Over 64 million registered voters did not vote in 2016. That has to change if we are ever going to get rid of Trump and take back the House and Senate so we can overturn Citizens United or Amend the Constitution, stop Republicans from crashing our economy again, take action on climate change and save the planet. The Indivisible movement has emerged to fight back against Trump and Republican plutocracy and it's working. The following are some observations about how we got divided and what needs to be fixed to make us truly indivisible.
Our biggest problem is not the DNC, it is that our candidates are kidnapped by a small number of political consultants and held hostage to raise money to pay for TV ads. This can also bankrupt our candidates, which discourages them from running again. The political consultants make a fortune off the commissions so they do everything they can to get our candidates hooked on TV ads and it's hard to break the addiction, even with candidates who know TV ads don't work. This situation also creates a profound weakness in the Democratic Party, which the Russians exploited in 2016.
There is a Political Industrial Complex and they control the DNC as much as they control most of our candidates. They are not the Corporate/Wall Street boogeyman that many on the far left keep railing against. In fact, the corporations, organizations, and wealthy donors that donate big money to Democrats are the ones being ripped off the most. We need to stop shooting the hostages and refocus on the kidnappers. The good news is recent results and research provide the kind of dramatic examples that should help us break our candidates from the addiction (more about that at the end). The bad news is to fill the void of fewer TV ads, we need to recruit and train more people who are willing and able to talk to voters and that is not going to be easy.
The Political Industrial Complex: Government of, by and for Consultants! - Bill Moyers
In 2016, the Russians focused their cyber attacks on existing and visible fractures within the Democratic party. They created divisions that kept too many people home on election day.
Sanders’ Campaign Faced A Fake News Tsunami, Where Did it Come From? - HuffPo
The Russians didn't do this because they thought Bernie supporters were gullible. They did it because they knew the Democratic party has a giant weakness caused by our addiction to big money, bulk TV ad buys and that fit their long standing military doctrine to find and exploit existing weaknesses to divide and conquer.
Putin’s Hacking Strategy Is to Divide and Conquer - Newsweek
Why did they do it? Humiliated by the 1990s, Putin called the collapse of the Soviet Union "a major geopolitical disaster of the century" and is now determined to win Cold War 2.0.
Putin’s Revenge - Politico
Putin wanted 'revenge' against Clinton - The Hill
How did they do it? Russia has confirmed they have at least 1000 cyber warfare agents, with a big annual budget, focused on damaging or destroying western Democracies.
Russia Confirms “Cyber War” Efforts - Bank Info Security
Russia sets up information warfare units - Euractiv
Russia’s 5th Column - Center for American Progress
The fractures in the Democratic Party have been around for a while. They were made visible by Howard Dean in the 2004 presidential campaign, the 2000 Bush/Gore/Nader election and even during the 1990’s when Paul Wellstone fought for campaign finance reform. The fractures were mostly overcome in both Obama elections but they definitely showed up again in 2016 and the Russians took full advantage of it.
The fractures are largely about big money in political campaigns, conflicts of interest and the way our candidates end up running their campaigns. Spending most of their time raising money and not enough time in the field, inspiring volunteers to knock on doors for them. This was compounded with the 2010 Citizens United decision that unleashed a flood of dark money that can now come from almost anywhere with zero transparency. The result has created a self destructive addiction between our candidates and big money, bulk TV ad buys to get their message out. The cause of this addiction is largely connected to the low number of people who are willing to volunteer to talk to voters as an alternative to the TV ads. The political revolution Sanders talks about was always going to boil down to getting more people willing and able to talk to voters in order to fill this void.
To get the best price on a bulk TV ad buy, a candidate has to commit early. The earlier the commitment and the bigger the bulk buy, the better the rate looks. Our candidates are left with little choice but to make these early commitments, which means they have to scramble through the rest of the campaign to raise the money. Little or nothing is left to invest in grassroots campaigning. This has created a self defeating cycle where grassroots activism and volunteering gets weaker and weaker, which then increases a growing dependency on TV ads.
This is the big problem we need to address and stay focused on. Part of the solution is making more people aware of the problem, own it, take responsibility and try to inoculate voters from fake news. The other part is recruiting, training and maintaining enough people to talk to voters one-on-one and we have to figure out how to make it sustainable. Below is a brief synopsis of recent research and anecdotal evidence of how ineffective TV ads are. I will skip the details of the most recent and tragic example (Nov 9, 2016) because it is too painful to think about.
Do Political Ads Work? Research Suggests Not Really
“Research shows that almost half of all political ads are completely ignored and those that are watched do not change opinions... The effects of campaign ads are easily countered...Money spent on ads is very short-lived...Even during a campaign, advertising spending has almost no lasting impact.” -- Matthew Sheffield, editor of Praxis
Do Political Ads Work? Research Suggests Not Really - Praxis
"The ads have effects ... but those effects decay pretty rapidly," -- Lynn Vavreck, Political Scientist
Do Political Ads Actually Work? - NPR
“a 1,000-ad advantage in any given market over the course of an election increased a candidate’s vote share by about 0.5 percentage points. It’s a small effect, but it could make a difference in a close election” -- Michael Franz, PhD, Political Science Professor
[This is an absurd ratio, for a ridiculously small margin of difference.]
The Science of Political Advertising - American Psychological Association
In 2010, Meg Whitman spent $178.5 million ($144 million of her own) to run for Governor against Jerry Brown who spent $36.7 million and won by 13 points.
Meg Whitman's campaign spending totals $178.5 million - McClatchy
In the 2015/16 Presidential primary, Jeb Bush spent $6.4 million on ads for every 1 point he lost in the polls.
Jeb Bush spent $6.4 million for every point he lost in the polls - WAPO
In contrast, online Digital ads, can be targeted to specific types of people in specific locations and their effectiveness can also be tracked and measured. We can make up the difference with door knocking and phone calls.
How Political Groups Know When Digital Ads Drove Voters to the Polls - Ad Age
So if TV ads are so worthless, why do we keep throwing hundreds of millions of dollars away on them? Answer: Because a small handful of people make a fortune off of them, full stop. This addiction is a clear and present danger to our democracy and I would ask that we get all hands on deck, working together to fix it so we can get on with saving the planet. To review, the Democrats have a major weakness, wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on massive TV ad campaigns, caused by a small handful of political consultants who make a fortune on them. The Russians were able to exploit that weakness and we can fix it by staying focused on the right target, making it widely known, inoculate voters from fake news and by filling the void with more people willing and able to talk to voters.