This agenda, and the tactics and strategy being deployed by the new organization (see the organization's Who Will Fight Big Money and EmpowerEveryday People? toolkit), seem cut from the same cloth as the agenda, tactics and strategy Democracy Spring is currently pursuing (described in Democracy Spring's Forcing a Choice Toolkit).
It is unclear whether there is supposed to be an advantage in having two organizations rather than one organization.
Be that as it may, I have been trying to ask questions and make comments to Democracy Spring about how it is trying to advance its agenda. The same questions and comments, I believe, are legitimately directed to Whowillfightbigmoney.org as well.
A. Messaging that will connect with voters
The Who Will Fight Big Money and EmpowerEveryday People? toolkit says it will provide "neecssary" resources "to talk to a jaded public about the problem of our out-of-balance political system" and will provide "[m]essaging guidance, based on years of research from some of the country’s leading pollsters, on how to connect with voters on the issue;"
The content of messaging is very important, but I think even more important is getting the messaging as widely disseminated to the public as possible.
It is obvious that our messaging powers are pathetic, compared, for example, to what Donald Trump can do with a single tweet read by tens of thousands of voters, and that can get out to hundreds of thousands of voters if his tweet is rebroadcast by TV news.. Bernie Sanders continues to get thousands of people hearing his messaging at rallies, and it too is rebroadcast by TV news. The Sanders campaign seems to have done widespread phone banking and a lot of door to door canvassing. Thousands of tweets show up on his hashtags every day. Similar goes for Trump.
Compared to the Trump and Sanders campaigns, our social media messaging has very limited reach, and we don't have money to do TV advertising or even US mail mailings or phone banking.
It is unclear whether there is supposed to be an advantage in having two organizations rather than one organization.
Be that as it may, I have been trying to ask questions and make comments to Democracy Spring about how it is trying to advance its agenda. The same questions and comments, I believe, are legitimately directed to Whowillfightbigmoney.org as well.
A. Messaging that will connect with voters
The Who Will Fight Big Money and EmpowerEveryday People? toolkit says it will provide "neecssary" resources "to talk to a jaded public about the problem of our out-of-balance political system" and will provide "[m]essaging guidance, based on years of research from some of the country’s leading pollsters, on how to connect with voters on the issue;"
The content of messaging is very important, but I think even more important is getting the messaging as widely disseminated to the public as possible.
It is obvious that our messaging powers are pathetic, compared, for example, to what Donald Trump can do with a single tweet read by tens of thousands of voters, and that can get out to hundreds of thousands of voters if his tweet is rebroadcast by TV news.. Bernie Sanders continues to get thousands of people hearing his messaging at rallies, and it too is rebroadcast by TV news. The Sanders campaign seems to have done widespread phone banking and a lot of door to door canvassing. Thousands of tweets show up on his hashtags every day. Similar goes for Trump.
Compared to the Trump and Sanders campaigns, our social media messaging has very limited reach, and we don't have money to do TV advertising or even US mail mailings or phone banking.
For more than a year I have been urging ideas about how to expand our messaging capacities.
I have encountered incomprehensible unwillingness of reform organizations to give any consideration to the same (as best I can tell).
One idea I have been pushing is to try to do messaging which takes advantage of the immense attention paid to the Trump and Sanders candidacies and their grassroots underpinnings. My effort started last July (see Proposed messaging re: Congress), and evolved into "tweeting banks" connected to the Presidential election, such as this last one CALIFORNIA - Last tweeting bank for Sen. Sanders. With Sen. Sanders' chances fading, I have tried to persuade Sanders supporters to turn their attention to Congressional races. See Berniecrat Congressional candidates.
I have encountered incomprehensible unwillingness of reform organizations to give any consideration to the same (as best I can tell).
One idea I have been pushing is to try to do messaging which takes advantage of the immense attention paid to the Trump and Sanders candidacies and their grassroots underpinnings. My effort started last July (see Proposed messaging re: Congress), and evolved into "tweeting banks" connected to the Presidential election, such as this last one CALIFORNIA - Last tweeting bank for Sen. Sanders. With Sen. Sanders' chances fading, I have tried to persuade Sanders supporters to turn their attention to Congressional races. See Berniecrat Congressional candidates.
I have not been able to get any encouragement of reform organizations to these efforts to capture benefit for our cause through reaching out to Sanders supporters (and even to Trump supporters).
Also, I have argued that conventional social media messaging, such as being pursued by Democracy Spring, and now by Whowillfightbigmoney.org, has significant limitations but there is a way to break through the limitations. See Breaking out of like minded social media circles. I have not been able to get any reaction to this from MAYDAY, Democracy Spring, and other reform groups.
I hope Whowillfightbigmoney.org will give more thought to how poor our messaging capabilities are and will strive hard to find ways to expand our social media messaging reach.
B. When is there dead end partisan posturing?
Please read A question for DemSpring. The entry tries to inquire whether MAYDAY in 2015 merely advanced the cause of partisan posturing, and whether Democracy Spring is at risk of doing the same thing, with the result that our issue is at serious risk of being just another one of numerous partisan gridlock matters that the American people despair of their broken Congress doing their job about, and, as such, disappears in the fog of the perpetual political war.
I have seen no answer from Democracy Spring to my question and don't know what their thinking about this is.
I believe Whowillfightbigmoney.org is at the same risk as Democracy Spring and ought to answer the question that Democracy Spring has yet to answer.
Please note that, if Whowillfightbigmoney.org is satisfied with its approach after considering the question, I think there are things the Democrats can be called on to do that will help negate partisan posturing and assist the Whowillfightbigmoney.org agenda.
Please note that, if Whowillfightbigmoney.org is satisfied with its approach after considering the question, I think there are things the Democrats can be called on to do that will help negate partisan posturing and assist the Whowillfightbigmoney.org agenda.
C. The problem of politicians making promises
Both Democracy Spring and Whowillfightbigmoney.org are proceeding in the mode of seeking candidates in the 2016 elections to make promises of what they will do if elected, for those promises to influence outcomes in the elections, and for the elected candidates to fulfill their promises in the new Congress.
Things can obviously go awry with this approach, including that not enough of the candidates making the promise win their elections, the ease with which elected candidates can wiggle out of their promises after they are elected, and it becoming necessary for voters to go through the exercise again in the the next election cycle if the new Congress does not pass satisfactory reform legislation.
It would behoove Democracy Spring and Whowillfightbigmoney.org to search hard for ways to lessen or avoid the risks of what can go awry with the approach they have chosen.
This is what motivated my 2016 Congressional candidates' Declarations approach. The approach seeks to force Congress to debate and act (or not act) before Nov. 8th. It does not ask a candidate to take any position about what should be done, but only demand that Congress face up and act (or not act).
The circumstances give my approach some credibility. Consider the below statistical information that The Who Will Fight Big Money and EmpowerEveryday People? toolkit sets out
• Three-quarters of the American people believe their government is corrupt (Gallup, September 2015).
• Four out of five Americans—including 80 percent of Republicans—oppose the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision (Bloomberg News, September 2015).
• Eighty-four percent of Americans believe money has too much influence in politics (New York Times/CBS News, June 2015).
• Ahead of the presidential caucuses in Iowa, voters there—arguably some of the most engaged in the political process—are angry about money in politics. A full 93 percent of likely Democratic caucus-goers and 91 percent of Republicans said they were unsatisfied or “mad as hell” about the issue of money in politics. (Bloomberg News/Des Moines Register, August 2015).
• Voters support efforts to reform the system. A full 85 percent of voters think we need fundamental changes or to completely rebuild the system. (New York Times/CBS News, June 2015).
• Seventy-two percent of Americans support small-donor solutions, like matching funds, to overhaul our broken system (Every Voice, December 2015).
If that information is correct, it should make it hard for a candidate to be unwilling to demand that Congress address this before Nov. 8th, and any candidate who makes that demand should be viewed favorably and not adversely. Making such a demand should be a lot easier than making a pledge as requested by Democracy Spring and Whowillfightbigmoney.org.
Voters may be more inclined to participate in a tweeting bank in a Congressional district if they are not asked to tweet for a particular candidate, and instead are only asked to tweet that all the candidates demand that Congress debate and act (or not act) before Nov. 8th.
The approach of Democracy Spring and Whowillfightbigmoney.org also suffers from conundrum #2 of Zephyr Teachout's conundrums and the impediment to voter unity relative to our issue, when voters may consider other issues more important in making their voting decision.. My 2016 Congressional candidates' Declarations approach goes a long way to solving that conundrum.
D. We are faced with a "heavy lift"
The introductory letter in the Whowillfightbigmoney.org toolkit says:
When he launched MAYDAY, Professor Lessig called it a "moonshot." Professor Lessig went from a "moonshot" at the Congressional level, to a "hail Mary" at the Presidential level. That "hail Mary" failed, and Professor Lessig did not return to MAYDAY for pursuing the "moonshot" at the Congressional level,
Democracy Spring's spent six months exclusively dedicated to planning the April civil disobedience action, which resulted in foregoing "outreach" during important early months in the Congressional elections. This can be interpreted that the "moonshot" at the Congressional level was going to be even more difficult than originally thought.
Most believe that Congress benefits from the status quo and is not going to pass satisfactory reform of its own accord, and the voters must force that on Congress. This calls for widespread grassroots mobilization.
The past two years have not demonstrated much grassroots mobilization. MAYDAY has been at work since July 2014 and has little to show. You can decide for yourself how much grassroots mobilization MAYDAY has stimulated by looking at their Facebook pages https://www.facebook.com/MAYDAYdotUS and https://www.facebook.com/groups/MAYDAYPAC/); their Twitter https://twitter.com/MAYDAYUS, and their Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/maydaypac. I see virtually zero.
Compare MAYDAY with the Trump and Sanders campaigns and the huge amounts of grassroots mobilization they have simulated.
I would say our grassroots mobilization is less than one twentieth of what Trump and Sanders have stimulated.
All these things considered, I repeat my belief that it is going to be a very "heavy lift" for Democracy Spring and Whowillfightbigmoney.org to simulate meaningful grassroots mobilization, and it is going to be an even "heavier lift" for the grassroots to advance meaningfully the agendas of the two organizations.
E. Conclusion
Democracy Spring and Whowillfightbigmoney.org must find ways to do a better job of stimulating widespread grassroots activity than MAYDAY has done.
I don't know whether the dearth of grassroots mobilization that MAYDAY has arrived at after two years is because grassroots did not hear about MAYDAY, or because grassroots learned about MAYDAY but they were not very stimulated by MAYDAY and concluded that MAYDAY was not going to stimulate much so such grassroots decided not to bother with MAYDAY.
Either way Democracy Spring and Whowillfightbigmoney.org have their work cut out in moving their agendas forward.
EDIT 6/2/16
The below is a Facebook posting copied and pasted from MAYDAY.US. It illustrates how MAYDAY supporters spend their time in discussion among themselves, and give no attention to how to get messaging out to the public. This kind of internal discussion accomplishes almost nothing and distracts from making effort to spread awareness of the issue in the public domain. Beneficial, helpful messaging to the public can be done without there being agreement about how to solve the corruption problem, but that escapes the attention of those discussing and arguing among themselves.
The approach of Democracy Spring and Whowillfightbigmoney.org also suffers from conundrum #2 of Zephyr Teachout's conundrums and the impediment to voter unity relative to our issue, when voters may consider other issues more important in making their voting decision.. My 2016 Congressional candidates' Declarations approach goes a long way to solving that conundrum.
D. We are faced with a "heavy lift"
The introductory letter in the Whowillfightbigmoney.org toolkit says:
Candidates will respond to a persistent and insistent call from constituents on social media, at town hall meetings, in letters, calls, and emails. This isn’t a heavy lift, but we need people in every district, so please join us and encourage others you know who are concerned about the future of our democracy to join us too.I disagree. My opinion is we are facing a very "heavy lift."
When he launched MAYDAY, Professor Lessig called it a "moonshot." Professor Lessig went from a "moonshot" at the Congressional level, to a "hail Mary" at the Presidential level. That "hail Mary" failed, and Professor Lessig did not return to MAYDAY for pursuing the "moonshot" at the Congressional level,
Democracy Spring's spent six months exclusively dedicated to planning the April civil disobedience action, which resulted in foregoing "outreach" during important early months in the Congressional elections. This can be interpreted that the "moonshot" at the Congressional level was going to be even more difficult than originally thought.
Most believe that Congress benefits from the status quo and is not going to pass satisfactory reform of its own accord, and the voters must force that on Congress. This calls for widespread grassroots mobilization.
The past two years have not demonstrated much grassroots mobilization. MAYDAY has been at work since July 2014 and has little to show. You can decide for yourself how much grassroots mobilization MAYDAY has stimulated by looking at their Facebook pages https://www.facebook.com/MAYDAYdotUS and https://www.facebook.com/groups/MAYDAYPAC/); their Twitter https://twitter.com/MAYDAYUS, and their Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/maydaypac. I see virtually zero.
Compare MAYDAY with the Trump and Sanders campaigns and the huge amounts of grassroots mobilization they have simulated.
I would say our grassroots mobilization is less than one twentieth of what Trump and Sanders have stimulated.
All these things considered, I repeat my belief that it is going to be a very "heavy lift" for Democracy Spring and Whowillfightbigmoney.org to simulate meaningful grassroots mobilization, and it is going to be an even "heavier lift" for the grassroots to advance meaningfully the agendas of the two organizations.
E. Conclusion
Democracy Spring and Whowillfightbigmoney.org must find ways to do a better job of stimulating widespread grassroots activity than MAYDAY has done.
I don't know whether the dearth of grassroots mobilization that MAYDAY has arrived at after two years is because grassroots did not hear about MAYDAY, or because grassroots learned about MAYDAY but they were not very stimulated by MAYDAY and concluded that MAYDAY was not going to stimulate much so such grassroots decided not to bother with MAYDAY.
Either way Democracy Spring and Whowillfightbigmoney.org have their work cut out in moving their agendas forward.
EDIT 6/2/16
The below is a Facebook posting copied and pasted from MAYDAY.US. It illustrates how MAYDAY supporters spend their time in discussion among themselves, and give no attention to how to get messaging out to the public. This kind of internal discussion accomplishes almost nothing and distracts from making effort to spread awareness of the issue in the public domain. Beneficial, helpful messaging to the public can be done without there being agreement about how to solve the corruption problem, but that escapes the attention of those discussing and arguing among themselves.
Should we oppose Debbie Wasserman Schultz? Vote here!http://bit.ly/1Ze9GE6
As DNC chair she gave big money interests more power while making it harder for everyday Americans to be heard. And after taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from special interests, she sided with Wall Street against consumers.
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