Lately, I’ve been leading a lot of conversations with the statement:
If we want our elected representatives to do the right thing, we have to elect and support them.
It’s been the credo of Daily Kos since its inception: Elect more and better Democrats. While this may seem obvious to many who’ve followed politics for years here, I’ve been finding that there are some strong reactions to this statement.
I’m hearing several alternative narratives about how our representational system works that I don’t believe are true, and discourage people from participating.
Here, I’d like to take a look at a couple of these narratives and talk about how to overcome them.
1. My vote doesn’t matter
This is the narrative I hear the most, in various different forms. It’s encouraged by cynical tactics like “both-sidesism” and “whataboutism.”
Since Donald Trump’s base is more like a ceiling and he can’t expand the group of people who vote for him, he and Republicans have to resort to ever-increasing levels of cynicism in order to convince people that their vote doesn’t matter.
If people feel their vote doesn’t matter, there’s no point in voting.
We often talk about making voting easier for people, and this is important. If people don’t believe their vote matters, however, it doesn’t matter if it’s easy. They still may not vote.
Here’s a few ways you can overcome cynicism:
- Highlight a race where voters stood up and made a difference. I like to talk about just how big a difference Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has made in Congress. Imagine if we had a hundred of her. Or electing Larry Krasner as district attorney in Philadelphia. Or all the congressional wins of 2018 when we turned out in force to vote. Here in Cincinnati, I’m talking about what a difference it would make to elect a sheriff who believes that justice is about more than just locking people up.
- Point out significant differences in beliefs between the two parties. One of my favorites is that Democrats believe in democracy, and Republicans don’t. There are many, many others, though.
- Help people understand the political model of social change (movements) → political change (elections) → policy change. All of these aspects of the model are important, not just one.
- Lift people up in any way possible. Often, I’ll use humor.
- Ballot initiatives that people care about.
2. I want a parliamentary system
This is a frustration with the two-party system. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a desire for a parliamentarian system, but this is what I see the most. It can also appear as: “I want some other system that’s different than what we have now.”
I understand the frustration. In our world of consumer choice, we’re used to having all kinds of different options in products that we buy. Often, I see people wanting something similar with their elected representatives. They want more choice.
It’s actually both easy and hard to disagree. It’s hard because I share the sentiment. It’s easy because if we want to change things, we have to start with reality. And the reality is that we don’t have a parliamentarian system or some other system that allows more choice.
If you’re trying to effect change within a system we don’t have, it’s not going to be effective.
Here’s a few ways that I talk with people who express beliefs that we need a different system:
- I agree with the desire for change. I, too, would like a system that’s more parliamentarian in nature. If you don’t agree, then don’t say you do. But I think most of us can actually agree with much of “the system is broken” and/or we could do better.
- Raise the reality that this isn’t the system we have. After I agree, I ask some form of the question: “How do we get there from here?”
- What this allows me to do is talk about how we can affect change in the system we have with the end goal of getting to something more like a parliamentarian system.
- If I can understand what they have a passion for, I look to suggest ways that they might be able to get involved. Often these ways are ways to help in movement building rather than with the Democratic Party.
3. If I don’t vote, it will punish them and they will do better next time
I hear this narrative all the time in different forms. It usually takes the form of someone saying, “Democrats need to do X or they don’t deserve my vote.”
The idea is that you want your representative to do something and therefore you say you’re going to withhold your vote if they don’t.
In theory it sounds good and it may be very personally satisfying, but what tends to happen is that political candidates tend to learn that they can’t count on you for support, so they look elsewhere instead.
That is, politicians simply have to look elsewhere for support. Often this has the sad result of shifting the political landscape further right. This is why Republicans work so hard to encourage cynicism and discourage people from voting.
When I hear people say “Democrats need to … “ the first thing this tells me is that these are people who aren’t identifying as Democrats. They want Democratic politicians to do something, but they’re not willing to support them. Often they’re liberals who feel that the Democratic Party doesn’t represent them enough.
With folks who sound like this, I will often ask: How are you supporting them?
When they say they aren’t, I’ll ask why they feel entitled to ask Democrats to do something if they aren’t willing to help out.
Basically, what I want to do is move them from “Democrats need to ...” to “We need to ...” Either help out, or stop pointing fingers. I’m okay if people don’t want to become Democrats, but there are still lots of ways they could help out. And I will strongly make the case that if they want politicians to do something, they need to elect and support the best politicians possible.
If a politician sticks their neck out for people and then gets unelected because of it, they learn not to stick their neck out. This is why politicians are only as strong as their support.
In a nutshell
One of the things you can do as a political leader is to help empower people to make change.
Part of this is helping them understand how our current system works, and that politicians are only as strong as their support.
David Akadjian is the author of The Little Book of Revolution: A Distributive Strategy for Democracy (ebook also available).