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Edited on Wed Oct-26-11 08:42 PM by tcaudilllg
If OWS has shown us anything, it's that Democratic office holders across the nation are either terrified of the Right or complicit in its agenda. We need to do something about them, but how? I once tried to involve myself in county politics, so I can offer some details as regarding how the Democratic party nominating process works and how to shape it.
Every month in every county in the nation, the Democrat (sometimes socialist) parties hold meetings. Every county politician comes to these meetings, including present and former city officials. Once every two years, elections are held for their central committees. Central committee members sometimes discuss community issues at these meetings, but the real purpose of the committees is to control and shape the registered Democrat vote.
The central committee is the center of power in the Democratic party. Those who sit on it are able to determine, in large part, who gets heard in the context of the party, and especially, who can run on the party's ticket. Generally people who don't sit on the central committee cannot nominate themselves for the party's endorsement, because they don't have the standing. Thus to be elected at the county (or city) level, a person typically needs to first obtain a central committee seat. Sometimes there are executive committees that a party member can join after receiving an orientation, but in some states these don't exist, and there are always schemes afoot to make the central committee and the executive committee the same size (effectively eliminating the executive committee, because all members of the central committee are also on the executive committee as per the law), so that power can be consolidated through local vote buying and the local population put under heel.
If you want to make gains for Occupy movement, you need to defeat the movement's enemies by dispossessing them of their central committee seats, thus preventing them from getting party endorsements. In their place you want supporters of the Occupy movement, especially local activists. (lawyers generally have vested personal interests in catering to the 1%, and cannot be trusted as much). The way to take a central committee seat is to ruin the reputation of its holder, by exposing their corrupt activities. A few dozen flyers in their precinct will go a long way towards this. Try to link them to the mayor if possible. It may hurt to "go after" someone who professes the same values as yourself, but that's politics. The devil is not in what they believe, but in their means to fulfilling these ambitions. Judge them for that, not just their intentions. The judgement is of course relative: they lose your support because another person has both the beliefs and the determination to use the right means, meaning they are more qualified. This is representative government election after all, not a popularity contest and certainly not a pity party. The enemies of Occupy are, in fact, counting on you to go easy on them, to think of their needs instead of the needs of your communities. That's how the party gets corrupted, by leveraging friendship impulses themselves and leveraging them to the full. People who want to think of themselves as good people demur from competing with the corrupt pols for the limited seats, because they want to think of themselves as considerate of others' needs. And so, we end up with a situation with very few decent people in leading positions in the party and many, many narcissists. The narcissists are the problem. We need good people in office, not narcissists and not sell-outs. Don't do it just for yourself, do it for your community, from which the mayor's corrupt allies have estranged themselves.
Once you take a county's central commmittee, the corrupt pols in the county will have to either switch to the Republicans (a more likely scenario than you may think) or serve out their (final) terms. Failing to secure the central committee's nomination ends careers, thus the obsession with controlling it and building a party "machine" around that effort. You want to aggressively attack this machine and defeat everyone associated with it. Screaming "WITCH! WITCH!" (in figurative terms) is strongly advised. "Defeat the machine, defeat the 1%!" If people protest about the change in mood, be alert -- this is a machinery which sustains the machine. It's not all about corruption, but also individual pique and weakness. Create an organization to rebut the critics, and make it clear you aren't going to move. They either join you, or the party fails. At the last, the decorum preachers will agree to support the nominee (because their nature is to fear the Republicans more than any Democrat), so don't waste time with them. This is how you beat the machine. Once many central committees are taken, the effect will trickle up to the state and national levels, as primary candidates will have to seek local endorsements (all held by Occupy supporters) to win precincts. In this way, you take back the entire party.
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