How do we win over our opposition? 

One conversation at a time, one person at a time.

If you want to have a chance of winning offices in counties and a Congressional District which has had a Republican stranglehold on it since the time of the Civil War, or even being able to have Democratic candidates run in races where they have a chance of winning, (or even getting them on the ballot in the first place), we need to build support from the bottom up, from the grassroots level.

We need to be the ones who learn about the issues and learn the facts rather than listing to the propaganda of the talking heads, who are paid for by special interests.  That is each of our responsibilities as a good citizen of this country.

If you look at the usual distribution of election results in national, regional or local elections for our area, it is usually skewed in favor of Republicans, who often run unopposed.  And most of the time, the best election results that we can hope to end up with, are something around a 60/40 split, with Republicans winning. 

Don’t expect that any political party will sink time or money into a project if they don’t have a reasonable expectation of some short term gains, or have significant support from their constituents.

People in the 5th Congressional District complain that they don’t have Democratic Candidates in local elections, but when Democratic Candidates do show up, there are very few who turn out to vote for them, and even fewer who will actually volunteer for or donate to their campaigns.  And in off year elections, when there isn’t a President, Governor or Senator to elect, most people stay home and don’t show up to vote at all.  And if the elections only have lower tier offices up for election, then even fewer people show up.  Only a handful of people end up electing your local officials, and many of those that vote don’t even have a clue who the candidates are or what the candidates stand for. 

People complain that they don’t want to encounter anti-Democratic tirades from people, either on the phone or from direct contact, when helping campaigns.  And given some of my own experiences, I can certainly appreciate their concern (I’ve been on the receiving end of many anti-Democratic tirades myself).

But Republicans like to promote being “politically correct”, so you won’t discuss politics and you won’t discuss anything that might be controversial or lead to heated discussions.  But the real reason is to prevent anyone from having a discussion and coming to an agreement or even an understanding of what can be done to resolve our differences.  Businesses, social gatherings and families all follow the “politically correct” rule, and our country has become a country of people who disagree based on personal biases, but don’t have the opportunity to come to any understanding of the other side, because the rule prevents us from even discussion the issues.

When families want to resolve problems, they need to come together and talk about their problems to air their differences, resolve them, and come back together as a family.  When they don’t discuss their differences and resolve them, they either remain dysfunctional or split apart.

It is the same principle that is taught for good sportsmanship.  Be competitive.  Play a good game, show off your skills, and follow the rules.  And at the end, congratulate one another for the opportunity to compete with one another, and part friends, or at least respectful competitors.

Our country faces the same problems.  We need to talk about what can actually be done to resolve our differences, and fix the problems, rather than complaining about ideological differences to obstruct policies which have been proven to work, while continuing to champion policies which have been proven to repeatedly fail.  And then, we need to actually do it.

There are those who believe that the only way that we can force the government to do what we want, is through mass protest rather than through changing political policies from within the political parties.  Someone recently pointed out that the Vietnam War was finally ended because of massive protests against it, involving millions of people during the late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s.  And while it is accurate that massive protests were the cause for the change in policy, the end result that changed our involvement in the war was to change a political and governmental policy.

If you can change the position of the political and government policy from within, by being a part of the conversation and helping to form the party policy, you can avoid having to go through the massive protests in the first place, (and the massive expenses in attempting to coordinate such a protest that are involved).  And let’s not forget what caused the moral outrage and the protests in the first place.  It was the body count.  It was the loss of over 50,000 American lives that led to a breaking point for the American people, where they could no longer support the Vietnam War.  And that happened forty years ago.

When have you seen this type of turnout to either support or oppose a cause, in order to change a national policy, since then?  Even with our involvement in the Iraq War, and the hundreds of billions that have been spent on the war that are unaccounted for by the Bush Administration, and the hundreds of billions that have been taken by War Profiteers under no bid contracts that were only awarded to Bush Campaign Donors, have we seen any massive protests against the war, that even come close to what we saw during the Vietnam Era?  Perhaps in other countries, but not so much in the United States.  No, that would be un-American, and unPatriotic.  So, I guess that the war itself or its expense wasn’t enough to get people to protest against the war.  And it certainly hasn’t been the number of dead and wounded American military that has created any massive protests either.  Maybe it is only because it hasn’t reached 50,000 yet.  I’m not willing to wait for it to get to that point.  And the issues that can bring us all together to create a turnaround in government policies are few and far between, that could bring as many people together as the Vietnam War did.

But people who would like to strike down my argument will point to the fact that people turned out in the tens of thousands and then in the millions to support our new President Barack Obama, and defeat the Bush Administration policies.

That just proves my point.  People don’t have the money or the time, particularly in this economic climate, to devote to supporting the multitude of issue oriented organizations, which are there to push for government support for their POLICIES.  If you have people in government who listen to the people, and support the policies that support the people in the first place, you wouldn’t need to be spending all the time and money to support those organizations, which are battling government in the first place.  And the massive turnout that finally matched the protests of the Vietnam War was to elect the Anti-Bush, to change POLICIES in GOVERNMENT.  That is the end result that we are all looking for.   We are all looking for a government that listens to us, works for us and is accountable to us.  A government for the common good, rather than for the billionaires and the corporations who use government policies to put us into economic slavery.

If we want to create change, it is much easier and cost effective to elect leadership that reflects who we are and supports what we believe in to begin with, rather than trying to change their minds or their ideology after they are elected.

And if we want people to understand the issues that they support are supported by our candidates, then we need to understand the issues ourselves, and talk about the issues with those individuals who aren’t taking the time to learn about or understand them on their own.

If we want to have some positive effect on the common good, then we all have to participate in our political process. We may not like it, but it is the system which our country was founded on, and it is the only one we have.  You can choose any party you want to support, but if you want to truly have some effect in their policies, you have far less influence as an individual on the outside than as an individual on the inside.

Progressives and Independents and even Democrats don’t seem to understand that simple idea.  But Republicans have long shown their understanding of this by stacking Boards of Directors and School Boards with people who share their ideology.  They’ve run entire tickets from the Presidential candidates, down to the lowest level candidate on the local level as a single party ticket with one message, lower taxes and weaker government.  And their supporters will generally vote straight ticket and support whatever the Republican Party tells them to support, through talking heads like Limbaugh, O’Reilly and Hannity.

Democrats on the other hand, generally don’t support ticket wide campaigning, and require that lower tier candidates be left out of any events that revolve around upper tier candidates, unless large financial payments are made to the coordinated campaign, or their candidacies are targeted by party strategists as being something that they want to win, and therefore should focus their attention on.  It neglects the fact that most of the attention of the local constituents won’t be redirected to other candidates or campaigns in other areas outside of their own political boundaries, and serves not to gain more support for the focused candidates, but rather to almost eliminate the support for local candidates in local elections.

So if we as a community want to change that, we need to work to change the way our relatives, friends and neighbors think about politics and elections.  We need to reach out to those who have “dropped out”, and get them to become active citizens by becoming educated voters.  The vast majority of people in the country don’t vote, because they have been brainwashed into believing that their vote doesn’t count, or they don’t want to think about the issues or make a choice regarding who would be better at doing the job as an elected official.  Or they don’t run for an office that they are qualified for, even though they complain about the job that the people in those offices are doing.

In the 5^th CD Democrats usually can only hope for about 40% of the votes, of the approximately 60% to 70% who usually do vote (Waukesha County has claimed a higher percentage of voter turnout, and the numbers who voted actually have exceeded the total number of voters who are actually qualified to vote in the past).  But that number ignores the 30% or 40% of the entire population who can vote but choose not to.  That means that the 40% of those who vote, and vote Democratic, is only about 24% to 28% of the total number who could vote.  So Republican winning numbers only reflect 36% to 42% of the entire voting population in this area.  That is nearly matched by the percentage of the people who generally don’t bother to show up to vote at all.  So if any of them are complaining that their vote doesn’t count, the numbers show the exact opposite.  They DO count.  They count FOR the candidates that they have grown cynical about, because they don’t show up to vote against them.

And the easiest and cheapest way for us to be able to win elections in the future under these circumstances, is for everyone who voted Democratic to find one person whom they know doesn’t vote, or is borderline but votes for Republicans or some other party, and talk to them about policies and what we stand for and get them to vote for us, rather than allowing the Republican talking heads to define us to get them to vote against us.  You may have to speak with dozens of people before you convince one to vote or vote Democratic.  But it is your responsibility as a citizen to be informed on the issues and vote accordingly.

Even within the Democratic Party, out of the close to three million people in Wisconsin who voted in the last Presidential election, and the almost 1.7 million people in Wisconsin who voted Democratic, only a little over 8,000 are members of the Democratic Party, who are actively involved in shaping the Platform and policies of the Democratic Party.  That is less than half of one percent of everyone who voted Democratic in the State of Wisconsin.  Any American citizen and legal Wisconsin resident who is over 14 years of age, is able to join the Democratic Party and can do so by signing up online on the DPW State Party Website at http://www.wisdems.org/membership_sign-up.asp .

So to anyone who claims that they are upset about positions taken by the Democratic Party of Wisconsin or the Democratic Party in general, because they don’t believe that Democrats have done enough or are ignoring issues that they feel are important, I say to them, that they have given up their right to complain about it by not joining the party and attempting to increase awareness or change policies from the inside.  You can choose to stay on the sidelines if you want, but there are plenty of people who want to change the party in the other direction, who are really Republicans who are claiming to be Democrats in order to do the exact opposite of what I am asking you to do.  So, if you don’t do anything, you just give up control to them.

And lastly, it is far easier to deal with elected officials who agree with most of our positions and vary with only a few, rather than putting someone in office where we disagree with most of their positions, and agree with only a few and then have to try to deal with them after they are elected.

Republicans run on lower taxes and smaller government, and we’ve seen the results of their last eight years in power.  We were left with larger government and fewer jobs to pay for it, with a disintegrating national infrastructure and collapse of our economy, working people bearing the brunt of higher taxes as a percentage of income and the economic downturn, and financial benefits going to a handful of people at the expense of many.  Senator Bernie Sanders (former Republican, now Independent from Vermont) reported that under the Bush Administration the 400 richest people in the country increased their wealth by $670 Billion.  Democrats are consistently working for the common benefit of all, with money being spent to rebuild our infrastructure and support working people.  The recent stimulus bill is designed to do that.  Republicans don’t like it because they finally have to start paying their fair share, and working families are starting to get some benefit from their labor.

We got into the mess we are in because not enough people paid attention, or cared enough to get involved.  The only way we are going to get out of it, is for people to start paying attention, getting involved and staying involved.  I’m tired of hearing people complain more about Democrats who supposedly haven’t done enough for them, instead of hearing them go after the Republicans for doing nothing.

Your choice. 

"Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right...and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean of the characters and conduct of their rulers."
- John Adams

"We, the People, are the rightful masters of both the Congress and the Courts. Not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who have perverted it."
- Abraham Lincoln

"I have two great enemies, the southern army in front of me and the financial institutions in the rear. Of the two, the one in the rear is the greatest enemy. The money power preys upon the nation in times of peace, and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes."
- Abraham Lincoln

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavour to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people (e.g., by pitting the cooperation-oriented political left against the competition-oriented political right), until the wealth is aggregated in the hands of a few, and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of the war."
- Abraham Lincoln

"Unless you become more watchful in your states and check this spirit of monopoly and thirst for exclusive privileges, you will in the end find that the most important powers of government have been given or bartered away, and the control of your dearest interests have been passed into the hands of these corporations."
- Andrew Jackson

"The bold effort the present bank has made to control the Government, the distress it has wantonly produced...are but premonitions of the fate that awaits the American People should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution [The Bank of the United States], or the establishment of another like it."
- Andrew Jackson

"The real rulers in Washington are invisible and exercise power from behind the scenes."
- Justice Felix Frankfurter, Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice

"The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson."
- Franklin D. Roosevelt

"Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it."
- Woodrow Wilson, 1913

"The real menace of our republic is this invisible government which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy length over city, state and nation. Like the octopus of real life, it operates under cover of a self created screen...At the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller Standard Oil interests and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as international bankers. The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both political parties."
- John F. Hylan, New York City Mayor, 1922

"The rich will strive to establish their dominion and enslave the rest. They always did...they always will. They will have the same effect here as elsewhere, if we do not, by the power of government, keep them in their proper spheres."
- Gouvernor Morris, head of the committee that wrote the final draft of the U.S. Constitution

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, (i.e., the "business cycle") the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."
- Thomas Jefferson

"Examining the organization and function of the Federal Reserve Banks and applying the relevant factors, we conclude that the Federal Reserve Banks are not Federal instrumentalities...but are independent and privately owned and controlled corporations...Federal Reserve Banks are listed neither as 'wholly owned' government corporations [under 31 U.S.C. Section 846] nor as 'mixed ownership' corporations [under 31 U.S.C. Section 856]...It is evident from the legislative history of the Federal Reserve Act that Congress did not intend to give the Federal government direction over the daily operation of the Reserve Banks...The fact that the Federal Reserve Board regulates the Reserve Banks does not make them Federal agencies under the Act...Unlike typical Federal agencies, each bank is empowered to hire and fire employees at will. Bank employees do not participate in the Civil Service Retirement System. They are covered by worker's compensation insurance, purchased by the Bank, rather than the Federal Employees Compensation Act. Employees traveling on Bank business are not subject to Federal travel regulations and do not receive government employee discounts on lodging and services..."
- Lewis vs. U.S., case #80-5905, 9th Circuit, June 24, 1982