Progressive Populism--Some Basic Questions Moving Forward

by: Paul Rosenberg

Sun Jul 05, 2009 at 11:30


Last weekend, in the discussion of my diary "The Recovery Myth", I wrote in a comment:

my point is that it's generally far easier to take over an existing party with a vibrant reform movement than it is to start a third party.

In response, Nancy Bordier replied by bringing up the political social networking tool she's developed, based on a brainstorm she had at a Howard Dean meetup back in the day.

I have been working on it for the past five years, during which it has evolved considerably into a mechanism that voters can use either to take over an existing party or start a new one.

She explained. Then adding:

The more I see Obama moving to consolidate his control over the Democratic Party using social networking techniques, the less I think a vibrant opposition reform movement can take over the Democratic Party with Obama at its helm.

My invention also uses social networking technology, but as I point out when I critique Obama's Pre-Election Web Strategy and Obama's Post-Election Web Strategy, I think it is best for voters to use social networking technologies independently of existing parties, candidates or incumbents.

While I understand her argument in the first paragraph--and sympathize--the evidence of history still weighs heavily against the third party option, except along the lines of the fusion option, exemplified currently by the Working Families Party in New York.  It's her second paragraph where I'm in complete agreement, and I went on to say that I needed to study her invention and its proposed use more carefully before responding at any length. (You can read about it yourself at her website, Re-Inventing Democracy.)

I'm still not ready to do that, in part because I'm concerned about some broader issues her invention raises, particularly in tandem with a research paper written by one of the boggers at Lawyers, Guns and Money, Dave Brockington, described in his post, "More and Better Choice = More Voters! Go Figure!"  I've got more questions than answers at this stage, as I'll discuss on the flip.... along with the reason I've titled this diary as I have.
Paul Rosenberg :: Progressive Populism--Some Basic Questions Moving Forward
Nancy's website is essentially an online book, titled "Re-Inventing Democracy", and subtitled "How U.S. Voters Can Get Control of Government and Restore Popular Sovereignty in America."  As a lifelong grassroots activist, first inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, I am deeply sympathetic with the purpose presented here.

The failings of the top-down model of elite-run "democracy" have always been evident to me, but have only grown more strikingly apparent as the voters' rejection of the catastrophic policies of the GOP in 2006 and 2008 has resulted in only the most modest changes in direction.  So my support for Nancy's basic intention is unreserved.

The problem, however, is that populists have habitually made the mistake of speaking of "the people" as if "the people" were all of one mind.  Sometimes, this is very nearly true, when large popular majorities--60 to 80 percent--favor ideas that the elites of both parties reject out of hand.  The sort of invention that Nancy has created could be invaluable to use in organizing in such situations.  But if one thinks of using it for all things, and if one thinks of potentially building new parties with it, then one must consider a broader range of issues, where deep divisions among "the people" may exist, which raises a whole different array of concerns.

That's where Dave's paper comes in.  He looks at electoral systems in almost 30 countries, using a consumer cost/benefit approach, and asking "What  makes voting worth it to people?" as a way of studying factors affecting turnout:

Like how stores with greater selection will have more customers, electoral markets with greater selection will have more voters.  Bonus if the better store also has cheaper prices.  In electoral politics, cheaper prices can be arranged through simple things, like having election day on a weekend, extended polling hours (or at least shorter lines!), etc.  It's also possible to have cheaper prices through something as mundane as accurate partisan cues, which is one reason why judicial elections in my home state of Washington often feature serious drop off on the ballot.  

So in this thing, I argue that electoral 'stores' that feature a greater range of choice, and choices closer to the voters' own views, while controlling for the usual range of individual (such as SES, education or interest) and institutional (electoral system, compulsory voting, age of the democracy, etc.) explanations, are associated with higher levels of turnout....  In fact, it turns out that electoral context as measured through overall ideological coverage (e.g. more choice) and ideological proximity (e.g. better choice) are stronger, more substantive explanations than the usual suspects (e.g. age, education, or even electoral system).

Put more simply, more voters will get what they want (electorally, at least) if there are a broader ideological range of parties that more closely match their own preferences.  This will be reflected in higher turnout.

Our two-party system is naturally a poor choice in this model for only offering two options--but it can be even poorer because those two options may not come close to voters' preferences.  And, of course, the bigger a role played by special interests, the greater the disconnect between voter preferences and what the parties offer is likely to be.

Taking Dave's argument to its logical extreme, the greatest number of choices, covering the widest ideological range, and offering choices closest to each voter's views would lead us to a system with everyone voting for themselves, each representing a party of one.  Obviously, there are costs involved in this that lie outside of Dave's model used in this paper.  Most people (unlike Sarah Palin) are actually telling the truth when they say they've got something better to do with their lives than run for and hold high office.

Still, the tendency toward political fragmentation is something that needs to be taken seriously. If two parties are clearly too few, how many are too many?  How should one know?  One approach is factor analysis.  Factor analysis takes people's views on a large number of issues, then looks for correlations between them, and seeks to find common factors.  This is the approach used in Pew's political typology research, and in Sun Tzu's analysis of the MyDD poll.  Pew found that there were nine distinct groups--three primarily Republican, three Democratic, and three independent.  Presumably, voters would be much happier if there nine parties instead of two, they could vote for someone much close to representing their political preferences.

But would this actually work?  Would a system with nine parties be able to enact effective policies?  Or--more saliently for us--would a popular sovereignty tool that empowered nine different citizen coalitions actually empower the people?  Or would it make it even easier for special interests to shape elite politics to play them off against each other?

There are other questions I could raise, as well as other indications about how political opinions might be grouped.  But I want to try to keep this discussion relatively focused, so I'm going to end it here with a final thought, which will help explain the diary's title.

The issues raised here are yet another incarnation of the perennial tension between populist and progressive tendencies in American politics.  The progressive tendency wants to move us forward--whatever that may mean (and the differences can be enormous)--while the populist tendency wants the people to be sovereign.  Progressives tend to be technocratic, one way or another, and Nancy's invention is an example of how a progressive mentality applies itself to try to reach populist goals.  I think this is very noble endeavor, and it's one that I myself am very interested in.  But in order to realize it, we cannot paper over the fact that "the people" are not always united, and sometimes can be very divided, even fragmented.  This is a very problem we need to face head on before we can hope to make real progress.  This is not to disparage any of Nancy's hard work.  But it is to raise questions about the best ways that her hard work might be carried forward in a way that will actually reach the goals she is aiming for--goals that I think are widely shared by the Open Left community.

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Progressive Populism--Some Basic Questions Moving Forward | 44 comments
Progressive populism is the opposite of corporate plutocracy (4.00 / 2)
When people vote their own economic self-interest, progressive populism wins. When they are distracted by social issues or they are convinced that workers' rights and common good should take a backseat to corporate profits, the plutocrats win. When the plutocrats own the major media, they are able to control the debate, which explains why we see so few articulate progressive populists on the weekend talk shows.
until very reently I was of your view (4.00 / 1)
but more and more the Democratic party is becoming the property of the Eisenhower Republicans, with people like Obama, Webb, and Specter taking over. There needs to be a party that represents the interests of ordinary people. There urgently needs to be a party for women. The party of Harry Reid is not interested in that job.

I think we need to look at individual races. Somewhere out there there is another Bernie Sanders. He or She might not be running for federal office. He or She might be running for the state legislature or city council, but there will be individual opportunities.

If we look for a grand third party strategy we will fail, but if we look for individual opportunities we will find them.

So What If Hubert Humphrey Had Said That In 1944? (4.00 / 2)
In 1944, Humphrey was one of the key figures in the merger of the Farmer Labor Party and the Democratic Party.  But the Democratic Party was the party of Southern racists.  If Humphrey had taken your attitude, we would never have given his famous civil rights speech at the 1948 convention--the speech that caused the Dixiecrats to walk out.

Bad as the party may be today, it's nowhere near to have vicious racists dominating the politics of the states where it is strongest.  You really need to get a sense of history.  American political parties are heterogeneous coalitions by nature, they are sites of struggle.  If you're a purist, fine.  Be like me: put most of your energy into issue advocacy.  But don't base your attitude toward party politics on a fantasy vision with no grounding in US history or politics.  That's Sarah Palin's gig.

But my bigger beef with your comment is that you're avoiding the main thrust of my post, which goes to the point that problem is much bigger than the Democratic Party, and that even Nancy's decentralizing democratic tool by itself would not be enough to overcome elite rule, even if it did give rise to a third, fourth, fifth, or even sixth party.

"Senate passes expanded GI bill despite Bush, McCain opposition"

[ Parent ]
Obviously that's a bad time to split (4.00 / 3)
If, by joining a major political party, progressives can "take it over" with respect to an important and controversial political issue, it's time to join in. But, often that's not the case. When we're not able to take control due to excessive influence by corporate contributors and corporate-controlled media, a real threat to defect may force the powers in control of the party to make real, meaningful, concessions. And we have to defect occasionally or the threat isn't meaningful, which they will figure that out fairly quickly.
[ Parent ]
I agree (4.00 / 1)
that the "grand third party strategy" will not work if the party is a replication of the structure of existing political parties.

In contrast, my invention allows voters to create political networks and winning voting blocs that can opt to work inside or outside established political parties, or establish ad hoc or permanent third parties that are unlike any third party that ever existed.

It enables voters at the grassroots to radically change the current electoral system and get permanent control of it by outflanking existing political power centers and running and electing their own candidates.


[ Parent ]
Yeah. Been sayin' this for YEARS. (0.00 / 0)
.
Get off your Internet asses, call ten friends, and just show up at your local Democratic Party HQ: You'll outnumber them. Lick envelopes, man phone banks, go out door-knocking. Work your way up to the State level, and finally, take over the national organization. It'll take about 20 years. That's how long I've been calling for it. Too bad we didn't start in 1989.

And while you're feeling democratic, vote for a new national anthem. The old one sux. Peas out.

BTW, I'm a Hawaii State blog. Blogroll me, and I'll see that you get a lighter sentence.
.

Candor and coalitions (4.00 / 1)
If you had enough parties, but not too many, you might still get Italy, or Israel.

That said, I think that one genuine advantage of a multi-party political spectrum, particularly when harnessed to a parliamentary system, is that it encourages politicians to be more candid about where they stand on issues, and why. Even when one of their positions is known to be problematic in the district where they're running, it might still be worth the risk of expressing it if the competition is literally all over the map. In the long run, this sort of thing can't help but be to the good, in that it serves the interest not only of educating the voter, but of engaging him as well.

I also think that it's easier to form coalitions that are more transparent, and therefore more easily judged by the voter. In our two-party system, this is rarely the case. Just who the hell are Arlen Spector or Joe Lieberman, anyway? It's certainly not in their interest for us as voters to know, is it?

We need to build systems in which the incentives are biased toward honesty, and toward more rather than less information, which is a rather more roundabout way of saying the same thing.

My take on Ms. Bordier's fondness for third parties, and failing that, for political coalitions outside the established parties, is that she hopes it will do in a two-party system what comes naturally in a multi-party system. I wonder how she -- and you -- would respond to that interpretation....

A Consensus-Building Federation of Self-Organizing Political Networks and Voting Blocs (4.00 / 2)

If you look closely at my invention, the Interactive Voter Choice System, you will see that it is designed around a unique consensus-building mechanism that empowers voters not only to create self-organizing political networks that can function as voting blocs, but also self-organizing federations of networks/voting blocs that can nominate and elect candidates at any level of government, including the presidency.

These networks/voting blocs can be operated by their members inside or across existing political parties. And they can also be used to create new political parties.

What makes the invention unique is that it gives voters free web-based tools and services that empower them to directly set the nation's policy priorities for the first time in history. It enables them to reset their agendas anytime they wish and build winning voting blocs around their agendas. They can use their blocs to get control of electoral and legislative processes by running and electing candidates who pledge to enact their agendas into law.

This is the core feature of the invention: it enables  voters to create their own policy agendas (and periodically update them) by selecting their policy priorities from a generic list of policy options (they can also formulate their own options).

They can submit their list of options to an online database that is used to publish and publicize periodic surveys of voter priorities as they change over time. When they do so, they have the option of identifying and contacting (indirectly) other voters' in any set of ZIP codes/voting districts they wish whose policy priorities are statistically similar to their own.

Then, using web-based social networking technologies, they can join forces to wrest control of elections from special interests and political parties in bed with special interests, again by working inside existing political parties or by working outside them in new parties.

But instead of splintering into fragmented groups, any number of networks/voting blocs can come together in self-organizing federations they create at any level of government to build common agendas and use them to nominate and elect candidates who will enact their agendas into law.

The federations can be short-lived or they can exist indefinitely, as long as there are people who want to use them to set their agendas and run and elect candidates who will work to enact their agendas into law.

BTW, there are two places on the web where Open Left members can see how my invention might work.

One is a prototype website built around the invention, Citizens Winning Hands. (Note: the policy options provided are for illustrative purposes only.)

The other is the patent registration application I submitted to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

To see a diagram of the Interactive Voter Choice System, click here.

What I am trying to do at this point is to familiarize as many people as possible with the invention and its potential and identify collaborators who want to work with me in moving it to the next step.

For those hardy souls who take the time to read my stuff, I would be delighted if you would share with me your feedback, insights and recommendations. My email address is nancy.bordier@reinventingdemocracy.us.

Let me note in passing that Obama's broadside attack on progressive groups mobilizing popular support for a public option adds fuel to the fire of those who argue that progressives are going to have to up the ante very considerably to avoid being shunted aside by the center-right coalition that Obama is trying to build, either by taking over the Democratic Party or starting a third party. My invention, IMNSHO, gives them a competitive advantage in pursuing either option, now that progressive voters are emerging as the majority voting bloc in the U.S.


The Problem Is Deeper, Though (4.00 / 1)
I really do appreciate how much thought has gone into this. It's a lot more thought than almost anyone else has given to the subject.  Almost too much thought for me to handle in such a short time--in part because I lost almost a full day of work when my keyboard died in ambiguous circumstances (a story best left untold).

You make a very strong case for what's wrong, and why we should move in the direction you propose.  But before plunging into the details, I really felt like I had to address the broader questions of what any sort of political solution can possibly accomplish.  There's a very sobering lesson along similar lines in terms of the history of the initiative in America, which differed dramatically from the original Swiss example.

I bring it up because it, too, was a deep and significant reform, but it was almost entirely coopted by the powers that be, at least in the states where it was used the most.  And yet, the keys to making it work far more effectively were already known, and already existed in the Swiss system, which provided for a much closer integration of the initiative and the ordinary legislative process.  This is the great irony: by recasting the initiative into a superficially seeming "more radical" form, the American proponents ended up creating something that was more easily used to snooker the people, rather than empowering them.

This is why I think we need a broader discussion about the full range of barriers to popular empowerment before focusing more narrowly on the specific details of your proposal.  At first glance, those details look pretty good to me.  But I really want to take things slow, and consider the broadest questions first.

I'd actually like to have an ongoing discussion about this, and maybe you can write an overview introduction diary that I could front-page next weekend as part of that discussion.  As I've indicated, I'm very much in agreement with the spirit of what you're trying to do with this.

"Senate passes expanded GI bill despite Bush, McCain opposition"

[ Parent ]
Yes, My Invention is a Work in Progress (4.00 / 2)
that we here at Open Left and in the broader progressive community can move in any direction we wish.

I really appreciate the opportunity you have given us, Paul, to look at it from every angle.

I have been working on it since I thought of it during Dean's run in 2004, and comparing and contrasting it to all other options on the table.

The discussions we have on Open Left, and especially your posts, Paul, are my basic points of reference, together with all the tactics and strategies we have explored and endeavored to implement.

But in light of the obvious fact that we progressives, even though we are an emerging political majority, keep getting shafted by a Democratic Congress and president, I keep coming back to it.

I keep refining it as our other options fail to make the sea-change correction Americans need in order to elect a government that serves their needs instead of those of the special interests, established parties and incumbent elected officials who are running our economy and banking system into the ground.

Yes, I'd be happy to write anything that you think will be helpful and of interest to our Open Left community.


[ Parent ]
I'm Glad You're Willing To Take Me Up On That (4.00 / 1)
I'll get back to you on this by email tomorrow, and we talk about details.

One thought I have is that it really helps democracy to rise from local circumstances.  That's where it's easiest for the largest number of ordinary citizens to become engaged.  Obviously, the greatest long-term benefit is at the national level.  But winning a few more immediate battles is a great way of building enthusiasm.

For example, Los Angeles has a system of Neighborhood Councils that usually work only on local issues, but occasionally band together on city-wide issues.  Your tool might very well help them work more cooperatively together, and that, in turn, could be a real boost for it. But it would have to have content specially tailored for the appropriate sorts of issues.  I know some of the local activists involved in several of these councils, and I think they'd probably be quite open to it.


"Senate passes expanded GI bill despite Bush, McCain opposition"

[ Parent ]
Invention Can Be Used by Any Group at Any Level in Any Country (4.00 / 1)
to identify priorities, build consensus about priorities, pressure authorities to implement priorities and, if need be, take over electoral and legislative processes.

It is designed to enable the members of any political group or party to function as sovereign decision-makers for the group or party.

It prevents the electoral chicanery in which group/party leaders and candidates pretend during election campaigns to elicit, respect and follow the wishes of their constituents but sabotage them once the election or vote is over after special interest campaign contributors have bought their votes.

Since the members of the group or party always have their shared agendas, and updates thereof, to use as blueprints and mandates to guide, oversee, instruct and evaluate the performance of their representatives, they can prevent slippage and betrayal by pulling out their agendas and making it clear that they have the power of numbers to throw the betrayers out of office the next time they come up for re-election if they have not exerted their best efforts to enact the agendas into law.

As I write in my book, my invention is designed to restore popular sovereignty in America, given the fact that

The electoral process in the U.S. has been reduced to a legitimizing ritual in which disempowered citizens transfer their sovereignty to electoral candidates who will subsequently use it, once they are elected, to enact their own preferences into law, along with the preferences of the special interests to whom they are beholden.

The act of voting in elections dominated by the anti-democratic rules and practices of the nation's two major parties is an act not of participation in the governing process but an act of relinquishment, a transfer of sovereignty to party-backed electoral candidates who elevate themselves via the electoral process into the inner sanctums of government. There, they translate their own agendas and those of their special interest benefactors into authoritative decisions backed by the power of the state.

My invention is designed to enable self-organizing networks of voters to bring this era to an end.

[ Parent ]
Link Correction (0.00 / 0)
To see a diagram of the Interactive Voter Choice System, click here.
[ Parent ]
fascinating (4.00 / 2)
Nancy, despite my somewhat skeptical/cynical comment below, I really like where you are going with this. It sounds like it provides an even more powerful version of policy oriented features of change.gov and mybarackobama. It's great to see this kind of innovation occurring outside of a political party of individual candidate campaign.

Good luck with your project.

Clem Guttata
West Virginia Blue
http://www.wvablue.com

They call me Clem, Clem Guttata. Come visit wild, wonderful West Virginia Blue

[ Parent ]
If you want to reform the Democratic and Republican parties, along populist lines (4.00 / 1)
you will have to exploit the internet for candidates' message propagation, crowdfunding, etc.

If you want to start a new third party, along populist lines
you will have to exploit the internet for candidates' message propagation, crowdfunding, etc.

An online tool, such as the Bordier invention, could be applied to either a reform purpose, or 3rd party purpose. Or both. (Of course, as a part of a reform effort, I expect it will initially have to be done without the blessings of party bigwigs. Those guys have big financial fish to fry, and in no way can be expected to look favorably on such a thing.)

Hence, even if you feel that a third party is the way to go, why forsake the opportunity to get your tool well known to the public, plus get the public used to the idea of exercizing power quite apart from what some Democrat or Republic poobah thinks that they should?

Think of this another way: If 25% of Democrat and 25% of Republican voters could use a tool like the Bordier invention to help select which Democratic and Republican candidates eventually got their support (financial, volunteer hours, and votes), and a 3rd party, using a similar tool, starts to take off, wouldn't a transition to joining a 3rd party in which adoption of the Bordier tool was fundamental, be that much more easy?

Frankly, determining concensus viewpoints will probably be the easiest part of a reform process. If the tool works as expected, vote integrity is assured, etc., then this could come to be viewed as a reliable mechanism - like taking your well maintained Honda to the grocery store. What will be harder is finding the candidates who will reliably embrace the populist positions, and who simultaneously refuse any donations not from 'the crowd'. Developing adequate crowd-funding, even if inevitable, will have transitional challenges.  

Once again, the internet can help, as support for populist candidates could be concentrated using an instant-runoff, Darwinian approach. This would at least give the best of the best populist challengers a fighting chance against corporatist Democrats and Republicans.

DemocracyABC.org
TheRealNews.Com
http://www.pdamerica.org

OK, confirmed: Bordier tool good both inside existing parties, as well as outside (4.00 / 1)
I just saw your preceding post, which wasn't there, before.

I suggest you contact the forward-looking and enthusiastic group of Democrats that won 25 out of 56 seats, recently, in New Brunswick, NJ. I guess the question you want to ask them is, "Can you get my tool used by New Brunswick?".

While they seem just shy of the numbers needed to allow any sort of official use, unofficial use would still provide quite an in-field test. New Brunswick is the home of Rutgers University - you can be sure that a good trial run will get noticed in the poli sci department.

DemocracyABC.org
TheRealNews.Com
http://www.pdamerica.org

[ Parent ]
My Vision (4.00 / 1)
is that voters at the grassroots should be able to go to a single website and find and use all the tools and services they need, free of charge, to set their policy agendas and identify and contact other voters whose agendas are statistically similar to their own. (Click here to visit a prototype of such a website.)

They can then decide whether or not to join forces and use the website's social networking platform to create political networks of like-minded folks whose agendas are similar.

Once they organize a political network and its membership is numerous enough to give them enough political clout that they could actually prevail in local intra-party decisions, nominating processes and elections, they can step up to the plate and start building support for their networks and agendas within the party.

If local party officials are responsive to their initiatives and agree to use the consensus-building, agenda setting tools that my invention makes available to them, then these voter-driven political networks can play a determining and even decisive role in party decision-making.

This includes deciding what the party's agenda should be, what slates of nominees should run in primaries and general elections, and who should be elected as party officials.

Wise party officials will see that the tool can enable the party to bring in more members by empowering them to join with these new catalytic voter-driven political networks and party regulars in setting the party's agenda.

These officials will welcome the members of political networks already using the tool into their inner sanctums because they will realize that they can work with them to build broader and larger coalitions around voter-based agendas.

This capability is vitally important because of the well-known fact that voters have been abandoning both political parties in ever greater numbers for several decades — to the point that unaffiliated voters now represent the single largest voting bloc.

Any political party that allows voters to set its agenda using the invention's consensus-building, agenda setting tool is going to be in an excellent position to reinvigorate the party with lots of new members.

But local party officials, candidates and incumbents who are in bed with special interest campaign financiers and do not want party members to formulate agendas that espouse voters' vital interests, instead of the special interests of the fat cats who fund party operations and party candidates, will not welcome these self-organizing, autonomous political networks into their inner sanctums.

In that case, network members can try to capture the party's lines by running and electing their own primary candidates against candidates favored by party officials, as well as and running and electing their own slates of party officials who oust official party candidates.

Once voters use their self-organizing political networks to run and elect their on candidates on the party's general election ballot, the networks will have taken over the local party apparatus.

So for those progressive who wish to take over the existing Democratic Party apparatus at the grassroots, my invention allows them to do this. If, on the other hand, they cannot make headway within this or any other party, they can
align their networks with other networks and key non-party players in U.S. politics, such as labor unions.

Come what may, if voters work continuously at honing and expanding their political networks by building broad-based consensus among local voters around shared policy agendas, they can win primaries and general elections — with or without the existing political parties.

I want to make it clear, as I explained in my earlier comment, that the invention does NOT lead to an infinite fragmentation of the electorate or a plethora of third parties (see A Consensus-Building Federation of Self-Organizing Political Networks and Voting Blocs.

Instead, it enables voter-driven consensus-formation and coalition-building all the way up to presidential elections at the federal level. For the first time in the nation's history, voters will set the nation's policy agenda from the grassroots and use it to drive and control electoral and legislative processes at all levels of government.

Last but not least, for now, one other key attribute of the invention is that it enables those who use it to dramatically reduce if not nullify the power of moneyed interests to decide elections and skew legislative decision-making in their favor.

Since this invention will produce a high degree of convergence between voters' policy agendas and electoral candidates' policy agendas, candidates will no longer be dependent on campaign contributions from business and financial interests to get their message out.

The dominance of campaign financing and legislative decision-making by special interests will come to an end because electoral candidates and incumbents seeking re-election will no longer have to sell their votes to financial and business interests in order to get elected.


 
[ Parent ]
Consensus-Building Is A Key Feature Here (4.00 / 1)
I continue to think that consensus-building will be far easier in some areas than others, and may well be impossible in yet others--at least with this tool alone.  I'm sure it's much better overall than anything like the current system, which is why I support it.  But I continue to think it will need more than just the processes you describe.

Well, Newton needed Einstein and Heisenberg, so needing additional fixes doesn't exactly put you in bad company.

(I'm not, however, worried about a totally fragmented outcome.  That was a problem with Dave's simplified model, not yours.)

"Senate passes expanded GI bill despite Bush, McCain opposition"

[ Parent ]
Next Steps for the Interactive Voter Choice System (0.00 / 0)
I shepherded the invention through the initial stages of formulation, but now it needs to be incubated into a new growth phase by the progressive community, if it is to achieve its full potential.

I have had the benefit of the five years that have elapsed since Dean's 2004 presidential bid to hone it into its present form.

I was not in an isolation booth during this time, but actively conversing with those of you who frequent progressive blogs, especially Open Left and those of you who post your views here. I have studied your ideas and perspectives as I worked to formulate my own, to the point that in many ways the invention is the outcome of an unwitting group think.

The 2008 election was a pivotal time in terms of my own thought processes because I could easily see through the smoke and mirrors that were being put up to hide what was actually happening. (See the sections in my book entitled Obama's Pre-Election Web Strategy, Obama's Post-Election Web Strategy and Transforming Web 2.0 Social Networks into Political Networks.)

What I concluded is that the current two party system is obstructing popular sovereignty. The parties structure electoral campaigns to prevent voters' policy preferences from being articulated and used as the basis of party platforms and candidate agendas.

So it came as no surprise to me that to see that neither Congress nor the new president elected in 2008 are seriously attempting to translate the popular will into law on the really major issues confronting the country, namely the bailout and the reform of health care.

To the contrary, they are attempting to scuttle the popular will and replace it with their own priorities and those of their corporate campaign financiers. Their refusal to even put on the table the single payer health care option favored by more than 70% of all Americans is an irrefutable case in point.

What does surprise me is the number of folks who continue to think that we can get policies that reflect the popular will from virtually the same political parties, candidates and elected representatives who have been flouting the popular will for decades.

We can and must figure out how web inventions like mine can be deployed quickly with user-friendly tools that empower voters to wrest control of elections and legislation from the corporate special interests that are now calling the shots.

But time is of the essence, as William Greider points out in his new book, Come Home, America. No recent book connects the dots of what imperils our democracy and the general welfare of Americans better than this one.

We progressives may be an emerging electoral majority in American politics. But, as Greider eloquently points out, our influence has been so weakened by the two major political parties and the special interests that bankroll the parties and their candidates that our livelihoods and the wealth-producing capacity of our economy are at risk.

[ Parent ]
in search of a walk-through with a reasonable degree of complexity (4.00 / 1)
I tried to register at the citizenswinninghands.net web site, but that's forbidden. I didn't notice any walk throughs.

I'd suggest that you create at least a canned walk though, screen shots and all. E.g. simulating 2 individuals (representing larger networks) with reasonably similar agendas, who would have enough in common to forge a consensus on the issue of, say, social security.

Suppose Person A believes that social security benefits should not be cut, and that any funding shortfall should come from higher taxes on high-income individuals. Person B believes that social security benefits should be increased, and that funding shortfalls should come from higher taxes on on high-income individuals and by increasing the official retirement ages to be more in line with increased lifetimes.

Both Person A and Person B are adamant that Social Security should not be privatized.

How can they use your tool to forge a consensus?

I used Camtassia studio a few years ago to make an explanatory web video of a web application of mine. It was pretty good, price is not too bad. I suggest you take a look at it.

===============================

FWIW, at my website, I've left something similar to automating the decision-making process, itself, as the lowest priority. (What I call 'Hierarchically Structured Debate') Not because it's intrinsically unimportant, but because I have some insight into how hard such problems are, and artificial intelligence is not my field of expertise, anyway. (I've done a very modest amount of research into the state of the art of artificial intelligence, about 15 years ago, and it was scarcely more impressive that what I had gleaned of the field 10+ years before that.)

Everything else that I've sketched out, I have a good idea on how to develop into a working application, confidence that I can generate refining ideas and learn necessary technology, and/or eventually find domain experts and capture their knowledge.

I'm somewhat skeptical that much can be done in terms of automating a consensus process (as opposed to supporting it, via various online tools; though I'm keeping my mind open), but I could see real value-added to the consensus-forming aspects of Democracy 2.0 by

1) creating a somewhat sophisticated issue/solution taxonomy capable of capturing a spectrum of opinions, while not so fragmented that potential users are turned off by the complexity; i.e., instead of waiting for the masses to discover your tool and form a bloc around a set of solution points for a certain issue, you can be proactive and define the various solution points, initially, with the aid of (hopefully) experts. Maybe I'm missing something, but the cards shown at Citizens' Winnint Hands seem too lacking in details to really latch onto. E.g., the 6 of spades says, "we should penalize US companies who go offshore to get cheaper labor and avoid US taxes", however the penalties aren't specified, and also, thanks to globaloney, even when you decide what a US corporation is, we still should look at the cost/benefit to US workers and tax base of whatever specific remedies will be proposed. If GM decides to outsource more jobs, should the US government cease buying and leasing vehicles from them? If so, what happens to dealers and domestic auto parts industries that would suffer? These sorts of considerations cannot fit into the space of a playing card.

2) facilitating verbal negotiations between leaders of similar, but non-identical voting blocs; The proposed compromises would then be transmitted to the non-leaders via web tools.

3) having dedicated facilitators on your staff (paid, if necessary), who are either talented at settling disputed equitably and/or are domain experts



DemocracyABC.org
TheRealNews.Com
http://www.pdamerica.org

[ Parent ]
Wow! (0.00 / 0)
I'm so impressed by your knowledge and skill sets.

I will have to give your comments more thought and get back to you.

Suffice it to say for the moment that more refined tools and services than those found on the website prototype have to be built to meet the needs of the people who build political networks using its core agenda setting and consensus building tools and services.

Anticipating and meeting these needs will be a core ongoing responsibility of those engaged in developing and running the website.

Many of these functions can be outsourced to outfits that possess the expertise required.

Come what may, we will need all the good minds and dedicated hearts we can find. Sounds like you would fit right in! I really do appreciate your focused comments and insights. Let's talk soon.

 

[ Parent ]
Sure (4.00 / 1)
I certainly agree with your desire to empower voters, and think you've got a bunch of stuff exactly right. It's not that I have a great faith in the wisdom of the crowds, but on too many issues and for too long, the elites have proven that they're either idiots or evil, or both.

Having some familiarity with the imperialistic, cruel, and stupid excesses of the ancient Athenian democracy, I don't view empowering the masses as a panacea, but at least I can take comfort in knowing that we can't screw up as badly as the deceitful elite class has been doing.

:-)

DemocracyABC.org
TheRealNews.Com
http://www.pdamerica.org

[ Parent ]
Points one and two make me think of the Study Circles Model (0.00 / 0)
which I have long thought should have wider support (although what seems like a tendency to focus discussions on "racism" instead of on more concrete policy proposals does not seem so useful to me).  They now call this the "everyday democracy" model.

see http://studycircles.org

In study circles, they construct a spectrum of common perspectives including a collection of beliefs generally shared by each perspective, allowing people to position themselves within these available "common sense" points of view and validating a range of possible answers.

Point two also includes focus on leaders as opposed to attempting to bring everyone in, which may be simply impossible.

But a focus on leaders also adds the fact that the problem may not be of issues and but of self-interests linked to specific groups--e.g., a focus on particular benefits for particular groups not the common good.  Which may not be so navigable with a process like this.


--Aaron Schutz (Core Dilemmas of Community Organizing)

[ Parent ]
excellent topic (4.00 / 4)
I think there are huge self-selection issues with an social networking tool as the salvation for democracy. Yes, one reason for involvement/activism is because our friends are involved and social networking tools are a big help tapping into that. But, they can only go so far.

I'm glad to see you also raise the question of why people participate in the democratic system. There needs to be more than just making people aware of what is going on or sending them a special personally-tailored invitation to do something.

Another huge challenge is those 9 different groups have different beliefs about the legitimacy of other groups to participate along with disagreement about the proper processes for participation. Part of what is being fought over is the rules for how to fight.

I find it more useful to think about what new sources of power can be established to re-form and re-structure our forms of governance (practically speaking, taking over the parties). Social networking tools may be very effective in leveraging individual resources (time, talent and treasure) so that like-minded people are working in greater solidarity. That may be a pathway to greater power and it does indeed require connections outside of existing party/politician apparatus.

It strikes me that the success (and limitations) of Moveon.org (and BlogPAC/FDL/etc.) provide both optimism and caution about what can be accomplished primarily online.

They call me Clem, Clem Guttata. Come visit wild, wonderful West Virginia Blue

Good Points! (4.00 / 3)
I don't want to rain on Nancy's parade, I actually want to promote it.  Yet, I know from experience that all strategic advances, even the most sweeping, have their limitations and surprises.  Critical support is better than fandom, I believe.

"Senate passes expanded GI bill despite Bush, McCain opposition"
[ Parent ]
Two Comments (4.00 / 2)
1. As far as I can tell, Nancy's focus is on policy perspective, but people often don't vote on policy issues.  Remember that Obama won, in part, because of his "evangelical" strategy where people told their "conversion" stories to others.  Policy wasn't really the key.

http://openleft.com/showDiary....

I think this focus on policy planks may misunderstand how people think at some level.  What fundraisers learn very quickly, for example, is that what you need are not good arguments, or good abstract numbers, or "policy planks," but a good narrative, a compelling story.  These are not the same things.  

I'm with Paul that all sweeping visions like this always have their problems.  Nancy's model contains a very strong assumption about how human beings operate, and while I think there are aspects that are useful, I am not compelled by the overall vision as a coherent overall solution.  

2. One question I have is about what small structural changes could be made in voting processes or election processes that would help produce the changes many of us would like.  Given that a parlimentary system simply isn't feasible in the short (or even long) run, what more "doable" changes could make a difference.  Like, for example, allowing people to belong to multiple parties at the same time and be on the ballot for them at the same time (like New York does).  I know that Obama was part of an effort like this earlier in his career.  Or changing the voting system to the kind of things that led to Lani Guinier's failed nomination during the clinton years.  

It seems to me that a more targeted focus on specifics like this, on something small that would make a big difference would be a great approach.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

This would be an effort to change the ecology of politics as my friend Larry Marx often talks about.  

--Aaron Schutz (Core Dilemmas of Community Organizing)

I Share Your Concerns (4.00 / 2)
In fact, you're taking another angle of approach to what I see as the divide between the populist mass politics approach and the progressive issue politics approach.  Integrating across that divide is where I think real power lies.

I see Nancy's approach as suited to those who actively engage in issues, and though this is not most voters, it certainly is a good chunk of those who are active in politics, and they, in turn, tend to have disproportionate influence on others.  At the very least, this can be a way of bringing about greater clarity and coherence for a significant chunk of politically engaged people, who could become more effective in countering special interest influence.

But I don't see this as leading to significant, coherent defections to a third party on a mass basis.  The only scenarios I see in which third party electoral power would grow as part of a workable strategy are those in which we have something like the fusion arrangement seen in New York, as I alluded to above.

Still, what can be done by strengthening policy connections beyond the sort of narrow single-issue configurations that have dominated the center-left is nothing to sneeze at, particularly when it comes to truly consensual positions with 60-80% support.  And I'm even more interested in how this approach may help interact with and synergize with others.

Put this together with clean money campaign finance reform and the continued flattening of media hierarchies and connect it with the sorts of major problems which Nancy rightly notes are not being dealt with, and we really could be onto something big.   Particularly if you can engage people on a local level, where a lot broader range of people are likely to get involved with issues, since they are significantly more concrete and immediate in the local level.

"Senate passes expanded GI bill despite Bush, McCain opposition"

[ Parent ]
Nicely put (0.00 / 0)
[ Parent ]
Where This All Began (4.00 / 1)
was in a Meetup of Howard Dean supporters during his presidential primary bid.

I was sitting in a room with about 30 people who were milling around waiting for a conference call from Dean.

I wondered what we could be doing other than sitting around waiting for the call.

You can read the rest by clicking here.

As you will see, I am one of the voters you talk about above, Aaron, who are constrained to a fairly mindless role in elections but are not at all happy about it.

While my invention does get voters doing things they have not been able to do before, lacking enabling mechanisms, the fact that they have not set their policy priorities across the board before does not mean they are inherently incapable or uninterested in doing so.

 

[ Parent ]
Sure (4.00 / 1)
but your system is not about what "you" want, or how "you" think, it's about how masses of people think, decide, and act.  And that's where I'm not entirely with you, although I agree with aspects of your argument.

Asserting that this will change how people think is not the same as providing clear evidence that it will do so.  And, in fact, there is a great deal of evidence out there that, in fact, most people don't think this way.

That's partly why Paul noted that this seems relevant to a fairly small collection of people.  

Providing a way to make rational decisions is not going to make people rational--make fundamental changes in how people understand the world or make decisions--or make the decisions we need to make fit your model of how decisions should be made.  

--Aaron Schutz (Core Dilemmas of Community Organizing)

[ Parent ]
By the way (4.00 / 1)
My point is not that people are "irrational," only that decisionmaking around politics, like everything else, is way richer and more complex than this.

To change how people think, you would need to change the whole society much more fundamentally.  You can't just change how people think in one small section of their life very easily, since people draw from a range of different resources all the time.  You can't partition off a space for rational politics.  

--Aaron Schutz (Core Dilemmas of Community Organizing)

[ Parent ]
Negativity? (4.00 / 1)
I am just wondering what you believe actually could work to bring more people into the political process, given the fact that you keep coming up with objection after objection to what I propose.

I also want to delimit what I am proposing. I believe that most voters, if given the chance, would welcome the opportunity to identify their policy priorities across the board, contribute them to the database of a public opinion poll, and identify and contact people whose priorities are statistically similar.

No more, no less than this. But once they set their agendas and identify like-minded folks, what you or I think or do not think about how people make decisions and engage in political processes is simply speculation.

My assumption is that like-minded people with shared policy priorities might decide to join forces to influence elections and legislative processes. I am not arguing that they all will, but that many might. If this is the case, then they can use my invention to change the political system so that they can more fully exercise their sovereignty than the current system permits them to do.

As I have said before, I have spent time thinking about these possibilities because I think they are realistic.

They are worth developing because there are few other mechanisms out there now that can be as easily deployed to give voters the chance to put themselves in charge of who runs for office and wins and what their policy agendas are.

Now you may be correct, Aaron, in all the objections you have articulated about why my invention might not work. Possibly it won't. But I believe it has a very high probability of succeeding, either by itself or in conjunction with other Internet inventions.

 

[ Parent ]
I Think Your Model Is Still Primarily About Empowering Activists (4.00 / 1)
such as the other people at that Meetup with you.  People who aren't activists tend to think very differently about politics in a number of different ways.

While your invention may help many people who can go either way decide to commit to and stay with activism, there are many, many more for whom that's never going to be a living possibility.  This doesn't make it useless or irrelevant to them.  It just means that the way it's going to reach or affect them is going to have to be different, more indirect, mediated in one way or another.

"Senate passes expanded GI bill despite Bush, McCain opposition"

[ Parent ]
Here's the Basic Idea Behind My Invention (4.00 / 2)
I need to fill in some blanks here, because I think my invention actually will work just as well for non-activists as activists and for intelligent concerned people like Metamars' mother who do not see what they can do.

During the Meetup for Howard Dean where I originally conceived of the idea for the invention, there were about 30 people milling around just waiting for Dean's conference call to come through.

I did not know a single person there, having signed up online through Meetup's technology. While some of the people looked like online activists like myself, many of them did not. In fact, I wondered if they just came along because they heard about the Meetup from a neighbor.

So my first thought was what could people in such a disparate group do, since they didn't know each other and were not necessarily from the same social/economic class background.

I knew they had chosen Dean instead of Kerry, and since Dean was such an unknown quantity, I felt they had made a considered choice among alternatives.

So I began thinking about ways in which we could all collaborate in making choices. Since we did not have a lot of time to have an open-ended discussion, I thought that people might be interested in having a spontaneous, not-too-serious brain storming session about what our priorities would be in terms of the policies we wanted Dean to advocate during his campaign.

Since Dean was beginning to get push back from the Democratic establishment, which considered him an uncontrollable upstart, I thought we could help him remain steadfast if he knew what were the stances of his supporters on key policy issues.

So what I dreamed up to meet these goals was the idea of having a simple deck of playing cards, with each card having a policy option printed on it. In fact, I thought that it would be a good idea to have two cards on each major issue, one with a "pro" stance and one with a "con" stance.

Also, given my marketing background, I thought it would be a great take-home premium if every attendee were given a deck of the cards to take home. Once at home, they could reset their agendas by choosing different policy options and arranging them in rank order from most to least preferred. Each card would have an 800 number printed on the back so they could call Dean's headquarters whenever they wanted to report a new agenda.

So if you go into the Citizens Winning Hands website, (a partially functional prototype) and scroll to the bottom, you will see two decks of cards with policy options printed on them. The options are divided into 8 umbrella themes. There is also a Joker Pool where people can create their own options.

Anyhow, back to the Dean meetup, the idea that popped into my mind was that each of the people would be given a card deck with a policy option printed on each card. Each attendee would be given the opportunity to look through the deck and select the policy options nearest and dearest to their own heart and way of looking at things.

Once each attendee had set his/her agenda, then the group could try to come up with a group agenda, either consensually or by voting on the options. I thought that this part would be the most interesting because every one could play as active a role they wanted in trying to explain why they preferred some options over others. So it would be a group consensus building exercise that would also be an educational experience since a lot of ideas would be exchanged and cross fertilized.

The end goal would be to have a group agenda that could be phoned into Dean headquarters so that he would know where his supporters stood on the major issues facing his campaign. With a card deck to take home, attendees could keep the campaign informed of changes in their policy agendas over time.

So, I hope you can see that this medium of the playing cards was designed to bring people together in small groups to discuss policy issues at whatever level the people involved felt comfortable with.

Equally importantly, the medium of the playing cards makes it possible for people without computers to participate right along with people who have computers. They can submit their priorities to the database of the website's periodic public opinion polls by telephone, or they can go to their local library and do it, or ask family members, friends and neighbors do it for them.

The idea of having people at the grassroots set the nation's policy agendas using a simple deck of cards is at the core of what I was trying to accomplish. So often candidates, elected representatives and the media put words in voters' mouths that absolutely do not represent their real thoughts or preferences. Or they ignore voters' preferences and concentrate on trivial issues, like whether a candidate wears a lapel pin.

As a technical note, once I had this idea for the card deck, I spent another year or so creating the first deck, just to see if I could do it. I finally ended up creating two decks because I could not get all the options into one deck.

As you can see if you go to the website prototype, there is a lot of text on each card, far too much. And either the card is too small or the font is too big so there is far too much to read. When we develop it for real, we will have to reduce the text and do the research that will be required to identify what the policy options should be and how they should be framed. So the two decks you will see are just an illustration of the fundamental idea.

I want to also add my idea of how the cards can help create a democratic dialog. Each card has a link at the bottom to online articles that address the topic. (These articles can be changed as new ones come online, so the list will not get stale.) Since there is usually a "pro" and "con" version of each option, each with links, people using the cards to set their agenda can compare and contrast the various options and learn about each by clicking on the articles that interest them. So it promotes discernment. It also helps get away from the dumbing down of the political process by short hand buzz words and phrases, as well as the stupifying of political discourse by political partisans trying to ignite culture wars.  

Likewise, I see the cards having an even greater stimulative impact on the cross-fertilization of ideas within groups that use them to set their agendas. When I read Bill Greider's treatment of the democratic dialogs going on in the IAF community groups, I thought to myself that the card decks would be a great tool for them to focus discussion on fundamental policy choices. Yes, many of these discussion might be fairly general, but over time I think the cards would help their members focus on actual policy issues facing the country.

So when I daydream about how we can bring back an authentic democracy to our country, I dream that every household that wants one can have Citizens' Winning Hands card decks, either in three dimensions or online. Whenever people want to make their views heard about policy issues they care about, and get them into the mainstream, they can deal themselves a "winning hand" and call or email it into the Citizens' Winning Hands website to contribute it to the next public opinion poll whose results will be published online.

And even better yet, anyone using the decks can find out whose agendas are similar to their own and contact them. If they do contact like-minded folks, what they decide to do next is their call. Per the exhortation of the website's tag line, they can "Take a stand. Find Allies. Build Networks. Change the World."
                                             

[ Parent ]
This Is A Very Good Statement (0.00 / 0)
You might want to incorporate this in your diary for next weekend.

I just want to clarify that I didn't mean to claim that your invention couldn't be used by everyone.  I just meant that it was far more likely to be used by them.  This goes along with educationaction's point below:

People yearn for change.  They don't necessarily yearn for dialogue about policy.

Of course, those of us who see the role of dialogue in bringing about change, particularly in building solidarity to fight the status, will find value in your invention.  But we're precisely the activists I think will be most likely to use it.

"Senate passes expanded GI bill despite Bush, McCain opposition"

[ Parent ]
Yes, and No . . . (4.00 / 1)
You write,
Nancy's model contains a very strong assumption about how human beings operate

If I understand what you have written, you believe voters may be intrinsically more interested in candidates' story telling narratives, style and presentation than the policy substance of what they plan to do if elected.

My response to these points is that the way many voters think, or don't think, these days is a function of the reduced role they have been constrained to play in the political process by self-serving political parties.

But this reduced role is not a reflection of any limitations on "how human beings operate". This limited role is not a permanent feature of our democracy, nor should it be.

If voters concentrate on things like "evangelical style" or get drawn into emotionally-tinged messages, it is because they have no opportunity to play a substantive and decisive role in determining what policy priorities should be.

I agree with you, Aaron, that many people, as well as the the media, focus on trivial things because the electoral process has been so dumbed down by the major political parties that voters really have no say on the major policy issues.

Yet voters do have policy priorities. What they don't have, and what my invention gives them, is a mechanism to set their policy priorities across the board by choosing among generic policy options. They can choose three, or thirty, or more, depending on how many issues and options they care about.

This mechanism enables them to learn about various policy options, create their own, and find people whose agendas are similar to their own. Once they join forces to influence the political process, they can educate each other about their various options as they build consensus among themselves going forward.

This gets them very close to the heart of what a democracy is all about - namely, the people deciding what the government should do rather than the government deciding what the people can and cannot do. Right now, the Democratic Congress and our new Democratic president are telling the American people what health care system they can have, even though it is not the single payer system the majority of the people want.

So I would put my money on the people being able to make fundamental decisions about policy priorities and use them to drive political parties and candidates to enact their priorities into law.

If the people you know can't do this today, then I believe they can learn to do it tomorrow if they have the tools to do so.

The very last things that I would spend any time on are fruitless efforts to change voting rules and practices, redistricting laws, campaign finance reform — even though all these changes are needed. But singly and in combination, we are decades away from getting enough reforms enacted in enough states and elections to rid us of the corrupt electoral system that has stolen the people's sovereignty and conferred it on special interests and influence-peddling legislators.

In contrast, my invention, IMNSHO, lets voters make an end run around the obstacles that have been deliberately thrown in their path and take control of electoral and legislative processes by means of their own political networks and voting blocs built around shared policy priorities.

If my invention is brought to life, I predict it will enable autonomous networks of voters to put an end to the political party system as we have known it in this country and replace it with one that only they control.  

[ Parent ]
There is a great deal of evidence (4.00 / 1)
that people do not make decisions in the rational manner you describe, and this is not necessarily a critique.  People are not "robots" in the sense that they make cost benefit decisions.  

Another problem with focusing on candidates' policy preferences is that you are not electing a bag of policies, you are electing a person.  These policies go out the door once people get elected, as i noted here:

http://openleft.com/diary/6599/

Like any other system, if you were actually successful, candidates would quickly find a way to game the process.  Even if they didn't, electing people by policy is actually probably a bad way to make decisions about who to elect IMHO.  I mean, in a general sense, you do want them to be "on your side."  But more broadly, you want someone you can trust or who you think can be effective.  Weren't these really the issues around the Clinton/Obama primary fight?  

I suppose if this system did lead to the development of power blocs behind particular policies, it might help.  But I'm not convinced that this is how power blocs get formed or can act (see metamars, above).

Like Paul, I find much that is interesting and useful about what you describe.  But I am nervous about what feels like your "conversion" to your model without a deep sense of its limitations--at least that is how you present it.  And fair or unfair (to your presentation or to you), I am leery about people who are "converted" to the new religion.  

Finally, I worry that you do not have a broad enough sense of key research out there on power, human cognition, etc.  

--Aaron Schutz (Core Dilemmas of Community Organizing)

[ Parent ]
Fair Enough (4.00 / 2)
I do not know whether you can know whether I have a broad enough sense of key research out there on power, human cognition, etc.

I have taught political and social science in five universities and while I am certainly not claiming that my invention will address all possible issues, I am eagerly awaiting information from you about a more convincing remedy for what ails our current system.

If you can propose a remedy that I consider more likely to rid us of the plutocracy that is running the country than my invention, I will immediately jump on your bandwagon.

As for electing a person rather than policies, I think we have had quite enough of politicians who refuse to clearly state what they stand for and just ask us to trust them. Moreover, I hear shades of Edmund Burke behind the ideas you express here, Aaron, and recall that he was defeated in his election bid by constituents who rejected the view you appear to espouse.

Also, as someone who has run for elective office and spent the past five years analyzing the anomalies of our current political system, I am not altogether certain that the remedies we are seeking are going to jump out of research into the human condition, although that is certainly a possibility I do not reject out of hand.

What people do and don't do depends very much on what they can do. My invention allows voters to do something they cannot now do but must do if they are going to control government ahd the policies elected officials enact. Quite possibly it will not be my invention per se that they use to do this, but another solution that supercedes it. Only time will tell.

But of what thing I am absolutely sure: there are few inherent constraints on what voters or any other human beings are capable of doing or learning how to do.

[ Parent ]
Well Said - "What people do and don't do depends very much on what they can do." (4.00 / 2)
I've sometimes wondered why I think along certain lines, and I think one reason my thoughts re activism went in some of the directions they have is because of a conversation I had with my mother, years ago. She was listening to me whine about our corrupt government, yet again, and apparently some of my frustration went in her direction. In exasperation, she asked me "What exactly am I supposed to do about it?".

Not having any faith in the long-term efficacy of writing letters to Congressmen, and such, I realized that I didn't have a good answer. However, I think her question settled into my subconscious mind (in large part because it was shockingly embarrassing) and from there prospective solutions seem to bubble forth every so often. Basically, if there is something that I can present to my mother, which doesn't require the level of commitment of a dedicated activist, but is appealing to somebody who cares about the evils perpetrated by her government (even if she chooses to remain in denial about a good deal of it), then that something can be the thing that changes the practice of democracy for large segments of society.

The fact that online tools are likely to be embraced primarily by activists is somewhat secondary, IMO. When people vote, they are doing so on limited information, and there is a degree of trust being extended to the candidate. For issues in which people like my mother have no interest in becoming highly knowledgeable about, to nevertheless be embraced by them sufficiently to use them minimally, they will quite naturally resort to experts. I am incorporating experts in my system as 'Voter Guides', specifically "gurus, watchers, and watchdogs". I suggest others do likewise.

My mother may not want to study the intricacies of varies alternative energy sources, but if she is able to vote with a energy voting bloc which has the unreserved endorsement of a Ralph Nader, I believe that she would do so.  

DemocracyABC.org
TheRealNews.Com
http://www.pdamerica.org

[ Parent ]
Yes and No, No and Yes. (4.00 / 2)
If I understand what you have written, you believe voters may be intrinsically more interested in candidates' story telling narratives, style and presentation than the policy substance of what they plan to do if elected.

Well, yes, in one sense.  Isn't that what you think happened with Obama in many cases?  But no, though that's close, it's not really what I'm saying.

It's not that I think people are "intrinsically more interested in candidates' story telling narratives," etc.  It's that we're biologically and culturally wired to assimilate new information in narrative forms.  This goes all the way back to purposeful movement as the foundation of everything we do.  From purposeful movement comes journeying from point A to point B. And from journeying comes narrative.  So it's deeply rooted in us to understand things narratively.

We can learn things other ways, of course.  But narratives have a huge built-in advantage.  I mean, look at your own book.  You present your ideas through telling a story.

Now, that's just the raw material, of course.  Layered on top of that is all sorts of other stuff, including the intentional uses of narrative, either to enlighten or to obscure.

It's my belief that we have to change the fundamental narratives of our society, which is one of the reasons I encouraged people to talk about what patriotism meant to them yesterday.  But that's not instead of what you're working on.  It's complementary to it.  The more people do take back decision-making and path-directing power, the more stories there will be about it, the more natural and normal it will come to be seen.

I think you're intensely focused on part of what needs to be done to pull off a great transformation.  But I think it's not enough by itself.  It needs other elements to reinforce, support and harmonize with it.


"Senate passes expanded GI bill despite Bush, McCain opposition"

[ Parent ]
If You Read the Last Chapter of Greider's book, (4.00 / 1)
Come Home, America, he joins with both of us when he describes citizens' and voters' and their unspoken needs and wants as an "underground river".

Greider tells of the decades he has spent listening to people tell their stories in a nationwide network of vibrant community organizations loosely allied under the organizational umbrella of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF).

He writes that the IAF meetings he has attended over the past 20 ears are the "closest thing to a genuine democratic dialogue that I am ever likely to witness."

He writes:

I began to think of this deeper current in American life—the pulse of democratic promise— an an underground river. It flows along beneath the surface of everyday events, largely ignored and seemingly impotent. The current is sometimes diverted or temporarily blocked. The flow of people's yearnings may at times be reduced to form a minor rivulet. It may seem exhausted, gone.

Yet suddenly—the unseen river regains its strength. The pulse of the promise surfaces anew. It breaks through to visibility with a burst of power that shocks the status quo and changes America. This is the true drama of our national history. You can see this pattern in most of the pivotal advances and liberating reforms—the abolition of slavery, the liberation of women, the rise of the labor movement, and the struggles for economic justice and triumphs of the modern civil rights movement. After generations of failure, citizens break through, make themselves heard, and gain power. The pattern can be traced back ot the origin of the republic and even before. The river has surfaced in good times and in bad times, nearly always coming as a threatening surprise to the governing powers

Well, it is time for citizens and voters to deliver another threatening surprise to the governing powers, which is that they intend to take back the powers these rulers have usurped from the people. I hope that my invention can help them articulate what they want and empower them to attain that goal.

 

[ Parent ]
Very Well Said! (4.00 / 1)
We just need to remember that for every person that shows up at the sorts of meetings Greider is talking about, there are thousands more who do not, but who share similar yearnings, even if they've been so discouraged, or overwhelmed by life's everyday struggles that they'd never even dream of coming to such a meeting.

No doubt, if we get much better at empowering those who do show up, it will un-discourage some of the others.  But there will always be many potential supporters that we must find other ways to connect with.  I think that metamars talking about his mother makes this point very well.

"Senate passes expanded GI bill despite Bush, McCain opposition"

[ Parent ]
Also Greider's vision (4.00 / 1)
of what happens at IAF is a very romanticized description (I haven't read his book, only this excerpt)

Most of what happens in large meetings is acclimation of decisions made--albiet in consultation with many individuals--by a fairly small group of leaders.  

This idea of mass participation in decision-making is more about what we would like the IAF to be about than what really happens there.  

People yearn for change.  They don't necessarily yearn for dialogue about policy.

--Aaron Schutz (Core Dilemmas of Community Organizing)

[ Parent ]
Hold on now... (0.00 / 0)
The problem, however, is that populists have habitually made the mistake of speaking of "the people" as if "the people" were all of one mind.

How do you know?  If you ask most Americans about what they stand for, you'll find their views are often far more liberal or progressive than the biased polling data suggest.  The problem isn't that the majority of Americans are necessarily disparate in their political views, so much so that it negates the effectiveness of third party strategy; it's that progressivism as a movement has been unable or unwilling to effectively argue and defend its positions.  I suspect more Americans agree with progressive viewpoints than you think.  We just need to pull our heads out of our asses and hammer out a solid platform we can start with as our basis for discussion.  The next step is then to craft the strategy and tactics for arguing on its behalf.  See my latest entry for such a platform.


Progressive Populism--Some Basic Questions Moving Forward | 44 comments
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