the quickest way to kill the DLC (and the GOP): clean money

[yurbud]

Without corporate money and big donors, the chamber of commerce whores in both parties would wither away and die like vampires in sunlight.

This is why they were scared shitless of Howard Dean. One of the campaign funding website did an analysis of who had the most small donors as a percentage of their pile, and in just raw numbers, and Howard dwarfed everyone in both parties.

Clean money requires candidates to get a certain number of small donations, then public funding kicks in. It's already been passed in a couple of states, but needs to be done nationally.

Check it out.

Only you can prevent Liebermans.

http://www.publicampaign.org/

[seabeyond]

1. good point. excellent point.

i saw the effect on dean. then kerry. then boxer. then dnc. yes, we the people take over with a lot of small donations.

[CWebster]

2. who said it?

...inside-the-Beltway pol who angrily shouted, "Russ, live in the real world," after U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., tried to explain why Democrats should embrace campaign finance reforms he had proposed.

It wasn't Lieberman.

[yurbud]

6. I give up, who?

Hillbilly Hitler art:



Blog:

[suigeneris]

3. That's right, only individual contributions.

We could get the payoffs out of politics overnight.

[bryant69]

4. One of several essential reforms we need

Mandatory paper trails! End Gerrymandering of Districts (make them all big squares! Robot Butlers!

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[wli]

5. gerrymandering is best dealt with via election methods

There are election methods where gerrymandering has no effect on the outcome. This is called the "consistency criterion." IRV flunks this criterion. CSSD a.k.a. Schulze (Cloneproof Schwarz Sequential Dropping) a.k.a. "beatpath" passes the consistency criterion.

[yurbud]

7. give this nominations, so it gets some attention

Hillbilly Hitler art:



Blog:

[yurbud]

8. another way to get around gerrymandering: proportional representation

have congressional candidates run statewide, or in a big state like CA, divide it into a couple of zones.

Parties would get a number of seats based on percentage of vote, and within a party, the candidates who got the least votes would be the ones kicked out of seats given to the opposing parties.

You could still have campaigning in districts since candidates from that area would have a better idea of what people there care about.

This would be good for Dems who live in GOP areas and vice versa too. Right now, a republican that lives in my town Santa Monica, probably doesn't even vote for his congressman because he doesn't have a snowball chance in hell of displacing Henry Waxman, but in a proportional system, his vote could make a difference. Same thing with a Democrat who lives in Cowpie in central California.

Hillbilly Hitler art:



Blog:

[wli]

10. that is useful for those cases, but not e.g. Presidential elections

What it boils down to is that the electoral college needs to be dumped and a spoiler-effect-proof, gerrymandering-proof method such as Schulze/CSSD or Ranked Pairs is needed.

[Cocoa]

9. I read somewhere the dems are focussing on clean candidates

I agree, that's the way to go. Get rid of the crooks and phase out the corporate-owned dems.