Tag Archives: politics

Sub-par Campaign Websites for Sub-par Candidates

Politics, Uncategorized, , , ,

If you’re going to run for a legislative office here in GA as a Democrat, you better get your communications straight. In fact, DON’T DO YOUR OWN CAMPAIGN WEBSITE, as you’ll probably screw it up anyway. Call/txt me if you need a comms person.

Angela Pendley ran this year as a Democrat for Lynn Westmoreland’s old seat GA-3, which includes northwestern Muscogee.

Her website, http://apendley4house.com is a damn joke, likely self-created on Wix. Her “About” page proudly proclaims thus:

“Angela Pendley does not use social media such as Facebook, twitter, or instagram.
​
Angela Pendley communicate with people in person, on the phone, through email, through United States Postal service, and through text messaging.
​
Supporters of the campaign are encouraged to share Angela Pendley’s message with friends, even if they are republicans who will vote as independents in November.”

Like, what the hell is this? If you’re not where the people and their eyeballs are, you’re ruling yourself out. You’re also doing damage to other progressives and liberals who want to run for that seat after you fail so needlessly.

No wonder she was beat by Drew Ferguson 68%-32%. She had it coming. Her communications looked like absolute “trash can juice”, to quote Nick Decker.

Same with Ben Anderson. Lost 64-35 to Josh McKoon. No website, just a Facebook page Anderson for Georgia.

Democrats out here in the country areas don’t know what they’re doing. Ugh.

Don’t be Angela Pendley 2016. Don’t screw up 2018. Call/txt me. #gapol

Over the next two years, if you are a progressive or liberal elected official who needs a website, or if you are looking for a website+mailing list+social media for your progressive or liberal campaign or activist group, please hit me up.

I don’t know if I have enough life experience to run for office, but I sure enough can cook up a communications platform for you. I can also write press releases.

Progressives, liberals and democratic socialists, please. And maybe pirates.

While at #Nerdacon this weekend, I talked to a libertarian who happens to be gay. He thanked me for not advocating burning or destroying things in protest, and asked me to consider adopting the model of the Tea Party movement in advocating for progressive policies.

I also talked to a writer with whom we shared a lot of concerns, including on the direction of progressive politics in the South. He happened to vote for Jill Stein in his home state of Tennessee.

Both wished me condolences over what happened on Election Day.

I’ll have more to say after I process these two conversations.

Retracting My Last Post

Politics, Uncategorized, , ,

Last night, I wrote some posts attacking the political viability of those who will be 50 years old or more in 2020.

I wrote these posts in anger against the “Democratic establishment” which is being excoriated as “neoliberal” and “elitist” for their screw-up of this and past election cycles, the Cold War-tinged sentiments which prevent this party from fighting for single-payer healthcare, and the incumbent party elders who fail the party and refuse to change their ways.

Since Super Tuesday, I have read many posts from my Facebook friends which have consistently ripped the Democratic establishment for “neoliberal” or pro-corporation overtures in their policy, especially in their endorsement of Hillary over Bernie. Many of these included overt wishes for the older generations of Democrats, especially those who endorsed Hillary, to “die off.”

I took precisely these posts to heart in the last two posts.

In the process, I ran over all 50+ year olds by advocating for political job discrimination against them. Kimberlyn called me out for ageism in the comments, and emphasized that it is unjust to advocate discrimination against older-aged people while I advocate for civil rights for LGBT people.

I admit that my posts were ageist, unjust and wrong-headed. I’m also starting to realize that those posts wishing for the older Dems to “die off” came from a place of ignorant, deep-seated hatred, and I should have been wiser to not even read those posts. I apologize and I’ve hidden both posts from my timeline.

I remain angry against everyone else mentioned, no matter their age.

Gone Head and Free Yourself

Politics, Uncategorized, ,

Those who wish to blow up the Democratic Party, or replace it with another party, now have a chance to make good on their wish over the next two years.

Are you below 50 years of age?

Go ahead.

This party is not progressive enough for many, not liberal enough for many, is too cozy with corporations and too cold to unions, is too prone to utilizing warfare to promote this country’s interests, and many wish death to the very infrastructure of this oldest organization of its kind in the United States.

Go ahead.

If the Green Party is what you feel to be the natural successor and replacement to the Democratic Party, join it and build it up into a political machine capable of running offices across this country. Hopefully, you can make more Gayle McLaughlins and less Jill Steins.

Go ahead.

Now is your time to build something better.

You’re gonna have to build similar networks with voters as the Democrats have, but with a different message, status quo and even culture within those networks.

You’re gonna have to organize county by county by county, and kiss some ass alongside.

You’re gonna have to practice what you demand about partisan openness to independent radicals and independent moderates.

You’re gonna have to practice what you demand about enforcing term limits, clearing the most obstinate people from leadership, and bringing the younger guns into power.

Or, if the Greens aren’t your speed, you’re gonna have to lead a takeover of your local Democratic Party. And maybe rename it to, I dunno, “Freedom Democratic Party” a la #FannieLouHamer? Do that here in GA.

Look at your by-laws and take advantage of them. Show up to the central committee meetings. Make it a long-term goal to take it over. Withstand the hours of yelling. Get your similarly-aged friends to come.

But go ahead. Take it over.

But when you start, don’t stop for anything.

One of your goals is to amend the bylaws. Another is to instill specific and broad goals for governance.

Do it.

  1. Visit similar ill treatment upon the new GOP governance as was visited upon President Obama and Democrats for 8 years. Make the GOP pay. Undermine. Don’t “give them a chance.”
  2. Work to build alternatives to the current structure of government. Start with fighting for top-two primaries or ranked-choice voting at the local and state levels.
  3. Destroy “The South”. Build an entire alternative culture to replace the current one.
  4. State secession. Create blue states out of blue, competitive regions like Metro Atlanta.
  5. ?????
  6. Profit!

Bernie Sanders’ Fandom is Making S*it Up Again

Politics, Uncategorized, ,

A lot of Bernie supporters on my feed saying that he would have won handily in the general election, expressing their utmost resentment for the DNC primary and “The Media”(tm).

Speaking as a Bernie primary voter, you can miss me with that. I think he would have done worse.

You can talk about how polling showed that he would have done well in a head-to-head against Clinton and Trump, but 3 things:

  • why did he lose so many open primaries against Clinton?
  • Why were most of Bernie’s wins in the caucus states?
  • Why did so many Bernie supporters resent that the New York primary was closed to registered Democrats, even though he lost so many open primaries?
  • How would Bernie have performed in terms of Electoral Votes as compared to the popular vote?
  • Why weren’t those Republicans who saw Bernie as the non-Hillary present in the open Democratic primaries in the Southern states like Georgia?
  • How were open primaries rigged?

You cannot make Afro-American Democrats love Bernie any more than how we voted in the primary, especially not within a year.

In the end, Afro-Americans were not the deciding factor between Clinton and Trump, and the bet on the Latinx vote came up short. Trump won because he carried the Euro-American vote across all class divisions, and the Euro-American vote dominates the Electoral College, not the popular vote.

So much of Euro America made this decision, especially the Euro working class, out of a reflex for economic and political security of their position in the world and against constraints of decency, and their decision is reflected more in Trump’s share of the Electoral College than in his current share of the popular vote.

Bernie would not have filled that hole because he came too late and assumed wrongly that so many demographics would gravitate to him with immediacy. Hillary did her best to compensate for this hole, even in working an entire “ambitious” political life toward this goal, but came up short.

Trump is the president that Euro America deserves, and the political system is rigged in Euro America’s favor since the Electoral College was established in its current form in 1803. He’s a man of his time, and the Euro-American men and women who voted for him will own everything that this Republican presidency and Congress will enact and appoint over the next four years.

To imply that Bernie would satisfy this urge is disrespectful to the man himself. It is a projection of your fantasies onto someone who tried and failed to build a sustainable voter base. It is a projection of your fantasies upon voters who clearly sided in the GOP primary with Trump because they liked his gutter nationalism, that maybe those misinformed voters would have seen the light of Bernie in the general election if he had been the Democratic nominee.

No. Euro America did not deserve Bernie. Euro America did not deserve Hillary. Euro America did not deserve a continuance or progression of the best policies of Obama’s 8 years in office.

Euro America knows what Euro America wants. Let Euro America have it.

No Gloating

Politics, Uncategorized, ,

As per Edric, I do not wish to gloat when Hillary wins tomorrow or Wednesday morning.

I will celebrate, eat, drink, dance, calm down…decompress…slowly.

I will likely spend the whole day Wednesday sleeping, thinking about what movie to watch at the theatre (likely #DoctorStrange in 3D) and finishing my slideshow for a #Nerdacon panel.

I will be waiting for someone to respond to my post-election job applications.

I’m not interested in gloating. I don’t think much that is favorable about Trump, but the people who have voted for him or will vote for him tomorrow will still be with us on Wednesday.

We will have to work differently than we did under President Obama. The racism and sexism exhibited by both his most ardent supporters and his Republican opponents over the Obama years will still be exhibited in different doses.

But those who voted for him over economic anxieties should not be left behind in not only explaining our economic limitations and dead ends, but charting a course forward to overcome those limitations.

Those who voted for him over their being de-centered in the future of the great American narrative – by sex, gender, sexual orientation or, as egregious as it is, race and skin color – will either find a way to navigate this landscape, hopefully by recognizing their privilege and helping to build a new, more equitable, more domestically compassionate status quo, or will retreat into an organized but dysfunctional socio-economic dystopia of the mind. I’m already doing what I can to dispel that dystopia for the fallacy it is, and to show that everyone should have an equitable role to play in this country, and an equitable chance to play that role.

We live in a small world, and we live in a big world. Our place is not assured, but we will write our own futures. Let’s write futures which will reach out to people who are not like us in shared background but who have the goal of comforting the afflicted, even if this disturbs and rouses the comfortable to wakefulness.