Letter to No Labels

To No Labels

Re: Citizen mobilization to break gridlock

Dear Sir:

A. No Labels and citizen mobilization

It is very difficult not to laud the efforts of No Labels to shape the 2016 Presidential elections by getting Presidential candidates to commit to the National Strategic Agenda, which is to be commenced immediately after the Presidential inauguration by a sustained bipartisan process to achieve one or more national goals to

• Create 25 million jobs over the next 10 years
• Secure Social Security and Medicare for the next 75 years;
• Balance the federal budget by 2030; and
• Make America energy secure by 2024.

The website says that more than 70 members of Congress have expressly undertaken to support the National Strategic Agenda.

The website explains the philosophy of No Labels thusly:

Breaking gridlock is a preoccupation and priority of many reform organizations in D.C. and around the country. Often, these organizations are focused on bold systemic reforms to reduce the influence of hyper-partisanship, get money out of politics or put an end to congressional gerrymandering. 

These are certainly worthy and important endeavors — but they are tough, multi-year, state-by-state slogs that may never come to fruition – or only come in time.

It is our view that we need solutions to our most pressing problems now, and we need buy-in from both Democrats and Republicans to find them.

For No Labels, the prevailing hurdle preventing our nation’s progress isn’t disagreement over particular policies. It’s an attitude – specifically, the hyper-partisan viewpoint that leads far too many of our leaders (and citizens) to completely dismiss, ignore or question the motives of people from the other party.

We don’t operate like that. Any member of Congress – conservative, liberal or in between – can win our approval, so long as she or he is willing to work with any other member to find solutions. 

The primary goal of No Labels is to start a national movement that will culminate in a Federal government that sees the presidential administration and both houses of Congress working together to achieve mutually agreed-upon goals that will solve the nation’s problems.

The foregoing is problematic.

Only time will tell if anything will break gridlock. Many in the country even seem to favor gridlock.

I wish to raise the matter of citizen mobilization, whether it is needed to break gridlock, and, if so, how it can be achieved.

I think it is fair to say that No Labels has engendered only modest citizen mobilization on behalf of the National Strategic Agenda, which mobilization can be contrasted with, say, the immense citizen mobilization that has taken place on behalf of the Presidential campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.


B. MAYDAY and citizen mobilization

No Labels might want to consider the situation for MAYDAY.US.

MAYDAY.US has been seeking to break gridlock through the election of a reform minded Congress by 2016.

MAYDAY has on its website front page this quotation:

"The mortal struggle at hand today is not between the right and the left. It is not between Republicans and Democrats. It is not between the Congress and the president. It is between us (currently outsiders to our own government) voters and the Washington Insiders."

This mortal struggle diagnosis would seem to call for great mobilization and unity of voters to elect Congressional candidates who will take action on behalf of reform.

MAYDAY has a problem here.

Voters have differing views on important issues, such as climate change, immigration, and privacy versus security in fighting terrorism and crime. If a Congressional candidate takes positions on other important issues, many voters may not support the candidate on that basis, and this undermines the needed unity in the struggle of voter outsiders against Washington insiders.

At the same time, a Congressional candidate who takes the position that Congress must be fixed first, that voter unity on that must not be undermined, and for that reason the candidate declines to take positions on other issues, in all likelihood, will attract little or no voter support.

The foregoing conundrum may have been a contributing factor in Lawrence Lessig's decision to leave MAYDAY and undertake his "Hail Mary" run for President and his idea of a trustee President whose only purpose was to get reform passed by Congress. Professor Lessig denominated this a "referendum Presidential candidacy."

That Presidential candidacy has foundered.

The conundrum continues, however, for MAYDAY at the Congressional level.

Professor Lessig could not run a single issue Presidential campaign, and very likely no Congressional candidate can run a viable single issue Congressional campaign.

If unity of voters is critically important in order to force the passage of reform by Congress, and if Congressional candidates cannot run single issue candidacies, and if that can cause the reform issue to get lost in the mix in the 2016 elections, how might the conundrum be resolved?

I think there is a possibility the current Congress could be forced by the American people to take action about reform before the 2016 elections, under the threat that the 2016 elections will be a referendum on how Congress, and individual Representatives and Senators, do in taking action to pass reform.

It would require massive citizen mobilization for such a threat to become credible. Incumbent Representatives and incumbent Senators would need to be put on notice by their constituents that they risk being voted out of office if they don't act to pass reform before the 2016 elections, or if they pass reform and the reform that is passed is judged by voters not to be adequate.

While there is widespread belief that Congress is "broken", there are numerous different things that might be done to try to "fix" Congress, and there will be differing ideas about what should be tried. These would be legitimately subjects of debate.

Indeed, that is exactly what should happen. Both Republican and Democratic incumbents in Congress should be forced to take a position about whether or not they think Congress is "broken."

They can take a position that they don't think Congress is "broken" and their constituents can decide whether the constituents agree or not.

Alternatively, an incumbent in Congress who says that Congress is "broken" can propose what he or she thinks should be done to try to "fix" the broken Congress.

Congressional debate should then ensue.

This debate would be subject to an overhanging threat that Congress must debate the subject and agree, or not agree, on something, and that something will be the subject of the 2016 elections referendum.

Voters can vote in favor of their incumbent if they think Congress has done a credible job in what Congress has proposed (or not proposed), or against their incumbent if voters are dissatisfied with what Congress has proposed (or not proposed).

This idea is set out in this blog, and the blog entry 2016 Congressional candidates' Declarations should be read first.

C. Citizen mobilization for the benefit of No Labels

How critical citizen mobilization is for MAYDAY or No Labels needs to be decided by those organizations.

I would refer them to the below quote from "Mayday, Mayday: How Not to Reflect on Campaign Finance Reform’s Disastrous 2014 Election Night", by Jamie Lovegrove:

So let’s be perfectly clear about this: The notion that quiet, behind-the-scenes politicking can someday lead to comprehensive campaign finance reform is patently absurd. We’re talking about reversing the effects of the most significant and well-known Supreme Court decision since Bush v. Gore, drastically shrinking a multi-billion dollar industry overnight, and wrenching power away from some of the most power-hungry people in the entire world. This is not some pet political pork that you can tactically maneuver onto the end of some long, unrelated bill and hope nobody notices. This kind of sweeping, controversial change simply does not happen behind the closed doors of the Capitol building cloakrooms or K Street boardrooms.
Incredibly, it seems Lessig is one of the first to recognize that for this kind of unlikely effort to stand even the most remote chance, it will require massive public mobilization.

The Sanders and Trump Presidential candidacies would seem to exhibit that the time is right for MAYDAY or No Lablels to try to instigate citizen mobilization on behalf of their respective agendas.

I submit for the consideration of No Labels whether my 2016 Congressional candidates' Declarations idea could attract significant citizen mobilization and whether that mobilization could be availed of by No Labels to advance its National Strategic Agenda.

I hope No Labels will give due consideration to the same.