The strategy the Democrats
need to win should include the following:
1. Recognize and announce that the political leaders do NOT reflect what the
electorate, let alone the larger group of American People actually want. This
is clearly shown in opinion polls, if not in ballot results, which means...
2. Get out the friggin vote! In presidential elections, barely half the eligible voters actually vote. In off-years, it's even less than that. In local elections it may be as little as a quarter, which means in a tight race, just 1/8th of the electorate is actually electing someone. The reasons vary from voter suppression to apathy, but in all these cases, there must be a concerted and dedicated effort to getting out the vote. Period. The votes will tend their way mostly, which the Republicans are well aware of, so that's why they do everything they can to suppress the votes. Democrats need to hire a few good lawyers to fight voter suppression too, clean up voting machine fraud (yes, it does exist and it favors Republicans), and also pay attention to court races where they exist.
2a. Support lowering the voting age to 16. Get people to vote while in High School and you'll make voters of them for life. Age 18 is a transition year, away from parental influence and even school for many, and people move around and are caught up in making a living and forget to register.
2b. Make voter registration automatic. Let people decide which party to belong to as an option. Most will be Democrats anyway at that age.
3. Find better ways to support grass-roots candidates. This has to come from the bottom up more. The top-down Party Machine system doesn't work any more. It's been replaced on the Republican side by super-pacs and super-donors. Only Obama and to a greater extent now, Sanders, have tapped into this great grass roots population so far. Clinton is still pursuing mostly the usual, and dwindling, supply of mega-donors. That strategy will fail in money terms and even in vote-gathering terms.
4. In the hail-Mary pass category, support instant-runoff voting. Yes, most Americans won't understand why winner-take-all voting results in the candidate whom most people support least, because two left-of-center candidates cancel each other out (though not always: see Bush I vs. Perot vs. Clinton in 1992. Perot and Bush I split the conservative vote and Clinton won with a 40% plurality). But it is time to start talking about fixing a basic flaw in the election process.
...Or, the Democrats can continue with their current strategy of We're-not-as-crazy-and-corrupted-as-the-Republicans. Yeah, that's the ticket.
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