The Precinctist Manifesto

Its like I must continually justify to myself this increasingly odd political hobby of mine.  Think of this: registered voters: a couple dozen people run a couple hundred people at every level of every political organization, or any organization for that matter.  The parties are supposedly set up for democratic participation, but most people want to party in the social sense rather than go to those boring meetings, so only people who want to do that tedious work actually do it.  Most of it is volunteer, most of the paid is poverty wages.  So there are very few of us political "activists" meaning we are politically active.  It is in many ways a distasteful activity, like drain cleaning, but has to be done.  I've learned that it is possible to call anything "fun."  A bit of political activity, like a certain amount of physical exercise or a certain amount of food, makes me feel better.

I've talked with lots of neighborhood people as a result of this activity, so its good for me at least, I tend to be otherwise a bit stay-at-home & don't see anybody much.  I see the possibility of real neighborhood association.  An exceptionally peaceable group of people live here.  Something could perhaps be done, but until now it hasn't been.

Then there is the Wake County Democratic Party.  The two key elements of organizational progress from one point to another are transmission of existing administrative structures by the old guard and innovation.  At the moment this process is in critical transition point all over the world in the shift away from paper.  WakeDems is in the middle of that migration too.  The old guard looks at its institutions & can't tell which ones are now useless but as usual there is a protector of the process to lobby for continuation of every single thing that was previously done, not to mention the money appropriated to that traditional activity.  Young people full of ideas but mostly don't know how to do them in some crucial aspect.  Old people not helping with facilitative support.  Dynastic tendencies in play as usual in politics, acorn don't fall far from tree.  Political turfs develop, occasionally little baronies, occasionally continued dynastically.

There is a hole in leadership/management in WakeDems at the moment.  What happens is that the elected positions in the party are mostly filled by old guard or proteges, people insurge, every now & then an insurgent wins a post, life goes on thinks the old guard.

I have no interest in the meeting lifestyle that is required in political administration.  That is too bad because that is where all of the mischief gets (mostly incompetently) made.  Someone's got to do it.  But not me, my interest is voter education.  A lot of them don't know, think its boring, some of them vote anyway, a lot of them actually, without knowing anything about any of the candidates.  Oh, that name, I've heard of that one.  I used to do that.  I'm into political education, not the exercise of political power.  Leave that to the sociopaths lol.  Just kidding, people who are holding the levers of power.  Just kidding.

So we have about half of the precincts organized in Wake Co & it has been that way for years.  Most of the precincts are only formally organized with officers & nothing is done.  A few have dynamic officers who do things.  At HQ there is a chronic disconnect with the precincts.  There is a kind of vibe, occasionally worded, that "precinct work" is prosaic & boring, accompanied by thoughts that candidate work is somehow exciting, perhaps in a rah-rah sense.  I, on the other hand, think that precinct work with the neighbor thing & the civic engagement, is where its at, and candidate stuff is lots of icky pandering, money grubbing, clownish theatrics.  So HQ doesn't help the precincts.  They like to tell the precincts what to do, but never a HQ vol shows up to help out a precinct project, not even to organize one.  The precincts are supposed to generate their own organization, then HQ will be happy to give them work to do and tell them how to do it.

I'm thinking that's backward.  HQ should be out there actively finding the people to organize the unorganized precincts.  Since they're not doing it over years of time I think the existing precinct officers can usefully get together to organize the unorganized precincts and to also join together as precinct officers, who obviously have a different set of interests than HQ, that is so even though the goal of more Dem votes is the same.  I would like to talk with other precinct officers about the usefulness to party organizing of a conscious organization, caucus perhaps, of the precinct officers.  Anyone?

gloom

My essential reading for politics includes Jacques Ellul's Propaganda.  Can get it on Amazon.

Propaganda like chocolate if you like chocolate.  You hear something you like, want to hear it again.  At some level they put something in the chocolate that they want in it, they don't care if you like that thing or not, long as you keep eating the chocolate.  You like the chocolate enough you keep eating it, especially they tell you to listen carefully all the time to the chocolate propaganda.  You get your steady dose of poison in the chocolate but it tastes good, everyone's doing it, etc.

All of the political parties and their people do this all the time, some are better than others, we laugh at the inept performances, or get mad if that's what we like to do, but we keep going to the stuff for entertainment, or the clowns they put on tv to "explain" their selections for us.  Those of us of a certain age.  Dig: my older son turned me on to the Daily Show but he doesn't watch it.  Stewart/Colbert: too old.  Prince: too old.  Nora Jones: too old.  He's like: who was Easley?  He's 26 years old.

I don't see a clear path to victory for O but I'm in it anyway, active & money until November.  It is going to be interesting campaigning solely on the "consider the alternative" line, which is what I'm going to do.  I think I can make the case to some people.  I made it to myself.  No protest votes this year.  Stakes too high.  Supreme Court.  My bottom line.

KIDS
The kids think he's old.  The kids think he lies all the time.  They figure they might as well try a new liar, what difference does it make?  They see too little too late.  So they figure the frying pan is not better than the fire.  They're wrong but you can't tell them anything, they think they know.  They want things to make them feel better, but politics is always the art of the less worse.  Politics like butt wiping: you can think what you like about it but not doing it is worse.

HOPE
But I'm in it anyway.  I do not need to feel good about doing political work.  It needs to be done.  Trash needs to be picked up.  Feeling good is beside the point.

some words on the occasion of the poll-greeting at Douglas Elementary during the 2012 primary

Must write this while it is fresh.  I think I'll just tell some of the story of my logistical engagement with the electoral process, some opinionizing and contextualizing of course.

Started on Friday before the election during which some communication with HQ regarding how the signage was to be handled this year and the candidate cards, for the poll greeting you know.  Turned out I was not on a precinct officer mailing list or maybe I was but the pertinent email did not get to me a few days before.  I got down to HQ Monday to pick up signs & cards.  The signage was real thin this time, almost all for judges.  No anti-amendment or governor signs.  The management of the distribution was done on a sheet of paper, I signed that paper.  Given the small size of the operation it seemed silly to ask if there would be a central recycling point for used signs.  Am I wrong about that?  Is there a sign recycling plan?
I was thanked for all I was doing.
The cards told people to vote for whomever they wanted, against the amendment, then presented the Dem judge candidates.  It actually turned out to be a well designed card, numerous comments from the oncoming citizens that they otherwise knew nothing about the judges and now they knew, you know, something.  Still in was confusing: 2 different batches of judges to choose between.  Couple times I had to explain to someone two different ways.  You know, it would be easier to figure out if one was for judge and the other was for fudge or something.  Anyway.
E-day started out I put up signs at 3 polling places.  At every one, this time, Rips got there first, had plenty of signs.  Did everyone see the RIPUBLICAN VOLUNTEERS WANTED signs at every(?) polling place?  Good idea.  We must steal it and deploy it widely and quickly.  Signage, in my opinion, is becoming less important all the time.
We ended up with 100% poll greet coverage at 01-15 & 01-37.  I was on duty at Douglas for several hours in the PM, before that I was running around.  Someone came over early & dropped off anti-amendment flyers but they didn't stay to hand them out & they sat under the tree all day, someone else dropped off Karlsson flyers & I handed out a few while I was on in the morning, afternoon a Karlsson guy handed out Karlsson fliers for about 6 hours.  One of our precinct people brought Dalton flyers, handed some out,  There were Rips at Douglas from about 9:30 to about 2:00, we all know each other so we shmoozed full time in contented comity.  The average age of the poll greeters is, um, old, probably older than me, I start getting senior discounts pretty soon now.

I should go back to the mailer.  I didn't see anyone carrying it in like last time.  I talked with several people who got it including a Rip, somehow included although I specifically didn't send to Rips.  Mystery.  Post office returned about 50 of them.  Most recently updated list from Board of Elections.  Moved, deceased, etc.  And one duplicate entry.  Interesting.

People I talked with about the flyer mostly hadn't read it, especially like no one I talked with had used the website references for the candidates.  They didn't care, were prepared to go in and vote knowing nothing.  Some of them had downloaded sample ballots from BOE and filled them out beforehand, good strategy.  Probably we sent it too early & put too much info on it.  Have to chew on the implications as we consider what we might want to do in the fall.

An OFA person showed up for a few minutes, was prepared to ignore me but I approached as for a voter, "I'm from OFA, I'm just here for the numbers," like why?  It's the middle of the day, who cares?  Little podunk precinct.  So I said: "If you guys were coordinated with the local parties you could have called me & I could have told you, save time, gas."  And was responded: "We're not allowed to coordinate," with pretty smile of course.  So me: "I know, you have to just do what you're told." (I said it!)  Smiles all around.  Nothing untrue about any of it.

The numbers all came in it turned out a larger % showed up in 01-37 where we did nothing than in 01-15 where we spent money and did stuff.  Does that mean that we shouldn't have bothered?  How would we decide?

I had a conversation of several minutes with a guy at the polls, late in the day.  Shorts, shaved head, glasses.  He's independent, going to vote Romney, Obama's a socialist.  Well, said I, from where I am standing Obama is center-right & in the pocket of the money people period, he's been center-right since the very start of his career.  The guy is like "Really?"  Like he thought us "Liberals" thought this or that because the shows he watches speak of what idealized platonic (that is straw man) "Liberals" think & do, because their people are all the time putting out "instructive" thoughtforms so the listeners can have a template of what to think about something.  Whereas I am always: what is actually going on here?  Because you never know everything, mostly we don't know anything.

We went on.  I brought up the Supreme Court.  That is currently why I do what I do.  They get another Alito or Thomas what they going to do: revisit Plessey v. Fergusson?  Dred Scott?  Us "normal" people have to get the next Supreme, if we don't I'm not responsible for what happens.  He was "Who do you trust more: Roberts or Kennedy?"  I was: "I really don't want another Alito."  Alito: Mr. "That's not true."  Its true.  Secret money everywhere.  Not true - that's the type of clear thinking we're getting from the Supreme Court these days.

I talked about corporations aren't people & he responded with the free association stuff in the Consitution, which is interesting.  The core issue is that the human race seems to prefer to let some of its monads hoard resources without limit and to let other monads die from lack of stuff that the rich monads have plenty of.  So politics is for rich people, so they can protect their stuff.  How come we don't have rich people demonstrating their civic virtue by massively endowing food-clothing-shelter-health care-education?  Romney: famous for his endowment of 300 clinics in ghettos across the country.  How come that's not the reality we see?  Wife of presidential candidate has 2 cars.  Nest featherer culture.  Not to deny that the Obamas in their modest way like the so-called "good things in life" too.  Nice clothes, etc.  Love of stuff.  Hoarding personality disorder.

Throughout that conversation he was several times like: "Really?  I though y'all (Liberals) thought ...(whatever)."  Because the lefter one's perspective the more some of it starts to converge, not with the opinions of the right, but rather the perspective.  The angles are sometimes the same though the axes of orientation are different, know what I mean?  I was perhaps able to demonstrate a few structural characteristics of the ideological landscape we all inhabit.  Because he had never met a real lefty before, only heard about what they are like from his pundits.

And a mention of the power of the unions, I think I heard him say "$400 billion" of union money, well, "m" is "B" on its side without the spine.  But i did not remark that at the time.  Or maybe I'm just making up that memory.  And the Greens in Europe are acting like fascists.  I didn't bother to engage that.  Fascists beat up minorities in the street.  That's what fascists do.  Greens - uh, no.  But I let that one pass.

To be continued.  I want to get more precincts organized in the formal sense.  Few more days I'll write more about why I think that's a good idea.  Precincts: where the voters are.  A political unit that perhaps it might be theoretically possible for everyone to know each other.  It has become my opinion that the local party units should come together to set policy and procedure for the central party administration, not the other way around.  All power to the precincts, if you will.  I have become a precinctist, as it were.  More on that next time.  Few days.