quick! just give the capitol police – give all police – more money. that’ll fix the problem. somehow… /s
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I think the short answer is that you don’t get to reform your political system, because it works fine for the people who matter, but that doesn’t include the voters.
If you want to restructure our political system before Election Day 2022, I don’t think you can. That battle was (mostly) lost quite a few years ago, and yes, that’s means we need to make the best of it. It’s too late to change the way the 2020 census was conducted, or to elect new state legislatures to change the election laws and redistricting maps and judicial appointments.
But if you start now, running local and state campaigns to get better candidates on the ballot to stop and reverse and improve on the election laws, then you’ll be making progress! I don’t think we know, anymore, how to build and sustain a movement with real structure that lets it act in a somewhat coordinated way over a span of a decade or several over a large geographic area, which is what actual change requires.
I say that, but I am part of the problem here. I have absolutely no sense of connection to my local community. I never have, and I’ll be moving soon, so it’s not like I’m going to start now. But that means I’m largely ceding any influence I could have to stronger community institutions, and to older residents. This process, repeated around the country millions of times, is a big part of how we ended up here.
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Yep. You have way more impact in local elections and they usually have a more direct impact on your day to day life. I’m also skeptical of how much could get done if an outsider President were elected without support from Congress—discounting everything that would need to happen for them to get elected.
Local offices are also more fluid within their party—especially executives. You hear all the time about mayors or governors bucking their own party because of hyper local issues. There are also a lot more viable third party candidates.
I’ve moved around quite a bit and it’s a lot harder to research local candidates. They’re covered a lot less and have shorter political histories.
I think Republicans have been so successful because they have focused on state races, which allowed for gerrymandering, and let them pass around terrible laws state to state, which all built support for winning Congress.
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I knew trump was an incompetent loser for decades, but the minute he started his “Mexicans are not sending their best” I recognized scapegoating.
I saw the danger.
The trick is to get everyone else to see it
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Don’t worry, everyone saw it. It was impossible to miss. Half the country (or rather slightly more than half) were aghast and voted against that horrible man. Unfortunately, nearly half saw the scapegoating and the nazi rhetoric, and gleefully recognized a fellow racist when they saw one, and they unfortunately tended to live in the more rural states which have an outsized impact on elections.
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yes, that was great for last November.
I was relieved.
But if we don’t prevent voter suppression all over the country…if people lose interest in voting and fighting back, it’s lost
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Kind of like that Jesus guy.
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Hell yeah! Let yer rep and senators know what you’re concerned about, and that their actions will effect who you vote for.
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For those wondering what to do, the Boston Globe has a new series.
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I am not at all convinced trump did all that by himself. Russian and or Chinese think tanks with years of US war gaming knowledge probably extended him a road map every now and then. Part of the Globe’s series should include an foreign intel component. (Maybe they do I haven’t read any of it yet.)
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This is particularly terrifying given the rate of police participation in Jan 6. Combining that with the existential threat that police are feeling from the defund movement (hell, yeah) their already questionable dedication to public health and safety and a functioning democracy is virtually non-existent. One can quickly see how this leads to a heightened Antifa response simply to protect polling places where the police will not. Given the frothingly rabid “repoprtage” on right wing media about Antifa, this feels like a fucking powder-keg set up to turn any election day into a total police-state lockdown.
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