I just responded to a Texas Democratic Party Survey. Here are their questions and my answers:
What do you think we could have done differently?
All organizations that are working to elect Democrats need to coordinate their activities to reduce duplication of effort, provide a consistent moral message, and increase effectiveness of getting non-voters to the polls. In our county, BGTX, unions, and candidates we all doing their own thing and I suspect the same thing happened in other counties. I started working with BGTX in April of 2013 and worked with them all the way through election day. One example of lack of coordination was the follow-up calls made for the mail-in ballot requests and applications. BGTX used their extensively corrected VAN database to make calls. Others used out-of-date VAN data to make calls.
What were your favorite moments or stories of 2014?
The day when the local county Republican chairwoman referenced one of my tweets in her urgent message to Republicans warning that BGTX was a threat and they better vote.
What do you think we can do to get more Democrats to the polls?
Stop backing neoliberal (free market fundamentalism) ideology and get back to our moral foundation of equally protecting and empowering all citizens. The voters who would vote for us and our values see no difference between Dems and Rep. They are both owned by those with excessive money. Sponsor resolutions and/or legislation against “corporations are people” and “money is speech.”
What do you think Democrats need to do to win in the future?
Learn from the Republicans, who have been winning the message war for decades: preface all communications with the moral value of why what we want for America is morally right.
Republicans motivate their supporters to vote with fear of their fellow citizens. Democrats need to motivate their supporters by appealing to their compassion for their fellow citizens. Protect All Americans from Corporate Abuse: Vote Democratic. Empower Citizens, not Corporations: Vote Democratic
Regardless of the particular arguments you want to use, we need to embed them in a moral value foundation. What makes our argument morally right? If we start with a moral value they can agree with, they will more likely agree with the rest of our argument.
For example, for our system of self-government to work we need fair elections.
The moral responsibilities of our government is to equally protect citizens from those with excessive power and to equally empower citizens for both success and effective self-governing. When that moral responsibility is diminished, citizens are harmed.
If the moral responsibilities of the government are privatized, then they are either ignored or minimized by corporations, and citizens are harmed. If the right to vote is not equally applied as the result of corporations writing laws through ALEC, then citizens are disenfranchised. If citizens are not equally educated to think critically due to excessively reduced corporate citizenship dues, then citizens are more easily manipulated by corporate and billionaire ads to vote against their own best interest. If multinational corporations, that owe no allegiance to America and are incorporated in another country, can spend unlimited funds on political ads in American elections, then citizens are ignored by politicians who are elected with corporate donations.
As corporate governance replaces representative governance, more harm comes to citizens and the likelihood of fair elections becomes an illusion.
What are you looking forward to in 2016?
Selection of candidates who are not corporate lackeys and who will equally protect and empower flesh and blood citizens.
What issues are a priority for 2016 you’d like to add?
Responding to climate destruction to minimize the future impact of dirty energy on those who are not part of the ONE%. The ONE% are the only one’s who can afford to live on a dying planet. The poor will suffer the most while we ignore global warming.
Reversing Citizens United and other activist rulings by the SCOTUS that empower corporations and promote abuse of citizens.
Busting up banks too big to fail.
