[Lnc-business] Pagans advising Libertarians?

[Scott L.]

From:  Scott Lieberman

 

I admit that a blog for Pagans is one of the last places that I would look
at for political advice, but nevertheless:

 

 

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GGGGGGGGGGGGG

 

 

http://wildhunt.org/2014/06/wiccan-minister-kathryn-jones-to-run-for-office-
in-pennsylvania.html

 

 

Deborah Bender . 5 months ago
<http://wildhunt.org/2014/06/wiccan-minister-kathryn-jones-to-run-for-office
-in-pennsylvania.html#comment-1449263264>  

More on the subject of third party candidates. At various times, I've been
registered as a voter with three different third parties, though I never was
an activist in any of them. In the decades that I've been following the
fortunes of these parties, none of them has had any electoral success other
than one candidate who was elected to a single term in the state legislature
and promptly changed her party affiliation to advance her career (it didn't
work). Rarely do their candidates even get enough votes to affect which of
the major party candidates wins.

In a state with a large and growing number of independent registered voters,
third parties ought to be winning elections once in a while. Certainly the
deck is stacked against third parties in a non-parliamentary system, but
IMHO a greater reason for the dismal failure of these parties to do the most
important job of a political party, which is to elect their candidates, is
their electoral strategy. Third parties tend to put most of their energy
into campaigning for candidates at the top of the state ticket and for
national office; these candidates have no chance of winning. Because the
party knows they have no chance of winning, they frequently nominate
celebrities and party activists who don't have relevant experience or
qualifications for the post they are running for. (An exception is third
party nominations for the more technocratic statewide offices like
controller. These offices are less political and third parties can sometimes
find qualified ordinary citizens to run for them.)

Because their candidates always lose, all these parties have is a bench of
perennial losers. No wonder they aren't taken seriously. In this country the
way to build a political party that fields more than protest candidates is
to forget about the glamour jobs and make a serious effort to elect 1)
candidates for local offices where they can build local support and 2)
candidates for state assembly in districts that have historically been safe
seats for one of the major parties, which is most of them. Once a candidate
has been elected, he or she can climb the ladder in the normal fashion: run
for re-election, run for another local post, serve one or two terms in it,
build a resume, a track record and a contact list of supporters and allies.
Then run for a more powerful office as a credible candidate.

 

 

 <http://disqus.com/Northern_Light_27/> Avatar

Northern_Light_27

All I can say is ^^^THIS! I also see the shoot-self-in-foot strategy with
third parties and I don't understand it at all. As much as I hate to cite
them as an example, people should be paying attention to how the Christian
right took over the Republican party-- pretty much exactly the way you
stated. Going for the smallest, most local positions and building a turnout
machine that produced passionate voters for positions that were otherwise a
political afterthought, and then slowly proving the potency of that reliable
turnout machine for more and more powerful offices. It isn't quick or easy,
but a quick look at the mess we're dealing with in this country as a result
of that strategy proves that it really works. It's such an obvious lesson
that I don't get why progressive groups have proven so incapable of learning
from it.

 

 

 <http://disqus.com/deborahbender/> Avatar

Deborah Bender  . 5 months ago
<http://wildhunt.org/2014/06/wiccan-minister-kathryn-jones-to-run-for-office
-in-pennsylvania.html#comment-1450567286>  

I definitely had the Christian Right in mind. Besides the fact that shoe
leather and personableness can beat money in a local election, local
elections often have a low turnout and three-quarters of the voters know
little or nothing about the candidates. That means that a single issue,
point of information or conversation can sway the voter to check off your
party's candidate instead of any of the others.

When Quentin Kopp was running for an office in San Francisco, I voted for
him even though he held more conservative positions than I usually favor,
simply because he stood outside my local supermarket and shook my hand, and
none of his opponents did.

*	A small but determined faction of activists can get their people
onto a school board running either a stealth campaign or an open one,
because the vast majority of voters are uninformed and apathetic. The
Christian Right has used this tactic successfully again and again. 

 

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