It seems that a large fraction of the people here is ready to move on from the minimal, "Give me a Democrat, any Dem!" We're ready for some substantive standards. The most comment tactic mentioned is to run primary challenges against those Democrats who have drawn our ire. We have to be smart about how many people we run primary challenges against, though, so the question naturally arises - how do we pick who to run a primary challenge against and concentrate our efforts appropriately? Given the nature of our community any process would have to be an open one. That would have the added benefit of providing real time feedback to our leaders that we really really disapprove of what they're doing, but also the downside that we would need to figure out some way to prevent people from gaming it.
To that end, I have a modest proposal for the community's consideration: the Shit List and the Hit List.
The basic idea is simple - we need a way to decide who to run a primary against and how to concentrate funds on those races. Not to mention which primary challengers to fund. So, what better way to pull that off than to have people contribute a small sum of money, say a max of $5 to $20, alongside a list of grievances. The dollar total and list of grievances should be displayed for all the world, especially the politicians, to see. When a certain cutoff deadline passes the shit list changes gears. All funds amassed are immediately re-approtioned to fund a primary challenge to the top 5, 10, or however many candidates. The amount given to each primary would, of course, be the fraction of of money that person brought in out of the top primaries (say the number one person pulled in as many contributions as the next four combined, then that primary should get half of all funds contributed). The community then votes on which primary challengers to fund. I'm torn between whether the vote should be limited to just those who have contributed at all or even just those who contributed with an eye to fund that particular primary. I think that more people would be willing to cooperate in the former case.
That's it. There are lots of details like how to make the scheme comply with campaign finance laws, whether the money should be debited immediately or at the end, how to handle people who want to back out (if they should be permitted to), how to prevent gaming of the system (eg how to prevent a whole bunch of Rethugs try to divert our money against a progressive dem by, say, having a concerted effort against Speaker Pelosi), and etc but that is the basic idea. The best part about such a system, if it could be pulled off, is that it isn't just some poll that the politician can shrug off. It sends a clear message that the negative consequences have begun and because the dollar amounts are small they can naturally assume that there's more where that came from. The small dollar amount is also a feature that prevents gaming of the system by those more fortunate than most.
We could even have a similar system for Republicans though the focus would be on funding a Democratic challenger and then there's the open question of whether to intervene in the primary or not. That's he Hit List I referred to earlier.
Thoughts? There would also be the question of who to run it. I would be a horrible candidate, quite frankly. I know nothing of campaign finance law nor how to run such an enterprise. Not to mention that grad school has been a huge time suck so far. So there would be that matter to settle, too.