meet qualification A, B, and C with stances X, Y, and Z. . .or be Trump who fires up the xenophobia and victimhood of the base. Democrats, on the other side, have a wide-ranging, mostly attempt at pluralistic umbrella, which generally feels like it's trying to do the best for the most people and to being accepting to the most people. Frankly, I think that is the Democratic party's strength. . .but also its weakness. Pluralism, community, and kindness are great things, but it's hard to fire people up on it without strong, articulate, inspiring charisma; a good, consistent narrative; and sound bite, concrete, plans for action that connect with a wide variety of people.

Michigan Democrats and independent voters have a lot of issues with their state politicians, though. Federal politics, frankly, has more salience to it than local and state politics. Federal politics gets into more "exciting" and "moral" issues that affects everyone in the country. Everyone can get involved, get into arguments and discussions about the topics at hand. We can get into values and wonky issues that have a much further reach.

State poltics can reach that level, too, but it just doesn't garner our attention like glamorous Federal politics. Let's not even get into local politics, where it's about everyday things. Those things affect us, but they're generally about roads, zoning, budgets, local taxes, minutiae, not values and morality.

Politics start in the the state and local, though. We can feel the affects of them, too, since those laws and policies can affect us more directly. Michigans definitely feel affected by these issues because most of their anger and ambivalence is about their state politicians (obviously, they've got issues with Detroit, Flint, and the state possibly being the image of the "flyover states" that have been discussed a lot lately after the 2016 Election).

On both the Democratic and Republic side, so many interests, so many viewpoints, Michigan is one of the biggest states, both in geographical size and in population. If a Presidential candidate wants to win, Michigan will get you a lot of votes in the Electoral College. Like the larger Federal elections, a progressive Democrat will meet with success here but failure there, so will a moderate Democrat, a moderate Republican, and also a more reactionary Republican.

No one really knows how Michigan will go. . .and this article does a really good job communicating the ambivalence and dislocation that many voters are experiencing in Michigan. I think, on the Federal level, we would serve ourselves good to get familiar with this mindset to get a better understanding where this nation is right now. I think the national Democrats would also do well to a better handle on all these mixed interests and figure out a good strategy for uniting the voters together. Coming together in opposition to Trump and the enabling GOP will only do so much. This country needs more than that.

PROTEST SIGN PICTURES FROM CONFRONT CORRUPTION / DEFEND DEMOCRACY VIGIL

I spent quite a bit of time writing the above, so I'll just post protest sign pictures. Maybe I'll type something up later.


If you like what you see here and in the past and want to free me up for more, support my endeavors by Buying Me a Coffee!

Posted by The_Lex at 10:04 PM 0 comments

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Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com