As far as I'm concerned, protests and calling your congressional reps and letters to the editor and blog posts and all that are fine, and you should do all that if you can. But the only really meaningful action I can take is to organize at the local level. I got a message from Rep. Joe Courtney's aide Adam Richardson that's on the money: "November's municipal elections will be the first referendum on Trump's second term - and we want to send a clear message that eastern Connecticut rejects him and all the harm his administration had already caused."
So in our small town, our Democratic Town Committee is committed to running a full slate of candidates for every office, from First Selectman to the Library Board. The town votes Republican and went for the raging orange lunatic by a substantial margin, but I'm determined to hold candidate forums, knock on doors, mail to every address, and do whatever it takes to thump the Republicans in November. We don't have any federal or statewide offices on the ballot, so it's all going to be about turnout.
Wherever you live, small town or big city, there's a Democratic Party organization. Join it. If there isn't one, found it -- contact your state party to find out how. Make sure there's a Democratic candidate for every line on the ballot, and make sure people work to get every one of them elected. That's what will make a difference.
7 comments:
While I admire and agree with your strategy, I think that the Democratic Party has to become something it has feared becoming: a stronghold of global and national humanitarian and egalitarian politics. it's time to thump off-the-rails capitalism in the ass and work toward making our country and the world the relative paradise it can be. Otherwise, all bets for Homo sapiens are off.
The only way to change the party is to be a part of it.
There are also millions of veterans, and military and government employees who took a solemn oath to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic", or something very similar. (This is lifted directly from the one all new members of Congress take.) Would it not be useful to remind them that they should think about that oath before following an order that clearly subvert that Constitution?
After all, Trump takes no direct action, he just issues orders that are transmitted down a chain to the peons who actually act. Any break in that chain interferes with that action. I understand that doing so may come at great cost, but many of those people have previously been willing to face death in order to do their jobs. (I guess that isn't as scary as the threat of being primaried.)
Much of Trump's power comes from the MAGA faithful willing to effectuate his "disapproval" of someone; why not Keep America Great oath keepers to counteract them?
This occurred to me while imagining a Russian dictator ordering a nuclear attack. It would have to go through a chain of command, including some who recognized the kinds of motivations that guy likely had, and who were unwilling to participate in a carnage initiated from base motives. I'd bet that not all those missiles would be launched. Orders not obeyed become just a petulant rant.
Well, a new party (even in the form of a revolutionary Democratic party) is a viable alternative. Every moment is a moment of choice, and we're as limited as our imaginations.
Don't forget that
1) We didn't have two parties when this system started out. It doesn't "have" to be that way. "Two" is so limited.
2) "The Democrats" were in power for four years, and couldn't get a psychopathic traitor in prison. Now he's the "president" (along with a S. African nazi. So "The Democrats" are part of "The System" and, therefore, "The Problem."
Sometimes it feels like mainstream Democrats are just needed so that we can have a political process. Something like how the Washington Generals are necessary to the Harlem Globetrotters so that they can play a "game".
Yes, CP. The two-party "system" (which, after all, arose unexpectedly and has stuck around to the exclusion of successful "third parties") is exhausted and a parody of its former self. The perfidious and mendacious nature of "conservatives" needs to be exposed for what it is: a yearning for and obsessive drive to establish aristocracy.
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