Category: Uncategorized (Page 17 of 49)

I hope they run some ads in Washington. Civility be damned, we got some taxes to cut!

Stupid latte drinkers…

The pick a party primary has turned 2o percent of Snohomish County voters into either sloppy or pissed off people:

Failure to complete the ballots properly likely reflects two problems, Diepenbrock said.

“Partly, people aren’t reading the directions, and, two, they don’t want to pick a party,” she said.

State law requires voters in the primary to stay within one party in selecting candidates for partisan races. With touch-screen voting machines in use before the switch, each voter had to select a party before being allowed to pick candidates.

This is the third year voters in the state have had to pick a party since the open primary, in which voters were able for decades to choose from among all candidates from all parties for each partisan office, was found unconstitutional.

Some voters write angrily on ballots about being forced to choose a party affiliation, and election workers have received as many as 250 telephone complaints on that issue since ballots were mailed Aug. 30, Diepenbrock said.

Matt Rosenberg is correct in his assessment of politics (in relation to a wiki-politics site like moreperfect.org): “people need a little bit of blood and guts to really become engaged in politics,” he said. “Politics is a contact sport.”

What he is wrong about is that he seems to assume that it is supposed to be this way. Politics, and our democracy, I’ve heard recently described (pdf file) “how any given society functions to achieve ends transcending social tensions.” (emphasis mine). Transcending social tensions, not becoming social tensions.

According to Morris Fiorina politics are a contact sport because the 20 percent who care a lot, and aren’t worried about compromise, control the conversation. They are the loudest, they are the most eager, and they hardly ever listen.

Better put by him:

Republican and Democratic elites unquestionably have polarized. But it is a mistake to assume that such elite polarization is equally present in the broader public. It is not. However much they may claim that they are responding to the public, political elites do not take extreme positions because voters make them. Rather, by presenting them with polarizing alternatives, elites make voters appear polarized, but the reality shows through clearly when voters have a choice of more moderate alternatives…

Democracy isn’t just about being heard, it is also about listening and compromising.

We all compromise in our daily lives. We compromise with our families, our children, friends, and especially at work. We don’t see this as a failure, but rather as a good way of getting things done. Its effective, and in the end everyone gets close to what they want. Only the most selfish person would ever go through life never compromising.

And democracy is just life with people you don’t know, but you still should listen. So, yes, something like moreperfect.org can and should work.

From the Political Wire:

GOP Hopes Rest on Low Turnout

GOP Planning Negative Ad Barrage

A party planning on convinving people not to vote is a party not worth supporting. I only wish the Democratic Party was as bold as Kinky Friedman:

Convincing People to Vote: We think that it’s not Kinky Friedman vs. Rick Perry. It’s Kinky Friedman vs. apathy. If we get a big turnout, I win. Almost everybody agrees with that. The last thing Rick Perry wants to see is a big turnout. That’s the last thing he wants to see. And that’s a shame because our elected leaders ought to want to see democracy in action — instead of the last turnout, which was 29.3 percent. For governor! $100 million spent, 29 percent vote. It’s sick. If we could get it up to 40 percent, I’m governor.

Washington Bloggers group. The Online Outreach Coordinator for the (state?) party, Tracy Joan, started a group for us bloggers. Sweet. Go there and join. Its a private group, so she’ll have to let you in. But, join anyway.

And, I’m so freaking confused about it too. Though, before that, this is a good review of whole PB thing from Hotline (hat tip Matt Lewis):

In the simplest of political theories, each party’s tool is reflective of their respectivie philosophies. Talk about competitive market: RNC users compete to get points, dollars and yes, the elusive “official” GOP ipod. With what is most like an intentional emphasis on competition, MyGOP users how much money they’ve raised (up to $200), voters they’ve and volunteers they’ve recruited. The DNC’s Party Builder is all about building and communicating within a community.

Most important is to check out how each party gathers information about the user. The RNC has different logins for different features, such as the blog, personal homepage and volunteer recruitment center. It’s a model for different levels of engagement and getting lots of names without shoving committment into a user’s face — and typically getting a larger drop-off rate in return. The DNC takes a different approach. By singing up with Party Builder, the DNC gets basic information in the login and then collects information through the user’s profile, signed petitions, signed letters to the editor and their network/group memberships. So why do we care? These users are the party’s next loyal supporter and volunteer. And how much information the parties have on these folk will determine the strength of their online activism in ’06 and ’08, which is conveniently transferable to field staffs across the country.

Party Buider is superior because it uses online political activism in a social sense, not simply as a way to draw people to a website, the way EPSN or Yahoo! would. See Kari’s review of the fall-down-the-stairs failure of MyGOP.

All that said, here has been my problem with Party Builder. I created an account at Democrats.org awhile back so I could comment on the blog. I tried to use that login for Party Builder, which I assume is the point.

But, Democrats.org doesn’t remember me. I don’t remember myself. Forget all that was here before, the DNC tech team is fine. Do their jobs great. I’m stupid.

From a comment at the Replace the Pick A Party Primary blog:

I don’t want the parties to get my address and start sending me mail.

From the Cluetrain Manifesto:

The Axe in Our Heads

Every one of us knows that marketers are out to get us, and we all struggle to escape their snares. We channel-surf through commercials; we open our mail over the recycling bin, struggling to discern the junk mail without having to open the envelope; we resent the adhesion of commercial messages to everything from sports uniforms to escalator risers.

We know that the real purpose of marketing is to insinuate the message into our consciousness, to put an axe in our heads without our noticing. Like it or not, they will teach us to sing the jingle and recite the slogan. If the axe finds its mark we toe the line, buy the message, buy the product, and don’t talk back. For the axe of marketing is also meant to silence us, to make conversation in the market as unnecessary as the ox cart.

The overwhelmingly popular vote in favor of I-872 two years ago and the continued support for something other than the closed primary has as much to do with buying a car as democracy. Buying a car and democracy are both necessary (well, not really the car, but you get my point) and during the process of both, you feel like you’re being sold on something that you dont’ really want.

One of the fears of closing up the primary system is that if you vote for a candidate, then whatever party that person belongs to will suddenly consider you a member. That is the downfall of many closed primary systems back east. Great for the parties, but sucko for the voters.

Actually, not so great for the parties, because their mail will soon be part of that junk mail we open over the recycle bin. It would be better to need accurate (junk mail) lists less and find other ways to engage voters.

While Sen. Tim Sheldon considers himself a Democrat, as is his right, he should tell the state Republican Senate Campaign Committee about his political affiliation. They’re under the impression that he’s a Republican.

From an RSCC memo (click image to enlarge):

And:

Its funny, that second page points out that both Kerry and Gregoire won the 35th. So much for Democrats for Bush.

Both the Times and PI have reviews of the issues surrounding Stephan’s really off the wall blog post about Toby Nixon not running afoul of the legislaitive ethics rules.

Seattle Times: Free the press releases
Seattle PI: Deciphering ethics in the digital age

Both seem to center on the webiness of the issue, that you can’t really fault someone for pointing to something on this big wide crazy web. On the other hand, It does seem wrong for a candidate to use the efforts of paid public servants to campaign.

He could just get someone to rewrite press releases if he’s going to cut and paste them onto his website. But, that’s just me.

Still can’t figure out what this has to do with the Klan or the governor.

I try never to get quoted during work. Ironically, yesterday I had a conversation with one of my co-workers on how to best send a press release so a particular newspaper doesn’t attribute anything to you. You have to be sneaky.

But, today, Ryan Blethen quotes me and I’m happy. Good column, its about politics in general and how my generation relates. I think I have a good point, but the entire column is pretty good. You should read the entire thing, but here is my part:

Emmett O’Connell, a 29-year-old respondent from Olympia, summed it up best during a telephone interview this week: “People see the parties being solely focused on winning elections, so they don’t want to get involved.”

O’Connell is not a bystander. He is the Web master for America For Richardson, the unofficial site for New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson’s possible run for president. O’Connell also writes for a number of blogs, including Western Democrat and Olympia Time.

Even with an insider’s view, O’Connell craves what the other respondents want.

“More than anything, we want authenticity,” he wrote. “We’re the generation of cable television, telemarketing, infomercials and junk mail. We don’t want to be sold; rather, we want to be engaged.”

I’m hardly an insider though.

I think this is a paragraph I influenced as well, it includes some points I made:

The only way to force open the seemingly impenetrable boundaries of party politics is for a new generation to get involved and not lose sight of the reasons for doing so. Involvement does not necessarily mean working for a candidate or getting a job on a politician’s staff. Political involvement should include civic involvement. Only by being engaged in a community can a person truly understand its needs.

I know it sounds silly. Politics should be about more than just electing the right person. It should be about making better communities, and often times that is more than electing someone.