I have been amused by the calls for political revolution coming from supporters of one of the Democratic primary candidates, but they are barking up the wrong tree in order to make that happen.
You want a political revolution? The answer to shaking up the American political system has been under your nose all along. It's just some of you because of your dislike of the two party system refuse to see it.
Well folks, the two party system is the best we got right now, and it's what we have to work with.
To me, the answer to shaking up the system has been quite simple for years. It's not voting for the Greens or whatever third party du jour white leftists think is cool or trendy. It's called bumrushing the polls in every election cycle in numbers above 45% of the electorate and voting from the top of the ticket all the way down to the end of it for Democrats.
Moni's Political Revolution calls for called kicking the Republicans out of power at all levels of government (federal, state, local and judicial) and putting the Democrats in power for at least 10 years at all levels of government to clean up the putrid political GOP mess It's voting the entire ballot from the presidential race at the top of the ticket to the judicial and other local races at the bottom of it.
Hear me out first before you scoff at it.
It's painfully obvious we have a Republican Party that has made it clear over the last two decades they are goose stepping toward fascism and idiocracy. The Green Party is not only not ready for political prime time, they aren't even close to major party status. Neither do the Greens have the organization or the size necessary to take on the Herculean job of cleaning up our broken American political process to make it work for everybody.
Besides, how many times has Jill Stein unsuccessfully run for president? Do you have a Green Party member in any state legislature? The US House? The US Senate? Doesn't help is she has the positive platform but can't get elected or can't get other members of her party elected to help make it a policy reality
The Democrats do have the size, national organization and the ability to get the job done. They just need the votes to get in power and stay there for at least a decade to accomplish the mission..
The other thing we don't have is the luxury of time. The change we need must happen now, starting with this November 2016 election. 'Vote the person, not the party' sounds nice on a bumper sticker, but delusional in a political climate in which you have members of a political party gleefully eager to use their legislative and judicial power to oppress people.
So what good is a moderate or liberal leaning Republican if by their very election to office, their seat helps keep an ENTIRE unjust party in power in a legislative chamber so that the rest of that party's members as part of that legislative majority enacts policies and laws to oppress us?.
And Democrats who aren't acting in progressive ways can be primary challenged or even better, if you don't see the candidate out there you'd like to vote for, run for office your damned self.
I see the value in direct action protests. But direct action protests don't mean jack if they aren't backed up by the power of the ballot.
Why do you think one of the major goals of the African-American Civil Rights Movement was getting the unfettered right to vote, and why do you think the Republicans have spent millions and passed unjust voter suppression laws in the states they control just to fight the power of our votes?
We have a critical election happening on November 8 which will be an all hands on deck affair. People of color cannot afford white liberals pissed off that the rest of the party didn't see it that way on a Sanders nomination petulantly sitting it out.
It's also the personification of white privilege that you have the ability to think that way, much less are pondering acting on that misguided idea in the name of 'teaching the country a lesson'.
Well the last Republican administration came about because you wanted ideological purity instead of voting for Vice President Al Gore, and it cost us a SCOTUS liberal progressive majority plus the countless lives lost in the Iraq and Afghan wars. .
Non white voters and those of us in marginalized communities don't have that luxury. It is imperative that we do the job correctly this November and get Democrats in office from the White House to judicial chairs to our state legislatures.
The political revolution will not come from voting third party. It will come from never voting for Republicans again until they decide to join the rest of us political grownups in the US. It's also getting the Democrats in power for another four to eight years and finishing the cleanup job that President Obama started.
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