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Fight Tea Party Voters With Fresh Voters
Candidates are in their districts, making nice to likely mid-term voters. They're a precious bunch, more scarce than general election voters, and typically more polarized in their views. What if there were more of them and more low-income people, particularly women, in the mix?
In a country where 131 million people voted in the 2008 presidential election, a few million more voters from under-represented groups sprinkled, state after state, by the tens or hundreds of thousands, just might make a difference. Securing their voting rights is a smart, effective way to find out.
In a handful of swing states where voting rights groups have sued and won in recent years, the result is impressive: hundreds of thousands of low-income people, two-thirds women, registering since 2008.
In Missouri, where John McCain beat Barack Obama by less than 4,000 votes, nearly a quarter-million voter registration applications have been filed by Missourians while applying for state public assistance benefits since August 2008. In Ohio, where George W. Bush beat John Kerry by nearly 119,000 votes in 2004, low-income Ohioans filed 100,000 voter applications in just the first six months of 2010.
Project Vote, Demos, The Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and the local civil rights groups who sued these states and won (forcing turnarounds at state public assistance agencies) have been waging a lonely fight to implement the National Voter Registration Act. The 1993 law requires a range of state agencies, not just motor vehicles, offer voter registration services.
That fight became a little less lonely in June, when, for the first time, the Justice Department announced it would start enforcing the NVRA's voter registration mandate. This April, 40 million Americans applied for Food Stamps. If 10 percent of those people registered to vote - a smaller percentage than seen at Missouri public assistance agencies after settling its NVRA suit - the nation's voter rolls would grow by several million.
The numbers from Missouri and Ohio dwarf the size of the largest tea party rallies. Already, right-wingers fear these voters and NVRA compliance, commenting on websites that poor people should not vote for any number of ugly reasons. Now it's up to other candidates to pay attention to voters who've until now been overlooked. Instead of obsessing about the tea partiers -- give those newest voters some good reason to use that vote!
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35 Comments so far
Show All"Tell me the difference between dems and repugs" and TP's? Tony
Hello Tony
Here are four differences.
1. In the new Health Insurance Bill, 30 million new people will have access to health insurance for the first time in 2014. Half of those people, about 15 million people, the poorest of the poor, will be allowed onto Medicaid, which is a Single Payer system, free to all users. Among these 15 million will be single homeless people, who have about the highest death rate of anyone. This new bill will save many thousands of lives, of the 45,000 who die each year for lack of health insurance. Do you know any homeless people who have died in the streets? I do.
2. In California, the Democratic majority state legislature has voted twice for Single Payer. Governator Arnold has vetoed it twice.
3. The Earned Income Tax Credit offers poor working people free money.
4. Most Democrats, including Obama, are in favor of repealing Bush's tax cuts for the rich.
Almost no Republicans have been in favor of any of these measures.
I am a registered Green. I would love to see a mass third party, in fact a massive democratic, pro-cooperative socialist party. The differences between Democrat and Republican are much too small for my tastes. But if you allow your political preferences, and your CD fashion preferences, to cloud your perception of reality, then your political effectiveness in building a third party will be severely curtailed. What I care about is change in the lives and minds of real humans, and a strategy for achieving that change, not single sentence rhetoric. If we had more discussion of strategy and fewer pronouncements in these pages, CD would make much more of a contribution.
But the Democrats don't Lead on these better positions---they Co-opt them once they have gathered a certain respectability in terms of numbers and power. In other words, they both take credit for, and assimilate these positions into the mainstream, thus eventually weakening their original force.
If I may be allowed to repeat a post I made on another CD thread:
Maybe if more progressives rolled up their sleeves and tried to meaningfully influence local and national elections, and/or purge the Democratic Party of all its Blue Dogs and other worthless swine, this point would NOT be moot.
But -- it's so much easier to opine on a blog, and throw up one's hands in despair.
I'm glad the progressives at the beginning of the 20th century didn't do the same. They managed to break up corporate monopolies, institute a progressive income tax, and end many of the Gilded Age privileges enjoyed by the Vanderbilts and the Rockefellers. And they did that without access to tools like the Internet or cell phones to organize themselves. Most of the newspapers were controlled by big-money interests who stood against them. They were in large part just farmers and small businessmen who were royally tired of getting screwed. I guess they knew how to work for what they wanted, rather than just whine.
Ah, if only Americans today weren't already lobotomized by television and Twitter ...
"Maybe if more progressives rolled up their sleeves and tried to meaningfully influence local and national elections, and/or purge the Democratic Party of all its Blue Dogs and other worthless swine, this point would NOT be moot."
Check out what happened in IL-6 in 2006 when "progressives rolled up their sleeves". A useless, clueless candidate who said nothing in terms of what policies she advocated but was strong on supplying "personal" narrative was heavily bankrolled and pushed by the Democratic hierarchy in order to push out an excellent candidate. The ordained candidate managed to barely win the primary but went on to lose the general in spite of the DNC dumping millions into her campaign for what was then an open seat. Unless there is a fundamental change in Democratic Party leadership, I don't see how the Democrats will become anything other then what they are now - slightly (emphasis on slightly) kinder, gentler Republicans.
Me? I'll vote Green, Independent, or stay home. That's what Democrats get for giving us a health insurance bailout that they call health care reform, HAMP that they now admit was designed to help the banks and not the people, and a far too small stimulus package. This in addition to normalizing the most egregious of Bush's policies, "pulling" out of Iraq by renaming the troops and hiring additional private security forces, expanding the war into Pakistan, and continuing the fiasco in Afghanistan. Oh, and there's cutting food stamps, lying about the BP spill, and of course, the Catfood Commission whose recommendation I have no doubt the Congressional Democrats will support.
"Check out what happened in IL-6 in 2006 when "progressives rolled up their sleeves"."
Cegalis vs Duckworth I assume. Rahm Emanuel sure knew how to kill progressive thinkers in the party. I found out that Obama was also involved in that election and I was an ass to think he was a victim. Looking back, only the fake populists make it in the Democratic Party these days while the real progressive and liberal champions are preemptively purged.
Point by point response, Laurenceofberk:
1. Obamacare empowers the IRS to enforce the individual mandate requiring us to pay private insurance companies for alleged coverage that the states (most will be bankrupt by 2014) will be required to enforce, in addition to funding medicaid.
Given Obamacare chief Liz Fowler's history, the insurance companies' leverage to deny claims, leaving hospitals holding the bag for indigent patients is likely to persist.
2. Obamacare prevents states from enacting their own single-payer. Perhaps if Jerry Brown becomes governor he and his new attorney general can challenge this and Brown will be our Tommy Douglas (re: Saskatchewan single-payer).
3. The earned income tax credit represents progressive taxation and will be better if more Americans have jobs and can use it.
4. Obama has approached the Bush tax cuts the same way he approached the other issues that resulted in his very undemocratic "legislative victories"; a glass half empty approach loaded with capitulation innuendo that starts the discussion center to center-right. Two months before the midterm election we are nowhere near seeing the tax cuts repealed. When Obama announces his deficit reduction committee's Social Security/Medicare gutting plan after the election the tax cuts will be forgotten until after the Republicans take control of Congress in January, guaranteeing the Bush tax cuts are never repealed.
Ray, you said it best. Thanks.
RAY: Great post.
About 3 weeks ago Rich M went into a debate on these same exact grounds and decimated the "arguments" then raised by Tramaker, who, like Donny-Don & Laurence of Berk today, appear to be standing in to play the role of pro-Democrat apologists for the status quo.
It's hard to believe this late in the game that anyone (whose check doesn't depend upon a less-than-honest accounting) can fail to notice the absolute degree of sell-outs on the part of 98% of the Democratic party.
CD feels like the Virtual world equivalent of The Matrix. Every time an informed poster shoots down a "Mr. Smith Clone," another shows up touting the same party-friendly half-cocked propaganda. And the process begins all over again.
Laurenceofberk,
I'm with you. And I could cite many additional examples of real differences between the parties (e.g., extending unemployment benefits to the long-term unemployed, funding high-speed rail transit projects, instituting stricter regulations on Wall Street investment houses to reduce the liklihood of future billion-dollar bailouts -- ALL measures that Republicans tried to filibuster), but ... the concept of working for incremental, progressive change within the system we're stuck with just doesn't fly with many CD-ers.
Which I can understand -- the Dems have proven themselves 90% disappointing and, like you and many CDers, I am registered Green Party for that reason. And it's hard to see anything seriously changing in this country until we institute publicly-financed elections and instant-runoff voting.
But: when I ask CDer's to propose other, better strategies, I get no useful responses. The closest I've seen is "vote for Nader" -- apparently because that strategy worked SO WELL in 1996, 2000, 2004, and again in 2008.
I would vote for Dems if their "incremental change" was truly the "baby steps forward" that they claim their legislation represents. Unfortunately those "baby steps forward" in too many cases are long leaps backward where those who caused the problems that we are allegedly trying to solve are further empowered.
OK. So, once again I ask: your alternative strategy/solution is ...?
(How come I never get a straight answer to that question?)
A solution will be found only when a majority of Americans overcome fear and greed, make decisions based on evidence, and stop voting for candidates who legislate against their interests.
Hello Donny-Don and everybody,
Please allow me to brainstorm about some "alternative strategies," which will encompass movement building AND voting.
1. LOW INCOME WORKERS. I would stand outside stores and other enterprises where people are making minimum wage or close to it. "Hi," I would say to entering or exiting workers. "Do you know that you can get hundreds of dollars extra per year from the Federal Government? And if you have kids you can get thousands. Here's the booklet about "Earned Income Tax Credit." (Most poor workers don't know about it.)
"I'm from the City Committee to Raise Our Pay. (C-ROP. In Berkeley BC-ROP) We're having a meeting Thursday night to see what we can do. We are working for a City Living Wage Law, and we're going to talk about which unions are best to join; or maybe we'll start our own union.
"And by the way, are you registered to vote?"
2. MEDICARE AND MEDICAID RECIPIENTS. Standing in front of a clinic in a poor neighborhood.
... "Hi, can I ask if you receive Medicare or Medicaid."
........ IF YES. a. "How do you like it? b. Would you like to see it extended to more people than get it now?"
.........IF NO. b. "Would you like to see if you can get it? We're working on that."
.........FOR BOTH. "Would you like to sign this petition? .... Would you like to come to a meeting?
"And by the way, are you registered to vote?"
3. AT A SCHOOL IN A POOR NEIGHBORHOOD. For parents and teachers.
................... You get the idea. This one writes itself.
The coalition we need is not so much one of different political tendencies, but of different but coinciding social movements. Until we build these movements, person by person, we will never have a mass based opposition party. At this point the argument about which party to join or vote for is simply not very interesting. You can't beat billions of dollars without many large social movements coming together. Anyone who is doing it will tell you that it is never easy. But the time to join the work is now.
And along the way, it doesn't hurt to have people registered to vote. One interesting example? San Francisco has voted in a progressive Board of Supervisors, and as a result they have instituted near universal health care in the City, far superior to the Obama plan. We can save lives, we can improve lives, and along the way we can build a movement. It takes imagination and dedicated work.
PS to raydelcamino. I never ask what Americans could or should do. I ask what I can do, along with my friends.
Laurence, I couldn't have said it any better. Even the most monied folks can't hold out for long when they find strong coalitions running against them. The social conservative coalitions succeeded out here in the midwest. The closest I have seen progressive/liberal coalitions in history would have been long before I was born in the earlier part of the 20th century. It is hard to imagine states like KS and WI being rock-ribbed progressive today. But that isn't to say that I haven't succeeded in being able to convince even my moderately conservative neighbors to accept the beauty of some of the progressive and liberal causes that could help them in life.
P.S.: If Kennedy had lived, he might have been able to take his quote on "ask what you can do for your country" a bit further by saying "ask what you and others together can do for your country".
Hi Stanley,
Economic conditions are ripe and getting riper for us to build movements and coalitions of movements. But it won't happen by itself. We have to do it. And although the internet is useful, we have to learn again how to engage people one on one and in groups.
It's amazing how many people who chair meetings haven't the slightest idea how to go about it. (Sometimes people in high places - California's Jerry Brown for example) We have to start teaching each other about human and group relations.
About a tenth of the courses in business school catalogs deal with some form of human relations. They study it so they can dominate us, and they do a good job of that. We have to teach each other how to co-operate before we can build a co-operative society. Sounds obvious, but we don't do it. We should have schools and workshops on organizing and group process in every city.
Donny, I understand your frustration but as much as most of us can't stand the Republicans, we can't stand the Democrats for ignoring us and delivering for Wall Street. Most people here have probably tried to do what they could within their limitations. Yes, it could have been better and forming coalitions to increase the chances of making progressive and liberal causes see the light of day would go a long way's to help. I used to believe that the Democratic Party really needed all the power it could get to enact sweeping reform but now I see what this party is really all about. Unemployment benefits to long-term unemployed? While the GOP would never think of doing it, what good does it do to still leave the unemployed insecure and less confident about their future? Funding high-speed rail transit projects? Very little has been done to fund any public transportation and Obama's stimulus package didn't offer much. In fact, we're still losing service while Big Auto keeps gulping down its spoonfed bailouts. Just ask my niece Jennifer about public transportation woes. She'll tell you what Europe has that this nation is unlikely to come close to producing on PT. As for stricter regulations on Wall Street investment houses, that doesn't stop the politicians from bailing them out. The Democrats have the power to say no to bailouts for Wall Street but most of them just won't use that power that they're given. I do like your solutions of publicly-financed elections and instant-runoff voting but as RichM has pointed out in the past, cooperation will have to come from the Republican and Democratic parties for such ideas to pass. I agree that sometimes we need to propose solutions on top of pointing out what's wrong. But I still think that some of us have a lot of catching up to do so I don't know. On the bright side, reading the articles and comments here has given me some unexpected courage in standing up to my employer getting involved with corporate misbehavior.
The first point is only an projected estimate. What passed in March was not health care reform but instead another act of government forcefully throwing us to the corporate wolves while doing little to nothing to tame those wolves. I know of no other nation that gives Big Insurance unlimited corporate freedom and simultaneously forces citizens to buy insurance from them or pay the fine. The homeless people are not likely to benefit from this scam because the whole package is totally faith based in that it assumes that Big Insurance will voluntarily police itself.
On your second point, I congratulate the CA Democrats for getting something right and if I may correct myself on my mistake I made about Gray Davis, he would have signed single payer instead of vetoing it and that's despite Davis being a conservative Democrat. I'm with you on the third point.
The fourth point used to be true but recently, the Democrats have been making it more clear that they are hell bent on extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. Last month, an article was published here regarding the Democrats' plans to delay repealing tax cuts for the wealthy.
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/07/22-1
Speaking of health care, we Missourians voted 71% against having to pay fines to the federal government for refusing to purchase from Big Insurance. It is a shame that the Democratic Party in Washington did abominable on health care that they used to use as a wedge issue. The GOP will continue to use it against them just like we're seeing in our current race for Senate in MO.
laurenceofberk; I have a few things to say but wanted to thank "raydelcamino" for his quick response which is so true.Just to cite the one point of the so called health care reform; the homeless may get free health care but at the expense of the poor and middle class and they are going to get the money to pay for it by raiding Medicare and whatever you think is good in this joke of a bill wont be till 2014 or 2021 and that tells me all I want to know about what they think of this bill! So the rich get away scott free again as, my guess, the tax cuts for them will be extended. California, where I grew up has been going down hill since Jerry Brown's father was Gov. When I was going to school in the 50's Cal. was at or near the top in education, work was plentiful and the state had more than enough to pay for whatever. Since then, Dem or Repug, have managed to take the state to about 34th in the country and we are broke. SF, a supposed liberal and progressive city, turned out Pelosi, Finstein, and now Newsom, who I dont trust, Boxer across the Golden Gate and, except for Newsom, have voted for a bogus war and all the other shit obama has put out and then I think about all the other politicians from CA who have screwed the state and the country. I'll stand by what's in my first posting. Tony
I agree with part of this, but
#1 - The inclusion of the federal health insurance bill as a benefit is seriously off base. This forces many of us to purchase a private product without limiting the price of the product or properly providing for the likelihood that we cannot pay. It is an ill wind that blows no one some good. I hope someone actually gets provided health care. But I don't think the preliminary indications look good, particularly given over 2,000 pages of industry-written semi-English that must be primarily written to protect the insurance industry from its responsibilities.
#2. Agreed.
#3. Agreed, but how many Democrats are still in office that had to do with EIC? Certainly it is against the spirit of Clinton's and Obama's administrations, both of which cut social spending, the latter to increase military spending and gifts to rich contributors.
#4. Requires substantiation. Talking left while walking right has been general Dem practice these recent decades.
I do agree that the parties are not identical, but the current Dem administration is so close as to be a straightforward betrayal of anyone who supported it based on its supposed affinity to progressive ideas.
I doubt it makes sense to vote for more than a few Democrats across the nation at this point. It is a dismal thing to survey.
Nothing like emphasizing the importance of voting when the differences between party positions has distilled to the point of existential debate.
And now that the Supreme Court has granted corporations the right to nakedly purchase candidates (and thus policy) in the light of day, what exactly are we arguing for in an emphasis on the "magic" power of voting?
It's raining so hard where I live that I honestly have to wonder if the sky has fallen in from so much graft, corruption, and waste taking place here on the mortal plane.
What are "FRESH VOTERS" anyway? Sounds like the language of missionaries who are in trying to fill their pews on Sunday, promise free food to the first warm bodies they find along the pathways near the church.
Republicans pander to their base and scorn those who would never vote for them in a million years.
Democrats scorn their base and pander to those who would never vote for them in a million years.
Since the Democrats' strategy results in losing a significant % of their base in each election cycle, they need a huge recruitment program to draw in new voters.
While the situation at the federal level is pretty dismal no matter who gets elected, the facts are that there are still important differences between Democrats and Republicans at the state and local level.
In my local area, the difference between a Democrat and a republican is the difference between a viable and livable urban Pittsburgh and a Pittsburgh that comes to resemble a hilly version of greater Detroit.
How many here get away from their computer and know anything at all about issues in their own cities, counties and states?
In light of the fact that our country will continue its backward slide until we take control of our media and force politicians to stop doing what's good for Israel and start doing what's good for Americans, I have decided on a novel course of action.
I am supporting everything and everyone Sarah Palin is supporting. I hope that total wackos take control of our country, so that average, decent Americans can wake up from their sleepless slumber and get political. My point is, once the wackos take over, and the whole country goes down the drain, and Americans start dying of starvation and cold weather, the American people will develop the interest to participate in the political process to preserve our institutions and save our country.
Widespread hunger in America will trigger the revolution that will enable us to take back our media and establish rules that protect Americans from warmongering rhetoric like the gibberish aimed at encouraging genocide against American Muslims to show Israelis how much we love them.
I find this article to be a totally callous misunderstanding about the plight of the working class in OH and MO. The same Tea Party voters wouldn't be where they are at if the Democratic Party acted like the Democratic Party of the 1960s and before that. Neither I nor any of my family members or relatives would bother to join a Tea Party rally but I understand that the Tea Party exists as a symptom of the duopoly gone worse. Voting will mean nothing unless we can get politicians who will actually represent us upon getting elected.
Hard not to wonder what is going on with Common Dreams which has lobbyists for Monsanto pushing the false "food safety" bill, S 510, and has published not a single article by farmers and those who see how dangerous it is.
Common Dreams has lost credibility.
CD posts a lot of articles on Monsanto all the time. With regards to "S 510", it has been brought up in so many articles on this site usually in the comments. I thought that there was one article which talked about farmers against S 510. No site is perfect but I'll take this site to FluffyPost and DailyHoax anyday.
As a progressive who has worked for many a forlorn (and occasionally a successful) grassroots campaign, I have long been on a soap box for a strategy of appeal to the "unlikely voter" as opposed to the regular ones who regularly vote mindlessly for those candidates who motivate their prejudices or excite their harmones. Any would-be populist campaigner who doesn't use every opportunity to associate him or her self with those who usually don't vote---the poor and the young in particular---simply knows nothing about populist campaigning. Barack Obama, faux-populist that he is, was able to mobilize an incredibly successful youthful constituency. What we need today is an Andrew Jackson (or maybe a Huey Long) type of candidate who will cast his lot with the poor of the world: as did Jimmy Carter and Dennis Kucinich, to use a couple of more recent examples. And it's not just a matter of registration campaigns, important may those be. It's a matter of a public figure being there with and for "the people" when they have a foreclosed mortgage, a lost job or a child lost to the vicious conflicts in Asia. Tom Joad's speech ("I'll be there" whenever an act of injustice is being committed against an innocent victim) should inspire the everyday behavior of the aspiring political candidate: both because it can motivate those "unlikely voters" actually to vote and because it is the humanly right thing to do.
"give those newest voters some good reason to use that vote!"
The Repuks always provide their idea of a "good reason" to vote.
The Demoks always provide their idea of a "good reason" to vote.
The marketing campaigns are designed to work on the people's emotions. Can you imaging hundreds of millions of USAns being played like violin strings for decades, their entire lives? Can you imaging their continuing to let it happen, election after election?
USans can write in third party candidates. Even in California where third party candidates were banned this year. Yes, when 30% of the people vote third party in California and those votes are dumped, then you have another basis for a popular revolution. What could be better news than that?
Ouch!
I don't understand why you Pollyannas keep insisting that there is some "positive solution". Change, real substantive, long-term change will require a revolutionary scale transformation of attitudes, understanding, knowledge, and action on the part of the American people. The damage we see all around us: to our oceans, our forests, our communities, our democratic institutions, our families, wars, economic imperialism, etc.- these are not aberrant aspects of The System. The System is the aberration. Do you really think a few "positive solutions" are going to overwhelm the legal, economic, and institutional framework of The System? Do you think the ruling class is just going to sit back and watch us dismantle their empires? Or do you think we can just baby step, by baby step reform a Global Empire until we have peace on earth and justice for all?
If the American people haven't woken up yet, what do think it's going to take? Nothing short of an economic collapse of Great Depression proportions is going to shake even most Democratic voters out of their torpor. It's so easy for those of us in the well-informed professional left to put two and two together (sometimes anyway), but for most of America they know only what the idiot box tells them- so their heads are so full of garbage, lies and propaganda they don't know what the hell is going on. We couldn't stop Global Industrial Capitalism from crashing even if 51% of the country suddenly got a clue (and a whole lot of political, economic and scientific sophistication).
This thing is going to wind itself down in a slow grind of economic dislocation and dramatically falling standards of living (for us anyway) or it's going to collapse suddenly and catastrophically. It's time to start organizing in your community. You want to roll up your sleeves?- start a community support and mutual aid society. Start a network to take care of each other, to build resilience and sustainability, to care for the old and the young and the sick, and to grow at least some of the food your community will need to sustain itself. Our government is not going to save us, 'cause it isn't our government anymore. The people will rise up when the time comes, but right now you may as well try to fix a broken computer with a hammer and a prybar. Give up the fantasy that the citizens through some mytho-poetic struggle are going to restore sanity to a world gone mad and a modern way of life that is slowly killing us all.
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Combining Food Stamp and Voter Registration? Great Idea!
I have the perfect slogan for Obama...
"Hope...it tastes like chicken."
It is wonder that the disenfranchised might come to the polls. It's a pity there is so little for them to vote for.
Perhaps the voters must get there first.