A few points. (1) Voting for the person not the party can work at the local level. In my state (MA) local elections are nonpartisan anyway. Even where local media are non-existent, it's not impossible to find out about issues and candidates without relying on ads. It's also not hard to find out what these elected officials and boards act…
A few points. (1) Voting for the person not the party can work at the local level. In my state (MA) local elections are nonpartisan anyway. Even where local media are non-existent, it's not impossible to find out about issues and candidates without relying on ads. It's also not hard to find out what these elected officials and boards actually do, or even attend a meeting once in a while. Thanks to COVID, plenty of municipal meetings moved to Zoom, and many of us are pushing for them to retain hybrid capacity even when they go back to in-person.
(2) In the U.S., the federal structure complicates things. A lot. Most of us live in a nation, a state, a municipality, and maybe a county. Each level has a governing structure. They interact in complex ways. Staying informed, never mind engaged, takes serious effort. Each voter has the maximum influence at the lowest levels, and that influence diminishes as you move up the levels. In a presidential election, you have almost no influence unless you live in a swing state. (See #5 below.)
(3) The Democratic Party -- OMG, where to start, where to start? I would *not* start with the DNC (Democratic National Committee) or any of the national Dem groups: DCCC, DSCC, DLCC, or DGA. (Full names available on request, or just google.) Not unless I already had serious clout, expertise, and/or money. Each state has a Democratic state committee. Don't start there either, unless you're prepared to tear your hair out, as many Democratic activists are already doing in my state (MA) and I doubt we're unique. Most if not all of the state committees have structures that reach down to the municipal level. Start there.
(4) I could go on about why strategies and tactics that worked for the GOP from Reagan onward probably won't work for the Democratic Party, and why we should aim higher than that, but it would take a while and I've got work to do. Over the last 40 years or so, the GOP's popular pitch has coalesced around racism, anti-abortion, and guns (this directly related to hysteria about crime, not unrelated to racism). The Democratic coalition is far more diverse and unwieldy -- and IMO that's our strength in the long run, if we can manage to hold the country together in the short run.
(5) Yes to ranked-choice voting (RCV), but it's going to take it a while to make it up to national elections. It helped the GOP lose a House seat in Alaska and they sure don't want that to happen again. Also I doubt we're getting rid of the Electoral College any time soon, so RCV would have to work within that structure. I think the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is worth pursuing as an intermediate step. Signatories would pledge all of their electoral votes to the presidential ticket that wins the popular vote nationally. At present 17 states (representing 205 electoral votes) have signed on. For more info: https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-explanation
Sorry for going on so long. I've been down in the trenches for the last few years, and one thing I've learned is that things are more complicated down here than they look from the outside.
A few points. (1) Voting for the person not the party can work at the local level. In my state (MA) local elections are nonpartisan anyway. Even where local media are non-existent, it's not impossible to find out about issues and candidates without relying on ads. It's also not hard to find out what these elected officials and boards actually do, or even attend a meeting once in a while. Thanks to COVID, plenty of municipal meetings moved to Zoom, and many of us are pushing for them to retain hybrid capacity even when they go back to in-person.
(2) In the U.S., the federal structure complicates things. A lot. Most of us live in a nation, a state, a municipality, and maybe a county. Each level has a governing structure. They interact in complex ways. Staying informed, never mind engaged, takes serious effort. Each voter has the maximum influence at the lowest levels, and that influence diminishes as you move up the levels. In a presidential election, you have almost no influence unless you live in a swing state. (See #5 below.)
(3) The Democratic Party -- OMG, where to start, where to start? I would *not* start with the DNC (Democratic National Committee) or any of the national Dem groups: DCCC, DSCC, DLCC, or DGA. (Full names available on request, or just google.) Not unless I already had serious clout, expertise, and/or money. Each state has a Democratic state committee. Don't start there either, unless you're prepared to tear your hair out, as many Democratic activists are already doing in my state (MA) and I doubt we're unique. Most if not all of the state committees have structures that reach down to the municipal level. Start there.
(4) I could go on about why strategies and tactics that worked for the GOP from Reagan onward probably won't work for the Democratic Party, and why we should aim higher than that, but it would take a while and I've got work to do. Over the last 40 years or so, the GOP's popular pitch has coalesced around racism, anti-abortion, and guns (this directly related to hysteria about crime, not unrelated to racism). The Democratic coalition is far more diverse and unwieldy -- and IMO that's our strength in the long run, if we can manage to hold the country together in the short run.
(5) Yes to ranked-choice voting (RCV), but it's going to take it a while to make it up to national elections. It helped the GOP lose a House seat in Alaska and they sure don't want that to happen again. Also I doubt we're getting rid of the Electoral College any time soon, so RCV would have to work within that structure. I think the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is worth pursuing as an intermediate step. Signatories would pledge all of their electoral votes to the presidential ticket that wins the popular vote nationally. At present 17 states (representing 205 electoral votes) have signed on. For more info: https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-explanation
Sorry for going on so long. I've been down in the trenches for the last few years, and one thing I've learned is that things are more complicated down here than they look from the outside.