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We are the watching and active and coordinating Left.
We’ve noticed how you operate, CPC reps and staffers. We are not amused. We are angry, coordinated, and at this early point semi-connected to the unions, churches, and various other “power players” in our local communities. If you agree to cuts in ANY parts of the safety net for the poor, not just Social Security, we will consider you a lost cause.
We need LEADERSHIP, and you’ve let us down, time and again. But we, your real constituents, are willing to just let the past go. But only if you stand up and LEAD. And Grayson, your following us, is NOT leading. Don’t pretend that you’re a real leader here, and we’re just hanging on your every word. Say something like “Thanks, Jane and FDL peeps, for showing the way. Here’s my ideas for fixing the political system,”. Because FDL peeps were weeks/months/years ahead of y’all.
I know we are willing to try, if not able, to bring a Green candidate to power in Washington. Or in a Mayoral office, even. But probably Washington.
We are everywhere. We organized globally.
You, Stoller, ( I don’t delude myself that Grayson would ever read/write here) have your ear on the ground. But hear this: We are angry to the extreme.
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We need to smack down any R or D proposals to make cuts.
If the Progressives want to call Green members, “Independents” because they can’t use the word Greens, I don’t care. But we have to keep pointing the the economy as the source of any deficits, and the bloated military budget as the “fat” for those who want to make cuts.
A Coalition of Greens, Progressives and Tea Party antitax folks could stop Obama.
//full stop//there’s a problem with my text software.//sorry
Totally.
(I’ve had formatting issues as of late as well, btw, with weird slashes added in)
Thanks, athena1.
Just found this little WTF item on Grayson’s wikipedia page:
You make a very important point. Every politician in America operates on a marketing model–every one. Republican, Democrat, Green, Socialist, Libertarian. The candidates do market research (called polling) to determine what sells, create a promotion plan (called campaigning), and manage their communications so that it flows in one direction as messaging. One of the things that turns people off from writing Members of Congres is the off-target form letters they receive in return that makes clear no one ever read the details of their letter enough to respond intelligently. Politician’s blog strategies have followed the same form; there is little evidence that the politician’s staff (yes, Stoller, that’s you) ever read the comments.
So what is interactive about the the “amazing interactive medium of the web”? For politicians, it’s their worst fear. Having to be candid with one part of their constituency while another part of their constituency might be watching.
This failure of two-way communications has two effects. (1) Good ideas and legitimate criticism from constituents never get into the process of legislation. (2) Progressive politicians never get the extended one-on-one interaction with constituents that might convince constituents that moving in a progressive direction is more prudent than continuing to do the same things that don’t work and harm people. That’s because you have to listen to where people actually are in order to engage in dialogue than changes their opinion.
So what we are left with is politicians making decisions behind bubbles, one-way communication, and confrontational messaging.
Can I guess this was in 2010 when he was scrambling to avoid losing re-election because his district was to the right of him?
He could have also meant “cut military offense spending.”
*standing and clapping and whistling*
Well said!
Yes it was. But my understanding is that holding the debt ceiling hostage is a radical right-wing ploy, which succeeded in 2011 only because Democrats let it succeed. So I’m surprised Grayson ever signed on to the idea. Maybe there was a good political reason to, but this just jumped out at me.
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Thanks athena1. We’ve lost the initiative on a attacking the real welfare queens, Wall Street and the defense contractors. That leaves us defending the CPI.
You know, this brings up something I’ve been thinking about for some time now. And that is gerrymandering.
Many folks have opined that the only way we’ll ever get out of the mess we’re in is to get money out of politics. But IMO, if we just ended the practice of gerrymandering and had Congressional districts drawn bases solely on geography would make a HUGE difference as it would result in a lot of “safe” seats suddenly being up for grabs seats. And that should result in better results in the long term.
I think the idea is that the elderly are the new welfare queens.
WOOT!! WOOT!!
CPC better stand up and represent us or there will be a lot of seats lost next cycle. The organized, angry left has a long memory and cutting SSMM is like poking a wasps’ nest with a stick.
That’s an excellent idea just to start with because you would have agreement of the public across the ideological spectrum. Until you got into the details.
The ideas of a non-gerrymandered district is one that is not so configured as to predict the election of a particular candidate or party. That would be one principle in establishing and changing (because of population changes that reallocate districts across states) districts.
But there is a second constitutional principle already at play, and that is the equal protection of the law when it comes to voting (as articulated in the Supreme Court’s so-called “one-man, one-vote” decision)
A third principle from the Supreme Court in the 1990s dealt with voter discrimination that automatically excluded minority candidates from success, especially in Southern states. So there was created a requirement to re-district to increase the likelihood that majority-minority areas were not precluded from successfully electing minority candidates.
Another principle often cited is that the districts be compact and not strung out like Gerry’s salamander. That means that you have the minimum perimeter for the maximum surface area as a shape, which would be a circle at the limit. But you have to tile all of the geographical space; therefore, the idealized form would be a hexagonal grid if you had a uniform population density. So what you come up with as shapes will be more like the shapes of US counties or the shapes of administrative subdivisions in other countries.
And then there’s the fact that political campaigns operating from a marketing model organize themselves to pitch to demographic segments, which creates an implied divisiveness.
So what does “drawn solely on geography” mean when you sit down at modern redistricting software and start shuffling census blocks from one district to another. That in itself creates a political discussion of the legitimate purposes of drawing the lines.
Excellent discussion. I learned a lot. IIRC, another key term from the courts is “community of interest.”
IMHO, another way to approach it would be to add a third Senator from every state and double the number of the House of Representatives. Now it’s more expensive for the elites to buy government.
My understanding is that some of the most acrimonius fights over re-districting are within each of the parties.
Look, right now contacting democrats and progressives in congress is fine but if we rely on them to stop Obama from cutting ssi and medicare we are screwed. The liberal media and majority of liberal pundits have all bought into the president has made tough choices and sacrificed the poor for a deal. Right now our best chance to stop this is the Tea Party’s refusal to accept tax increases. After we go over the cliff and Obama has his tax increases he wont have an excuse to cut entitlements which is what he really wants. The Tea Party stopped him last year and hopefully they will again. Any democrat who votes to cut ssi and medicare while agreeing to lower corporate taxes needs a primary challenge. If you have a republican congress member call their office and urge them to say no to any deals with Obama. Tea Party Intransigence may be the only thing that saves the poor and elderly from the Obama Pelosi knife.
Should there be congressional districts at all? Why not just proportional representation? That would do away with gerrymandering altogether.
I know, I know. Such a system would require an educated and politically engaged public to work, and that idea is anathema to those who now control our government and economy. I don’t see that happening until the 1789 Constitution is scrapped, if even then.
I also know that most Americans seem to like having “their” representative who lives in their geographic area. Just throwing out food for thought.
Recommended, and I’d love to see backlash against these false progressives. Unfortunately, until those of us willing to buck the “lesser of two evils” meme that guides most voters who vote Democratic are far more numerous, it won’t happen.
OTOH, it will never happen if people like you give up.
“Agitate. Agitate. Agitate.”
–Jim Hightower
Yes. The Tea Party has the capacity to blunder into forcing Obama into doing the right thing. Wall Street already is showing jitters about that possibility. It would be most ironic, would it not?
I don’t think it will happen. I actually hope I’m wrong and TarheelDem is right. We’ll know soon enough.
Jane has mentioned before that she’s scanned IP addresses, and the readership here is disproportionately/overwhelmingly folks in CPC districts.
*WE* have to be the gap between our hyperlocal watchers (and we have to take them on faith or intuition that they’re operating in good faith. It’s tricky. We must become twitter/local-blog/fb/irl/whatever friends with them to feel them out, and them, us) and the way the CPC behaves nationally.
They can gain your respect the exact same way you can gain theirs. Transparency, honesty, passion, fact-checking, etc.
The “bad guys” have networked for decades (centuries?). The post 70′s left hasn’t, although the FBI had a lot to do with that.
We national politics watchers HAVE to connect with the people who mostly just watch hyperlocal politics. It’s easier in the CPC zones, but should be do-able even in blue-dog zones. “Going Green” has to be “on the table”, for real, too. If even ONE CPC member “goes green” in the next 2 years, it’s a victory. And we can all rally around the one who expresses interest.
If I lived in a tea party/repub district, my first priority would be to convince my leftie friends to totally come out of the closet and engage in charity works WITH tea partiers/republicans. This is evidence-based. Once repubs realise they’re actually surrounded by good people they’ve known for years who are actually lefties, their minds shift dramatically.
Free ebook:
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
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If this were really true you might have something.
1 out of 3, at best.
Watching.
Active and coordinating. I don’t think so. Not enough so any politician notices.
And your solutions is…………
And your solution is……….
WTF? lol
How in god’s name do you know how we activists spend our “on duty” activist time? How do YOU know who I connect and coordinate with? How do YOU know anything about us? lol.
Proportional among what? Parties? One big huge popular vote within a state, or the US, or why not the entire globe since we’re thinking outside the box (and the current system as specified by the Constitution itself).
Take the national level as an example. We have an election with thousands of candidates not limited geographically for, limiting to the House of Representatives for now, 435 seats in Congress. Even 435 turns out to be hard to manage to a consensus, it seems. And the top 435 vote-getters are the ones who are seated. No geographical or party restrictions. That first of all forces every candidate to have a national communications strategy (if the campaigns are run under the current marketing paradigm). And that costs the candidate money unless there is a free national election infrastructure financed by tax money (however it might work) that provides all candidate equal access to the voters. (Without a subsidized infrastructure, the candidate with the most money — his own or someone else’s — is the one most likely to have the necessary name recognition to win.
I guess I don’t know what “proportional representation” means in your statement.
Wait I think the lightbulb went on. What if we had the current number or fewer geographical districts compactly constructed and had multiple-member districts with the number of representatives based on the proportion of the population? A lot of state legislative districts are like that in some parts of the country. Population changes from the census would be used pretty straightforwardly to assign the number of representatives to each district. Some candidates would have an easier job campaigning because fewer numbers in the overall district. Other would be campaigning in large population districts to be the best 2 of 5 or 3 of 11 candidates in the field.
Whenever I think about the issue of gerrymandering, and reforming it, in order to achieve fairness within the electoral situation, I also ponder this: We need to support having a new system of Federal government regarding the allocation of Senators. How is it that California, with 37 million people, has two people representing those folks, while South Dakota, having less than 900,000 people TOTAL, also has two Senators.
I would love a solution to this situation, even one that included dividing California into two separate states – a North and South California.
What is a CPC district?
Tried teh google but, that’s no help
MY congresscritter is Marcia Fudge, who didn’t even have a Republican opponent in 2012, much less a third party one. She’s bulletproof.
Unless someone has a million dollars to throw my way. I could beat her with that, white guy in predominantly black district and all. On a third party ticket to boot. People here are healthily cynical. Ask Jest and Peasant Party if you don’t believe me.
Ding ding ding ding! Your light bulb is what I was thinking, mostly, anyway. It could work.
Unfortunately, I don’t think we have the TIME to enact such reforms more or less peaceably. Ten years max. Again, I hope I’m wrong; even if I don’t live to see them.
Actually, if not for the confusing wording of Article One, we should have had, and should still have one Rep. for a minimum of 40,000 and a maximum 50,000 people. The two key words were “less” and “more.”
The relevant sections of Article One should read
And
These changes were approved by the Constitutional Congress
But the wording confused the engrossing clerks when transcribing Sen Oliver Ellsworth’s notes on Page Two here
If anyone knows more than I do, go ahead and correct me if I’m wrong
Maybe someone would say that’s unworkable in this day and age, but I don’t think they in any way imagined we’d have 300 million people, 50 states, and over 1,000 military bases throughout the world.
In my mind, and maybe in some of the Founding Father’s minds (if they were alive), I think they’d envision we’d need some sort of regional administrative areas to really serve the people properly. I think we need bare minimum equal protection clauses, and all — to protect against racial discrimination, gender discrimination etc.
IMHO, the fact that Wyoming, South Dakota, and North Dakota have the same voting power in the Senate, screams for more representation in the House for the more populous states
Last paragraph should be
IMHO, the fact that Wyoming, South Dakota, and North Dakota have the same voting power in the Senate as New York and California, screams for more representation in the House for the more populous states
Oh, you’ll get no argument from me. I agree with you, mostly, except for the Senate.
As far as I am concerned, the Senate should be abolished.
Tarheel Dem if you happen to come back to this thread, I have a reply for you on another thread
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