October 11, 2016

How to make the Clinton campaign better than it seems

Sam Smith – As we move into the last month of this bizarre presidential election, it may be a little hard to remember that our choice is not just between two individuals but between the admittedly more boring but realistically more important issue of the politics they represent. Not voting for Hillary Clinton – her substantial faults notwithstanding – is not about refusing to select the lesser of two evils but is turning one’s back on over 80 years of progress thanks to the Democratic Party’s periodic command of the White House. It is about putting at risk decades of policies towards women, blacks, latinos, unions, the poor, and the environment, among others.

It is not that a President Clinton will do an ideal job of protecting this progress, but that she will respond to the pressure she is under and if that can be defined by those of the aforementioned ilk and interests there is no doubt that we’re in for a better four years. 

This is all happening at a moment of substantial demographic shift in our politics. Consider that approximately 60% those 29 and younger support Clinton while only 30% support Trump. The latter are in their last years of influence in our politics. Trump is their last gasp. 

But what will replace them?

That will depend in no small part on the skill with which progressive groups of highly varied specialties come together to define a common agenda. These organizations have increasingly restricted their interests to their primary concerns, not recognizing that the success of these concerns in no small part depends upon a broader common agenda. 

I was reminded of this the other day when I asked a leader of a Maine women’s group whether it will be supporting a referendum on ranked choice voting which is on the state  ballot. She explained to me that they had decided not to because it was not sufficiently connected to their agenda.
But while ranked choice voting is not a specifically women’s issue, it is especially clear in Maine that had we had this system in our last two elections, the current dumb, right wing governor would never had been elected, something that would have helped women along with everyone else.

This is a common problem within today’s liberal and progressive groups: too little attention to the larger concerns and common issues of other movements.

The potential Clinton election allows us to change this approach. 

I’ve seen a hint of how it can work. Before the national Green Party got off the ground a group of us held a conference in the early 1990s that many would have said was doomed to failure. We had 125 people from over 20 different third parties ranging from the Socialists and Greens to the Libertarians and Perot people. It was clearly asking for trouble.

But we also had two rules: first, we were there to discuss what we agreed upon, not what divided us and two, we would discover it by some form of consensus. And we did; by the end of the weekend we had come up with 17 points of unanimous agreement.

It was as simple as sitting around tables based on issues and everyone having three yellow stickers with their names on them to paste on the white board list of policies those around the tables had recommended. If yours was one of only a few yellow stickers on a policy you got to move it until we reached a clear consensus. 

Something like this could happen now at the national and/or state and local level. Labor, blacks, women, latinos, environmentalists and others could come together, propose ideas they’d like others to support and then have everyone select the ones they like the best. These may not be the top choices of the groups that propose them but would be the ones easiest for all the other groups to support. A broadly supported progressive agenda could be completed by the end of a day. 
It would be great if something like this happened before the election because it would give discouraged progressives a reason to vote for Clinton. One can imagine Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Robert Reich as well as representatives from Black Lives Matter and heavily woman labor unions – just to name a few – coming up with a pre-election conference to get the movement going. 

It doesn’t have to be perfect – more meetings can follow the election, but it would be the start of progressive unity such as we haven’t seen in over forty years. And well worth a try.  

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Pathetic, you still cannot bring yourself to write much of anything acknowledging the third party alternatives to this fiasco. Ironic that one has to go to US News & World Report to find something at all.
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-10-11/vote-for-gary-johnson-or-jill-stein-if-youre-not-in-a-swing-state
How twisted and Orwellian these times have become. The near total freezeout of both Stein and Johnson in this race is the stuff of fascism, and there is no hyperbole in the use of that term. How can the public make informed voting decisions when all options and political issues are not presented before them? The partisan ranks of the duopoly dread the prospect, instead resorting to all manner of chicanery to constrict the process as much as is possible. Shame on you Sam for being a willing accomplice. We've lost considerable respect for you as a result.

Tom Puckett said...

Another reason to have all the candidates before the public, especially where two of the candidates are so disliked and unstable is to have the good alternatives known in case both Clinton and Trump became disqualified.

The current charade is that there are only two viable candidates and we are only told about them. There is a blackout on all others, even ones such as Stein and Johnson who are on the ballot in the majority of states and who at least in Stein's case has an excellent agenda.

What would happen if Donald Trump became ascendant through an extremely bad news leak about Hillary Clinton?

If Clinton had to drop out of the race or dropped dramatically in the polls so that Trump had a 20-30 point lead, all of those who have been adamant that Trump had to be avoided at all costs would want Jill Stein to be elected, because she would be better than any of the four. She's just being ignored in favor of Clinton, the moneyed interests' current choice.

N'est-ce pas?

Cheers, Tom

Anonymous said...

What is this 'Democratic Party' thingy you speak of?

John Namest said...

Please Stein and Johnson are awful candidates, being in the debates would only shine a light on how truly awful they are, which is a waste of time. There is a huge reason such a small percent are for them and that's not going to change for either of them, ever.

Greg Gerritt said...

Sam has great nostalgia for the Third parrties conference that took place more than 20 years ago. I was therre, it was a good meeting. But it was a fantasy, and therefore people were able to work together easily. In a realistic situation that harmony would not prevail. Nostalgia is great, but it is not a prescription for 21st century politics. Vote Green in 2016

LJansen said...

That has a nice ring to it! "Vote Green in 2016." Their platform is great. Why wouldn't you?