CORRECTION: A previous version of this article misstated that this poll had a likely voter screen. Democrats have a 57%-40% lead among men ages 18-30 who say they’re the most determined to vote.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this article misstated that this poll had a likely voter screen. Democrats have a 57%-40% lead among men ages 18-30 who say they’re the most determined to vote.
Basically, it’s up to all of us to educate people whenever we get the chance.
Here are three stories I have been repeating for years.
Back in 1968, old school Communists and anarchists, the folks who’d actually gone to Spain to fight Franco and been blacklisted, were telling people to vote for Humphrey. To a lot of young voters then Humphrey looked as bad as Nixon. To the oldtimers, Nixon was one of the people who’d helped kill Ethel Rosenberg. They knew Nixon was evil, and they were proved right.
Second. A lot of people point to Martin Luther King as a saint. They don’t look past the public persona and see that he was a shrewd political operator who strategically timed his actions. Rosa Parks wasn’t the first woman to refuse to give up her seat on a public bus, but she was the one they chose to rally around. One of King’s top aides was Bayard Ruskin, a gay man. King knew about the raw deal LGBTQ+ people had, but he also knew that America wasn’t ready for that conversation.
Third. Frederick Douglas was an escaped slave. His speeches and books had made him famous. He had a chance to back a candidate who was storng for Abolition. Instead, Douglas backed Lincoln, who was more committed to saving the Union. Douglas gambled that it was better to win and be at the table than it was to lose and have no influence at all.
“Basically, it’s up to all of us to educate people whenever we get the chance.”
Good luck with that, I can’t even get people my age or older to listen and it’s not communication skills but rather everyone wants to hide under a blanket. I was I think 16 when I was in a government class and the teacher comes in all pissed off and asks, “does anyone know what the Patriot Act is?” since it was just passed. Other than myself only one other student raised their hand. And that’s when I got the feeling that we’re fucked. I told people within my circle about Drippy Diaper Don and what he really is; nah you got it all wrong. Well this year they’re starting to understand it from a hard lesson point of view. All I can do is be amused and say I told you so.
Richard Nixon once said that a politician can give the same speech a thousand times. Every time he gives it he has to remember that there’s one person in the crowd who never heard the speech before.
No one said it was easy.
More recent and maybe as pivotal was the move to get Ralph Nader in 2000. They knew he wouldn’t win, but the line I remember was that if the Green Party got 5% of the vote then they’d get a lot more funding next election. The right idea in trying to break the two party system, but the wrong approach, and who knows how things would have branched with an easy Gore win instead of the mess we got. “They’re both the same” - maybe in some ways, and that’s its own fight, but in other ways they are absolutely not.
Look it up.
The GOP has given money to the Greens and the Libertarians. The GOP leadership knows its people will always vote ‘R’ and that people on the left have no great love for the Dems.