There is an electoral strategy that can win the entire Congress for us next year. We can turn the energy and determination of the Occupy Wall Street movement, and of the Wisconsin and Michigan demonstrations, into an absolute electoral route of the forces of the Oligarchs next year. We can save our shared dream of a fair, just, egalitarian and truly compassionate nature of the United States, and save its Constitutional nature. But we don’t do it by running a man. We do it by running a message already shown to be favored by more than 50% of the electorate, as represented by candidates pledged to a platform built on those popular positions. We do it by electing a Populist, activist, Democratic Congress, and by a large margin, in 2012.
To do this, we use the Constitutional remedies built into the Constitution. We create an upstart third party, Americans for a Representative Congress. Its motto? “A Congress for the 99%.” ARC finds candidates who will run on a commonly-shared platform of popular policies - and then immediately begins to run them in every Democratic Primary, in every district. It has one sole purpose: to take back Congress from the guys with million-dollar checkbooks, so that it can pass the following platform of popular policies:
• Higher taxes on the wealthiest members of our society; Congressional action to directly create jobs;
• Direct Congressional effort to start a huge jobs program;
• Reduced spending on war, ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan;
• Infrastructure development, both repairs to our vital assets and investment in new technologies;
• Protection of Social Security and Medicare;
• Public options for healthcare, so that all Americans have access to medical care;
• Protection of our common wealth: our National lands, our environment, our children;
• Meaningful punishment, including jail time, for the men and the financial institutions that created this depression.
• A fair tax system that rewards long-term investment and job creation for American citizens on American soil;
These are the policy positions that consistently poll above 50% when voters are surveyed. Some of them – like higher taxes on the wealthy, or vastly curtailing our occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan– actually reach almost 70%. These policy positions are neither Right nor Left, Liberal or Conservative. They are popular We might give the name of “Progressive” to the Congress that actually passed all the above-listed policies into law.” But the more accurate name would be “populist” because it would pass popular policies and programs. By promising to enact legislation that is actually what the American voter wants to see adopted, Americans For a Representative Congress can win elections in 2012 – enough to carry both Houses of Congress.
We will never have a better time to elect a massively populist Congress by running candidates that are pledged to represent popular policies. Right now, the American people hate the present Congress. They hate the Democrats: we have only 28% approval rating. They hate the Republicans even more. Those guys are in “approval rating below-20% Hell” at 16% , Next November, Americans will elect anyone that isn't the guys in charge.
They hate the Congress in direct proportion to its refusal to listen to the voters, and actually be representative. 54% of the Am54% of the American people say it’s time to give someone new a chance in Congress.
But where are our candidates? Where are the slates full of populist Representatives and Senators, running from every district and state in the Union? One thing is for sure: if we don’t provide the candidates, we know who will: the Plutocrats that control the Republican party. They are more than happy to offer them candidates who have been manufactured to appear as if they are answering the public’s call for change. If there is no other option offered to the American people in the in the voting booth, they will go with the only option: none of the above. They will stay home, at worst – and the Greedy Old Plutocrats will win, then, as well. But where are our candidates, running as a group on a strong Populist message?
It falls to us, here and now, to find them and offer them to the electorate. We have to do it fast, as well, since the earliest primaries are now scheduled for the end of January. (South Carolina has just moved its own primary to January 21.)
Congress - more than the President - is the key to everything. All the laws, all the policies, all the programs, all the appointments, and all the investigation; they are all handled by Congress. All the foreign involvements are controlled by Congress. Most importantly, all the money to fund all the programs, all the bureaucracies, all the branches of government, is all appropriated by Congress. A populist, activist Congress can remake America, no matter what the President or the Right-Wing echo chamber wants. It can protect us from a Republican President. It can force Obama to the Left - after all, he's all about signing legislation.
To accomplish the goal of electing that Congress, we would use a very simple strategy that is already familiar to us. It was utilized by Howard Dean in 2004. He then used it again two years later, with the “50 State Strategy” that won a Democratic Congress.
This strategy has so effective in capturing Congressional majorities that when the DNC abandoned it, along with Dean, in 2009, the Koch-driven Plutocrat conspiracy picked it up. The Koch Brothers utilized Americans for Progress as the national organizing committee; and had that group run the creation of their whole “Tea Party” zombie. Their intent is to use their present Congressional power in order to dominate the economy, politics, and, as far as they know, the entire future.
The strategy consists of a campaign waged in every voting district, with a common platform as the basis for identity of the political party. The platform is “marketed” using an essentially franchise model of a election campaign, rather than a military model.
The system has a decentralized power structure: the national organization comes complete with an entire platform of very specific premises and goal. It provides net and professional-looking print .pdf marketing materials, logistics, legal information on deadlines and procedure, as well as training, to its affiliated groups on the ground, who adapt it to local considerations.
But the real, on-the-ground work – the power - is controlled by local organizations. These groups are formed with local volunteers in each of the 435 Congressional districts; it is these people who organize the local start-up meetings. But the local groups do the heart of the work: finding candidates to run for the platform, through solicitation, outreach, and contact with local communities. They also collect the petition signatures in the drive that gets these candidates and the platform onto the Democratic Primary ballot.
We are will be using the Constitutional voting booth remedies that we still have (for perhaps only a little while, if the GOP carries out its plans.). These remedies are as old as the nation itself. We have actually greater right to lay claim to our Founding Fathers’ legacy than the Tea Party, because we are rising to defend our secular and free society that protects diversity and its commonwealth.. We, too, are crying out:“No taxation without Representation!” After all, the American populace of 2011 has its tax money forcibly confiscated, and sent to a distant capitol, where it is spent to protect and reward not our interests, but those of the tiny minority of aristocrats that expend huge sums to bribe our Congresspeople.
What we want is a Congress that is representative in fact, not in theory.
An action calendar for an Americans for a Representative Congress campaign would look like this:
1. Start with an immediate rollout via the net, Twitter and Social Media, which introduces Americans for a Representative Congress, its reasons for existence, its platform, and its goals. Use this during the remainder of October to solicit volunteers in every Congressional district. These people will get the ball rolling on the ground, by holding introductory Meet-Ups and getting the message out locally..
2) In November and December, local groups meet in every Congressional district, with the specific charge of finding effective potential candidates. These candidates pledge to run on the platform in the Spring primaries, specifically in the Democratic primaries. They also urge their present Representative to commit publicly to the platform. If the candidate will not commit, publicly promise to primary them.
3.) These groups then solicit the signatures on petitions to get those candidates on the ballot. (This depends on the individual Primary calendar of the State.)
4.) Then they run them in the Primary. The very fact that candidates with the Americans for a Representative Congress label are running in the primaries will advance the goal of focusing the discussion on those issues that the people care about.
Here at dKos, we have tens of thousands of veterans from campaigns and elections held over the past forty years. We have experts in every facet of activity that such a nationwide movement would encompass. We have liaisons and representatives from every large and small Progressive, Liberal, Democratic and democratic organization. We have members from every state in the nation. We bring together, in one miraculous nation-wide public square, the people with the skills, the knowledge and the passion to make Americans for a Representative Congress a reality. Can Kossacks work together to accomplish something this massive? Are we a community that can actually carry out major electoral action?
You might ask, “Why not simply mount a campaign for a third-party man (or woman)?” The answer is also simple: because the barriers to ballot access in this country are insurmountable in some states – and intended to be that way. It’s been the approach of the corrupted power-protecting traditional parties to make ballot access as hard to achieve as possible. That’s designed to make sure third –party candidates, with their messages, can’t get onto the ballot.
But we are not running a third party candidate – we will be running a third party platform – with the intention to take over as of the Democratic candidate slots as possible. Why run as Democrats, in Democratic primaries? First, it will be easier for Americans for a Representative Congress to take over the Democrats’ candidacies. The Democratic Party is organizationally the weakest in terms of party discipline, and it has many members who would themselves sign onto such a platform automatically.
By running a slate of candidates, all agreed to achieving legislation based on popular positions, in the Democratic primaries, we can overcome the barriers to ballot access. Candidates with this platform will have a splendid chance of getting elected in a year when the electorate is in the mood to throw out non-responsive elected officials, and elect a new group of representative Representatives and Senators. The first two platform items – higher taxes on the wealthy, and large Congressional action on jobs - are popular, for the most part, in every section of the nation, even in every state. With this approach, we actually stand a chance of winning a veto-proof, filibuster-proof Congress.
Yes, there are a great many political organization already out there working on the November 2012 elections, such as Van Jones “American Dream Party,” and Campaign for a Progressive Congress. But there is none that is running a district-by-district campaign to run candidates specifically committed to the platform of popular policies.
Certainly the DNC isn’t. There are too many Congresspeople with Democratic Party affiliation who cannot or will not run on this platform because the business interests, as opposed to the constituents - in their districts tell them not to . Look at those Democrats who did not support the most populist bill Obama has introduced yet – the jobs package –because it cut subsidies to oil and coal interests. A candidate from the ARC Party, if elected, would not only be pushing for its passage, but would be fighting to make such a bill even more stimulative.
With candidates identified as specifically supporting these popular policies, identified so by Party affiliation, the voters will have a chance to vote for someone especially committed to Populist policies at this time in our nation’s critical history, and in spite the continual messages from its corporate-owned media, and the capitalization to, or ownership of its other political parties by the Big Money Guys. They would have a reason to vote.
This 2012 election may be that last one we have. If the GOPlutocrats win, they are going to strip voting rights from most of the citizens - leaving only those who would normally vote in the Big Money Men with the franchise. They've been planning and working for the goal of complete oligarchic takeover of the United States of America, its Treasury and Commonwealth, for almost 40 years. This election is the last one standing in their way of complete domination. We know that this is the Last Election of a free people because they are so very obvious now - we can finally see all the secret connections - the plutocrats like the Koch Brothers, AFP, think tanks, media outlets, ALEC - things that were war in the shadows of conspiracy before. They have 40 years of True Believers that they have weaned on these beliefs as well. They don't have to hide it anymore because they think they have got it sewn up. They believe that there is nothing we can do to stop them.
But just in case the forces of Democracy get wise and raise a last-ditch effort, the GOPlutocrats are going to throw in every gun they've got: ratfucking of Democratic groups and Progressive groups, electoral fraud, "voter fraud" laws that make it impossible to get the right ID to vote, doctored videos, and outright, bald-faced lying. They will manufacture votes through machine manipulation in close states. They will commit every unConstitutional act known to this country, figuring that by the time we take it to court it will be too late.
We have to treat the next 12 months as if it were a frontal military assault by a powerful nation that has been building up its troops and weapon systems for decades. Do we have the intelligence, guts and foresight to win what is actually a war without bullets? We need every army we can get. Americans for a Representative Congress would be the front-line push to systematically drive voters to the polls, with the aim of winning the Congress. It is up to us to win the People's House for the People.
Many of us shared the excitement of the Obama campaign, and the thrill of his election. It promised the hope that we had saved the dream of a People’s Republic of the United States of America. Now, on the verge of his re-election, we are faced with the utterly hopeless vision that a treasonous conspiracy to confiscate all the wealth of America, 40 years in its creation, is poised to sweep all before it in the 2012 elections.
Before we all begin filling out our citizenship applications to points elsewhere, there is still time for all of us to work together in the service of a cause that we believe in, that can change the course of American history, and that can win.
Hold on tight to your dream.