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.

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