I was an election judge in the November election. It was an interesting experience. I came in at 5 AM got home about 10 PM after our trip to the courthouse. I had to bring food since no one gets to leave. We were busy and I couldn’t attend to the crock-pot. Before I turned it off it was rather dried, burned, and crusty along the bottom edge. So I took my election mess home and let it soak for a couple days, then put in some directed and applied elbow grease. It was back to usable and in the cabinet before my wife returned from her business trip. The mess left by the election in our Congress will take a little longer to clean up. Instead of elbow grease it will take legwork to repair, confabulating by idioms I guess.
I have a suggestion to resuscitate Democratic Party politics and retake our country. It belongs to us the majority not the Tea'er minority.
I suggested this last May, but it seems I have yet to reach our Democratic leaders. We will never turn our party politics to a successful model as long as we rely on big money and a plethora of disconnected Internet movements. There are many reasons big money politics will never be reliable for the Democratic Party. We are many things, but moneyed interests cannot dictate our policies. As long as we want to build a better America our party must have policies that are for the greater good formulated by people. Democrats cannot be mouthpieces for policies dictated by corporate entities. Time and again these policies are not even good for the corporate entities own interests. The latest demands for tax cut extensions are not in our nation’s long-term economic interests, but nothing will shake the GOP demands for them. It is time to ignore the party of the old, white, and angry (G granddad’s, O old white, P prejudiced party).
The Democratic Party will be well served by turning to its members to formulate policy. We are the party of the diverse, young, and educated. We must construct a framework, if framework is not too discredited a word, based on congressional districts. Our policies must be formed through local congressional interests. This will instill local interests tied to a local representative. Constituents’ interests will overwhelm any national movements. How much more influence would a policy like a public option have had if a representative knew how many in their home district were in favor of a public option. This is not an archaic approach; rather it is merging long successful political models with modern social networking technologies.
We need to develop networks in each district. Networks that form a jigsaw when connected become a national party. The tools are available to do this and efforts like DailyKos, MoveOn, and many others have tried on a national basis to do networking. A new social networking needs to be built by the party in each district. These networks would increase turn out, and improve communication. The election of Alvin Greene in South Carolina and Scott Lee Cohen in Illinois are just two examples of what happens when we continue ignoring the tools of communication that modern technology provides. The national Democratic Party could build these networks for far less money than will be spent on worthless television ads. An effort needs to be initiated involving the national party as well as the many Internet interest groups to design the system that all the local party units can then take advantage of in building their own voter networks. The current system of communication with our representatives and party leadership does more to alienate voters than motivate people to go to the polls as informed citizens.
So yes when we look at the results of the November election it appears to be a real mess, worse than my crock-pot. We must start to work on informing voters. If we do get to work we can make 2012 a great Democratic success. If these networks communicate to a representative that 30,000 or 50,000 in their district have discussed and voted to support a position such as a public option that representative will be far more responsive to their voters than PAC money. Those elected will have an accountable link with the voters who elected them. People will have more power and corporate interest groups will have far less. Anyone who is part of the blogosphere should lobby for a meeting of the party and all the groups working to promote Democratic candidates to develop these networks. Please push for this, we need a nation tackling our problems not growing the deficit and impoverishing our people.
Two congressional districts with the best voter turnout numbers are discussed in this article. It shows informed and educated are important characteristics in these districts.
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