Does Writing Post Cards and Making Phone Calls gain a Candidate more Votes

 

 

By Mark Patro

23 September 2020

 

It’s a little more than a month before the 2020 Presidential Election. I am having a polite conversation in an online neighborhood social platform. The conversation gets heated and all the moderates have dropped out. I move to the sidelines, but because I had posted something on the original thread, I keep receiving new posts notifications to the thread. I’m curious to see where this goes, so I watch. I truly am interested in why people support Trump. The responses and the retorts are now diving down into ridiculous rabbit holes. One woman is so aggravated that she posts an angry rant (written by someone else) about why people are voting for the president’s re-election. It essentially says, “We are not voting FOR Trump, we are voting AGAINST you (meaning liberals and progressives) and YOU are responsible for that! Some of it describes a world different than the world or the political reality in which I think we are currently living. Some of it seems to be purposeful misdirection, and still more of it are boldfaced lies.

At this point I switch online platforms and go into my personal political bubble of friends and acquaintances. I re-post the rant, and ask the others to respond, “How can we counter the falsehoods in this rant?” I get responses faster than I can keep up with so, in a moment of self-defense, I turned off the computer and got myself a glass of wine, and do some cable TV binge watching. I wanted to relax, but you know how social media is, it sucked me back in after a little while.

I was surprised by many of the responses. I will not use names. (And where I have, those names have been changed.) To generalize the many responses into one, most of them turned out to say, “Why bother,” or something similar. These are people I respect, and so, as you can imagine I was simultaneously intrigued and flabbergasted. Maybe I am wrong about all of this, I thought. Why should I concern myself with this oppositional perspective? So, I’m back and forth, and back and forth. My experience (40 years working to change civil rights laws through organizing, testifying before the Maryland General Assembly and the Baltimore County Council among other things) tells me I am not wrong. I am interested in the political and sociological methodology of the question: “How do we counter this political pollution?” Why people do politics the way they do, has been a long time interest for me.

My goal with this little experiment was to get a grasp of the zeitgeist, which is momentarily somewhere between 40 and 45 days until Election Day. My mind is made up about my vote and I suspect that there are very few “undecideds” at this point. It has been a relentless and fierce day-to-day struggle for four years now. I sense that many of us are tired, but still determined. I realize that some of the die-hard politicos among us will disagree. These are the people who will work for the next 40-some days for that one last vote. And kudos to them! I am focused, and worried on the influence this political propaganda will have on the future of our very form of government. I’m looking at the “long game” at this point. I believe this momentum toward a Trumpocracy can be reversed. And, sooner is better than later.

For me, the anxiety over this election is bad enough. This IS a very important election. So, I wanted to talk to the people in my political circle, about political strategy and about election strategy. I am interested in getting my candidate elected, but my focus, right this minute is really centered on changing the political culture for the long run.

I’m now tired, and want to go to sleep. I’ll return in the morning.

The next morning I awoke to many more responses in my email box.

There was one response that made me smile. It resonated with my sensibilities. “I'd start by validating their feelings, see how that works, then go over each thing one at a time,” said one person whom I know to be an active political participant. She continued, “But learn to identify if the person is operating in good faith early, and if not, don't bother. This seems like a reasonable approach.

Another comment was responding to another post which supposed that “the rant” was written by a group of professionals for the purpose of agitating the oppositional voter, “[I] agreed totally! It is clear to me that this is a piece of agitprop, not an informal opinion written casually. As such, it is framed in all the ways outlined above. I also feel your curiosity about this, and share it. *If* I wanted to respond (which I wouldn't, for all the reasons outlined above!) I'd do what “Jennifer” says directly above me. Or, since that would take a lot of critical effort, I'd reframe it with "rather than talk about what you hate and scorn, I'd rather share my values in terms of how they relate to policy. Here is what I believe: ...." and then I'd talk about healthcare for all, respecting the vote in a democratic society, understanding that people should not be killed wantonly by state sanctioned power, public education as a cornerstone of a democratic society, the right of consenting adults to be with and love who they choose, clean air and a livable environment for human and nonhuman life, etc... This way, you don't accept the limits of their framing, falling into that trap, and posit a logical agenda that helps the world that we need to create.”

I very much agree with the previous comment.  And I believe, in my democratic heart that it is our job to counter this propaganda. The people in the other political party believe the nonsense in this rant, because they hear it from Steve Bannon, Steven Miller, Rush Limbaugh, Tucker Carlson, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Riley and all the others like them. If we want to get our country back we need to undermine this false narrative. I am not talking about what to do on Facebook or Twitter or Tik-Tok, I am suggesting we formulate a grander strategy. We need to organize our think tanks, our media and (as George Lakoff puts it) our framing. It will be difficult it will take some time. It took them 45-50 years to get to this point starting with the formation of the Birch Society and Senator Barry Goldwater’s run for the White House in 1964. We need a sound strategy. Ignoring them will not work. We need to be several things at once. We need, like [a previous poster] suggested to hear them out. We need to work with law suits. We need to continue protests. We need to organize a variety of groups with different goals. We need to be ready for violence, and I say that being committed to a life-long adherence to non-violence. If a conservative power-grab is coming we will need to be ready for that and not wait until the last minute like the Democrats always seem to do. "We The People" need to lead the Democrats, and if they don't want to be lead, we will need to leave them behind. Democratic Leadership has been too wimpy for too long now.

While I am thinking about all of this, I get a private message from one of the earlier responders. This person wanted me to sign up for a phone bank or a post card writing group. “You can stay right where you are, we’ll have someone deliver them to your front porch. They already have stamps on them. All you have to do is write the message put them in your mail box at the end of your driveway and put the red flag up. The mail carrier will do the rest.”

Now let me remind you, the reason for this whole episode began when I had this brilliant idea about getting the people in my political bubble together to think out loud and come up with a strategy to undo some of my perceived damage that the rant had caused. Focus here on “undo the rant damage.”

So, I’m thinking, “And, now they want me to write post cards (that will influence no one) that will be tossed in the trash two (maybe three) minutes after it is retrieved from the mailbox. IF, and that’s a big “if” considering how Louis DeJoy's postal system is working these days. And, then there was the phone banking option. Now mind you, there was no one in this world happier for the invention of caller I.D. than me. No one would ever seriously ask me to do phone banking if they knew how much I really hated talking on the phone. But, I was polite. I listened. I was skeptical.

I went back to my internet browser and typed in, “Does writing post cards and making phone calls gain a candidate more votes?”

I wanted to know if spending my time in this way was going to be useful. It was a question to myself.

I stumbled upon and article written in the New York Times. You should go read it for yourself. Its all about a candidate who was determine to prove that writing a large number of postcards who allow him to win the election. It did not. He lost his election.

I then began to think about how many phone calls I get each day that I never answer. I usually only answer when a name I know pops up on the caller I.D.

I haven’t answer a poll takers question in ten years, and I have made more calls than I have received asking me for my vote. It all seems futile in retrospect. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think so.

The synopsis of the article was, post card writing helps to bring the person writing the post cards back from the brink.” So, in the end, post card writing is not for the people receiving the post cards, they are for the people SENDING the post cards. That in itself is worthy, but it still makes me feel deceived.

Like I said, I have made up my mind. And it will not change unless I die before Election Day.

Voters have changed since 2016. They want to know more about how the process works. We need to encourage that desire. We need to get past the elementary party functions of writing post cards. (Sorry Party People.) We just might need to rebuild our democracy one day if we don't get going with this electoral transition soon. I think we should start now to broaden that interest and turn that interest into productive skill. We need to PRACTICE DEMOCRACY in order to make it work like it should.

 

Voter Education

By Mark Patro

 So, yesterday I got caught up in a FaceBook conversation about voter education. 

 Reader to Mark Patro:

"We should get ourselves educated in ways that allow us to make our own decisions on how policy and legislation should be written." – It's called voting.

 

The person I was chatting with said, "It's called voting." I sent him a response that included many of the things on this list. I have since expanded it. I hope it is useful to someone:

Mark Patro to Reader:

Its about a lot more than "just" voting.

•  We need to understand how political parties work.
• We need to understand how power structures in legislative bodies work.
• We need to know the structure of all three branches of our government.
• We need to understand how rich people have more power in election due to the Citizens United, Supreme Court decision, and how that affects democracy and the democratic process.
• We need to understand and use voter influence, when it works and where it fails.
• We need to understand how conversations that are rooted in "Liberty" can be beneficial to those who own businesses and how they limit democratic participation. We need to know history and, we need to understand how the left and the right write it differently.
• We need to know who is writing the history we read, and we need to verify it with several sources.
• We need to understand when political appeals are based in fact and when they are just rhetoric or propaganda.
• We need to understand when those who want to control the government and power structures are using "popular culture" to work for us or against us.
• We need to understand the difference between policy and law. We need to understand how we can influence policy or law. We need to know when one works better than the other.
• We need to understand how to know the differences between one candidate and another beyond the political party label attached to the end of their name. We need to know the policies they support, which ones they will fight for, and which ones they only give lip service to.
• We need to know that sometime political parties are harmful or beneficial to the democratic/republic’s process.

Voter Education, in my view includes all these things. And probably more. If we wish to keep democracy alive in our country we All need to do more of these things. I didn’t include Running for Office because I was directing this to voters who do other thing while working. You should include it on your list, if it motivates you.

Are we Taking Our Democracy for Granted?

The question: “Are we taking our democracy for granted?” has been on my mind for a long time. It’s been the topic of a few articles in the past several years in the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, the LA Times and it was even the topic of a warning from departing President Obama shortly after the election of Donald Trump.

We do seem to take things for granted that surround us, especially the things that seem to have always been there. There is light when we flip the switch. There is drinkable water when we turn the spigot. There is bread and milk at the neighborhood grocery store. Of course, there are exceptions to these conveniences. The people in Puerto Rico lost their “light switch convenience” when hit by Hurricane Maria. The people in Flynt, Michigan lost their drinkable water convenience when it was decided to divert acidic river water into the metropolitan-wide drinking water system to save money. And the people who live in areas designated as “food deserts” in urban areas of the wealthiest country in the history of the world do not have convenient access to fresh food and vegetables because of “market forces.”

Many affluent American suburbanites take these things for granted because they have rarely if ever suffered from more than a temporary debilitating blizzard. Three feet of snow can literally stop civilization in most of the country. So, instead of getting stressed-out most of us look at the snow storm as a two-day holiday, shovel the snow out of the driveway and get back onto the county-government-plowed roadway and get back to our life. We take it for granted that the road will be clean before we get the driveway shoveled. And we do this because, most times it is. We take it for granted.

So, as of 2018, Americans before us have invested 242 years into building this country. We have built cities, railroads, industrial complexes, a highway systems, air traffic systems, shipping ports, the internet, public education systems, a wealth of scientific knowledge, the largest military industrial complex the world has ever seen, and our democratic institutions that hold it all together. These governmental institutions defend individuals against large organizations. They defend us against the invasion of foreign armies. They defend consumers against the vast power of huge corporations. They allow us the freedom to learn and communicate. They defend those who look out for their neighbors against the impact of criminal behavior. The most important of these institutions is our broad acceptance of the words and ideas within the Declaration of Independence, which recognizes that we were all created equal and The U. S. Constitution that we can usually depend on for the legal system it defines, setting the ground rules by which we should all live.


The democracy that we now take for granted sprouted from the two seeds that these documents represent. We can continue to lean on these words and ideas if we elect people who respect our institutions and keep them strong or make them stronger. But, at the current moment it looks as if the people who were elected in the 2016 election are disassembling the very institutions on which we depend. We should be outraged by this, making noise and mobilized to do something about it. (Yes, in some cases we are. I've seen some powerfully vocal women wearing pink hats while marching, on my TV.) We need to keep reminding ourselves that the government of this great country is not those who we elect to office, but “We the People.” I am a citizen. You are a citizen. And, our elected officials are citizens. They are not better than you or me, they are (only, or at most) equal to you and me. Granted they are in powerful positions, but that power is temporary if we elect to remove them from office.

Even though we, as citizens, were all described as equal at the writing of the Declaration of Independence, we still have not achieved that total realization. There are many examples of the expansion of the right to vote to include those who were originally disenfranchised: women, people of color, men who did not own property, and any citizen between the age of 18 & 21.

And, at times even when some who granted the right to vote were barred in other ways through intimidation, through the requirement of paying a poll tax, by being required to read, or by holding “White Only” Primary Elections. Citizenship was unequivocally granted to African Americans in 1868 with the ratification of the 14^th Amendment but, the underhandedness of segregationists in power during the post Reconstruction period slowly and steadily implemented “Jim Crow” laws to interfere with the liberties of Black folks to vote and hold office which then interfered with the rights of assembly, accommodation and education.  We have much to learn, as citizens, about the ebb and flow of attaining civil rights and losing them to those hostile to the concept of equality. (The Strange Career of Jim Crow by C.Vann Woodward  is a good place to start if you need to catch up on this history.)

C. Vann Woodward writes in The Strange Career of Jim Crow about the great advancement that African Americans made during Reconstruction. Many voted and some held public office. Then came the backlash, the Redemption period. Many whites were angered by the freeing of the slaves. The vast majority of Americans—Northern and Southern—remained very prejudiced toward Blacks. Southerners saw themselves as “redeeming” the South by regaining power over the South, which they had lost at the conclusion of the Civil War, to the “Scallywags” (who were Republican Southerners who supported the policy of Black emancipation) and invading “Carpetbaggers” (who were Northerners who came to the South after the Civil War) who imposed their culture of government over the Southern United States. This was a time in which gained rights were completely erased or simply pressured into submission.

The Second Reconstruction was the time between the end of WWII and 1960. During this time grass roots civil right activists eroded the power of the Jim Crow Laws. Their effectual end came with the Brown vs. The Board of Education ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court. This ruling made “separate but equal” (established by the Plessy vs. Ferguson Supreme Court ruling in 1895) an illegal and unacceptable idea within the educational system. The ruling, however, did not take complete effect, however until 1969 when the U.S Supreme court decided the Alexander vs. Holmes County Board of Education ordered immediate school desegregation across the nation, fifteen years after the Brown vs. The Board of Education ruling.

School busing then became the flame which set fire to those who resisted total school integration. In 1972 Boston exploded with anxiety over a court ordered school busing decision. 

The point to this bullet-point history is to expose the sign wave of attainment and loss of civil rights. Many people learn history as it is taught in high school and college where the gains are taught by liberal-minded academics as achievements and the regressions are taught by the segregationist (White Supremacists) as achievements.

This back and forth still occurs. But, we no longer have the luxury of believing that people of color have only made advancements. We can no longer think that LGBT people have “made it” because of the achievement of marriage equality. With the election of Trump, the repeated stories of sexual misconduct and now stories of spousal abuse coming out of the White House and the refusal of other prominent individuals in the Republican Party to criticize the offenders make it obvious that the push back against women’s rights is alive and real. Not only did Hillary Clinton fail to break the Glass Ceiling, but men who disrespect women are trying to push them back down the ladder. With the obvious intention of subjugating them to a lower status.

The first and strongest way to build the third Reconstruction is to vote. We will lose our democracy if we sit back and whine that “my vote does not count.” We can no longer allow the cloud of disenfranchisement to let us complain without action that “there is nothing I can do.” We must work together. We must use Transformative Campaigns  to empower those in our community that feel disenfranchised because we have much work to do.  We must empower as many voters as possible.

We must protect our right to vote and ensure it is always counted. Because, although the U.S. Constitution protects our right to vote, it does not grant the right that that vote will always be counted. This was a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Gore vs. Bush ruling after the November 2000 election.

Other Supreme Court decisions have added to the erosion of the value of our vote.

The 1976 decision – Buckely vs. Valeo was a case about campaign finance. The Supreme Court’s decision was to strike down the limits on expenditures by candidates or other groups (read corporations). 

The 2010 Citizen’s United decision - The Supreme Court’s decision was to establish two primary points, that “money is speech,” and the legal notion that a corporation has at least some of the same legal rights as a natural person. (Remember Mitt Romney’s statement: “Corporations are people too.)

We must stand up for our retention of our right to vote in the same way that we fought for that right initially. We must recognize that this too is a vigilant process. With the gain that businesses have made with respects to their “rights,” the rights of natural persons have been eroded. 

Have we become complacent to this slow erosion? Have we allowed our exhaustion with the pressure of defeat to push us into a place of not voting? Have we become lax in our sense of community?

We can turn this around by voting, by encouraging others to vote, by becoming certified to register others to vote, to develop relationship with nonvoters with whom we talk endlessly about how we can win if we get all of our neighbors to vote, about volunteering to drive the to the poles in order to get them to vote. Yes, I’m talking to you. We need to stop placing all our trust in others. That’s what we do now and it’s not working. As citizens it is our responsibility to get the government to work better by BEING the process.