Representative Democracy in America Is Changing -- for the Better?

When I was a youngster and lived with my family in Cypress Hills, in the borough of Brooklyn, NYC, I often dropped by the local Democratic club. These clubs had buildings where they met and conducted their business and they were the citizen’s gateway to the government.  Every Friday if you dropped in you could see and talk to the Congressman Eugene Keogh, the last to wear a straw hat.

If you wanted to see your state representatives they were there also as was the party district leader around whom the clubs organized.  In the days before Baker v. Carr (one man one vote) districts were often geographically based, e.g. one representative per county or a state senate district consisting of three state house districts.  With the Supreme Court rulings that electoral districts that served to elect representatives to legislative bodies had to be equal in population (with a wider discrepancy allowed the smaller the districts were) counties and neighborhoods became less important to the concept of district representation.

Because the Courts have refused to rule that political based partisan gerrymandering is contrary to the federal constitution we have suffered under forty years of ever increasing politically motivated redistricting – with computers making partisan calculations even more precise and using population equality to hide behind.

The nature of representative democracy in America has changed. In the 19th century district representation played a great role but districts themselves not so much. Congressmen were people who went to Washington to act on the nation’s problems, state legislators went to state capitals to do the same on state matters.  For local representation, that one could go to for assistance with problems, one went either to the local county officials or in the cities to the aldermen (precursors of the Councilmen who were a combination of elected officials and party officials).

In the 20th century the nature of representatives duties and compensation changed. From annual state elections we went to two and four year terms. From rotation in office for Congressional nominations (the norm by which a party gave its nomination to state representatives who waited their turn) we went to incumbents and even incumbent families “owning” Congressional seats.  These federal and state legislators also took on the role of constituent servants. They opened offices in the districts and assisted with red tape problems; at first all problems and then eventually a hierarchy of helping only with the problems that related to bureaucracies at the level of government they served in.

As the nation continues to increase from its’ nearly 4 million in 1790 to its’  312 million now - the nature of representative democracy has again changed.  Rather than bemoaning it and yearning for the good old days- that trust me weren’t that good - we should understand and accept and use the changes. When the nation started the founding fathers wanted one representative per 30,000 persons – now it’s one per 705,000 (precise number may vary by state).

Districts today have become masses of election precincts combined for the purpose of electing a Congressman or a state legislator.  Often that elected official is the only thing the people of the district have in common with municipalities and postal areas and shopping zones divided.  These legislators should be looked at as representatives and the citizenry should use the social networking and the Internet and the 24/7 news media to follow what their representatives due in Washington D.C. or the state capital and judge them accordingly.

Local municipal government and councilmen and party officials should again be handling citizen constituent. Representatives should represent.  With the demise of earmarks and the public outrage at the insider trading antics of federal representatives we may see a new Congress where members vote and speak and are judged accordingly.  Again with the use of social networking, online petitioning, and the availability of information about the legislative branches activities district lines will become even less relevant.  If we impose federal Congressional term limits (both Houses) and, if we ever get a handle on the money that is poisoning our politics (we need open public funding not backdoor public funding by the contributions of corporations that take federal money) we might see a return to real Representative Democracy in America.

22, Dec. 2011

How Democrats Can Win in Delco

For twenty-one years I’ve been a Democratic activist in Delaware County PA.  First as chairman of the Radnor Township Democratic Committee (1990-4); then as Chairman of the Delaware County Democratic Party (1994-2010) and now as chairman of the SouthEast Delaware Co. Dem. Committee. (2007- now).  During those years I’ve organized and coordinated and in forty-two election cycles (primaries and generals).  Democrats have lost most of those (except for carrying the county for President and twice for Congress (Joe Sestak) and a few state legislators.  In odd numbered years when municipal and school district contests comprise the ballot Democrats in Delaware County tend to lose the majority of those they contest.  There are some municipalities that are solidly Democrat and Republicans can’t win.  There are few that are truly competitive where either party could win but most are solidly and often uncontestedly Republican.

So why do Democrats lose in Delaware County?  The registration in the county when I first became involved in 1990 was just a bit over 25% Democrat; it is now over 43% and only two percentage points or 10,000 voters less than Republican. But Democrats still lose countywide. Why?

First, we usually have few real candidates and we fill out tickets with place holders who party leaders feel are important. We need candidates that want to run, want to serve and will devote in some cases  two years, 24-7, to winning an office which they have ideas to use for specific purposes. I believe that a candidate on the ballot who does not intend to work and doesn’t really care about winning is a drag on a ticket and one is better off without them.   Similarly we are better off running no candidate than one with negatives whose baggage will become the issue in the campaign.

Second, we need to present a clear and simple message on an issue that resonates with voters.  In the midst of this Great Recession the matter of the county foreclosure process is such an issue and was used creatively by a judicial candidate in 2009.  It should have been followed up and pursued in 2011.  Even more the county Democrats need to begin to speak out on controversial subjects that will offend some but will get the attention of voters and in the long run win out. For example, the consolidation of our municipalities as it makes no sense for forty-nine local governments to be doing the same things within the county.  A fair consolidation can be worked out with local Councils that have district representatives (which would actually give people better representation than the current at-large systems that most of our municipalities have) a county police force with local police headquarters and a county wide fire department with local community firehouses;. similarly, regional libraries.  All these could reduce local government costs and lead to a reduction in local property taxes.

Third, we need to stop using the old tired worn-out strategies.  We shouldn’t spend our time trying to get Republicans to votes for us.  Focus on registered Democrats and non-Partisan voters and moderate/independent Republicans will come along. We need a real GOTV plan or a GOOV (Get Out Our Vote) plan doesn’t mean putting people in front of polling places to say hello to those whom the Republican machine drags out but getting one phone caller and one door knocker per precinct to work election day to get our voters out. 

Fourth, at the county wide level, we need to raise serious funds to do mail and name recognition signs and massive lit drops.  You can’t go door to door in over 400 precincts.  But you do have to do the other things.  That includes campaigning at any event even those that the Republican machine over the years has scared candidates away from.  The model here is Sestak2006.  Since he was new to politics in the county, he didn’t know what he couldn’t do, so he did everything that made sense and he won. 

Now let me make clear that too often over these past twenty-one years I have made these mistakes. Once I began to focus on Folcroft I ran candidates sometimes who really didn’t care and did nothing putting the burden on the few who did.  That didn’t work.  When I knew we had a winning message I allowed those who did care to veer off the message and try the old technique of pictures and bio material instead of banging away at the message. In 2009 we raised $20,000 but we didn’t do much door to door and we never honed our message - we increased the Democratic turnout but not by enough. In 2011 the Council candidates did extensive door to door and we stayed on the message Repeal the Boro Income Tax - we won.

Democrats can win in Delaware County.  Sestak, Vitali, Lentz, Davidson  and Spingler have won races that were thought likely not winnable; four of those were against entrenched incumbents. They also followed another model - that of Bob Edgar, the Democratic Congressman from 1976-1986.  He recruited activists who were interested in his campaign either due to his personal charisma or an issue they and he cared about.  They became Edgar people and they fueled the campaigns as did the Sestak volunteers of 2006 and Obama volunteers of 2008.  They coordinated their efforts with the county party structure and therefore in turn with the local committee structure (which during my years as chairman were part of a unitary county party not 49 pieces). By building their own field organizations of volunteers they were not burdened by the “we tried that before and it didn’t work” refrain of too many committee chairs and persons, or the parochial turf envy of local committees and the paranoia of local leaders seeing new volunteers as threats to their party titles.

Democrats with the right message and candidates with a profile that excites voters can win in this last bastion of northeastern suburban Republicanism.  Not because the voters want to exchange the worn out corrupt Republican machine with a Democratic version but rather because the voters are offered something new - an old fashioned concept of a public service oriented candidate whose value and beliefs are more important than party affiliation.

7 Dec. 2011

Suppress Voter Turnout - Rig Districts - Kill Democracy

It is reliably estimated that after all the district lines are established for the Congressional elections of 2012 there will be 20 of 435 districts that will be truly competitive in the election.  Obviously there will be more contested but only some twenty may actually be drawn fairly enough to result in a real contest.  In the past ten years, 78% of the House of Representatives seats did not see a change in the party of the persons elected.

Reapportionment is only one way that the political establishment, now owned by the money establishment, controls who can enter government.    Ever since Gov. Elbridge Gerry (later Vice President of the US) vetoed a Massachusetts apportionment bill with a district that on a map looked like a salamander giving rise to the cartoon that called it a Gerrymander, the House district lines have been subject to chicanery.  The state legislatures have used race and politics to gerrymander Congressional districts.  Using the one man - one vote injunction of the Supreme Court the political establishment has, created districts using the real criteria of 1) protecting the incumbents and 2) protecting the incumbent party, defending them as needed to meet population parameters.  Because the Supreme Court has ruled that political based apportionment is not a basis for a Court to reject a state’s plan, and with the added fact that the African American vote and registration is overwhelmingly of one party, it has been easy to reapportion districts along political and racial lines contending that only the former is being used

Since the Supreme Court ruled that the one man - one vote concept must be applied to state legislatures the prior use of local boundaries when mapping state districts has been replaced by purely political criteria.  In some states popular outcry has caused the political establishment to implement “non partisan” reapportionment.  Pennsylvania claims to have that, although a party able to control both houses will control the 5 member reapportionment commission. There is as a matter of act almost no truly non partisan redistricting at either the Congressional or state legislative level.

If you make the election outcome evident even before the campaign you reduce interest, you reduce willingness to run against an incumbent and you reduce the turnout.  The radical right wing Tea Party Republicans, to ensure their continuing control, are working tirelessly in the states they dominate to guarantee that rigged electoral districts can’t be punctured.  They are doing so by passing laws to discourage voting and reduce the turnout among low income, minority and young voters - three demographics that currently vote Democrat.  Photo ID, restrictions on Early Voting, reduction in the number of polling places, restricting the use of provisional ballots -- all these are process changes designed to further rig the outcome of the elections in favor of the right wing controlled Republican party.

Old fashioned voter suppression still goes on.  Voters are challenged outside and inside the polling place in the hope they will go home.  Last minute polling place locations are made to confuse the infrequent voters.  And voters are told they will be more likely to be called to jury duty or have their backgrounds and records checked.

Once the districts are rigged and the size of the electorate reduced with turnout suppressed than inordinate amounts of money are spent, now allowed uncontrollably by the most outrageous Supreme Court decision of this century (Citizens United), to get out the establishments controlled vote.

One of the reasons that the Tea Party movement and now the Occupy/99% movement has scared establishment figures is that they represented people who were somewhat outside the existing activist groups.  So the right wing Republicans using their access to funds co-opted the Tea Party movement by creating the Tea Party Express (Dick Armey sponsored operation) and aided the Tea Party folks in taking over the Republican Party. The only question about the Occupy/99% movement is whether the protesters will use the Democratic party ( many of the Occupiers have voted Democrat; if anything they are more populist than the Democratic party establishment) to engage in electoral politics.

So what is the future of Democracy in America, the birthplace of the idea that a modern and a large country can be ruled by its own people?   Will the tactics that allow an establishment to control the democratic processes effectively kill democracy?  Or, will the people, as they did in the 1840's, the 1890's and the 1960's rise up and demand more and true reforms of democracy?

Many countries have faced serious threats to their democracies in their history.  France a number of times has had to reinvent its republic.  Russia and China had brief periods of democracy before being taken over by Communists. Some would argue that the Russian return to democracy is already being short circuited. And of course everyone knows what happened to the German experiment in democracy known as the Weimar Republic and what followed it. 

Wither America?  We face a fork in the road. Down one road lies the control of an oligarchy or plutocracy, the submission of 99% to 1% and perhaps ultimately the violence of revolution and civil war not based on political issues but on class differences.  Down the other road, that most often taken by this country, lies a body politic wherein compromise and agreement are not dirty words but a way of governing; where the influence of money in politics is controlled rather than it doing the controlling; where the people make the decisions and the majority rules, with respect for the political and personal rights of the minority and the recognition by both that  on any one given issue they may be in the position of the other.

American democracy has worked -- it can work again - But only if we Trust the People.

22 Nov. 2011

Exercising FIRST Amendment Rights

The millionaire Mayor of New York City (who thrice has purchased that position by spending inordinate amounts on his campaign and spending his personal funds to get the charter changed so he could run for a third term) ordered the New York City police in full riot gear to remove the Occupy Wall Street protesters from Zuccotti Park in the Wall Street area and destroy their makeshift abodes and tents.  Then he secured a court order “allowing” the protestors to demonstrate during daylight hours but not gather or sit/sleep in the park at night. In Oakland, California, the Mayor ordered police to disperse the protestors and they used strong physical force to do so.

For 222 years Americans have had a constitution that included a Bill of Rights.  Rights that were preserved for the people by restricting the power of governments.  The First Amendment of that Bill of Rights guarantees a freedom of speech and a right of association for the purpose of petitioning the government for redress of grievance.  Our country’s history shows times when peaceful demonstration has caused the government to change course and to redress grievances.  During the Great Depression the Veterans of WWI marched on Washington to demand their promised war service bonus.  They stayed and occupied Anaconda Park - built shelters and raised tents.  President Hoover sent General MacArthur, and his aide Dwight Eisenhower, with the Army to clear out the residents of this “Hooverville”.  They did and burned the shanties. But some veterans stayed and the new President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, sent his wife to talk to them.  He tried to redress their grievances.

During the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960's it was when protestors sat in at lunch counters and when marchers were attacked by police with hoses and dogs that America rose up and redressed their grievances.  Our political moral guideline the Declaration of Independence goes so far as to declare that “whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends [i.e. ensuring the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness] it is the right of the People to alter or to abolish it”. 

The Supreme Court has recently declared that the rights guaranteed in the First Amendment apply to corporate entities; and, now rich businessmen can use their corporate funds, often taxpayer subsidized and in my opinion the property of the shareholders, to influence elections and secure the friendship and support of elected and appointed officials.  Yet now the Mayor of NYC, along with Oakland, CA and others would have us believe that amendment does not guarantee the right of less wealthy people to gather in a park and pitch some tents and demonstrate.

In 1773 a group of citizens angered at being subjected to a tax by a legislative body to which they had no representation gathered and painted themselves to look like their image of native Americans and seize the to be taxed goods on the ships docked in Boston Harbor.  They threw the tea into the bay so it could not be unloaded and the tax applied.  Nineteen years later the new country born out of a democratic revolution enacted its’ Bill of Rights.  Some would focus on the second amendment which guaranteed those Tea Party rebels the right to bear arms.  But it is the First Amendment that has been the basis of our nation’s governance.  The freedom of religion, the freedom of speech, the freedom of association, the right to petition the government these are the basic guarantees that so many men and women died for in the wars of defense and liberation fought over the centuries.

The American people have a right to exercise their free speech in any way that does not endanger other people.  They have a right to express their frustration with their government and when doing so peacefully should never be restricted.  We do not need government sponsored thugs to attack protestors as they did in the early days in Egypt’s Tahrir Square and we don’t use military force to disperse protestors as the Chinese did in Tiananmen Square.

In America we celebrate diversity and we support the right to dissent.  As Lincoln so nobly put it this “government of the People, by the People and for the People shall not perish from the earth”. 

16 Nov. 2011