I participated in a thread called Another call to publicly disown the “firedogs” My answer was so long, and because it threw light on what, I hope, will be a systematized and rational way of dealing with honest differences of opinions, that I’ve decided to post it as a separate diary on FDL, OpenLeft, and DocuDharma.
Somebody had suggested an “FDL Party”, but I said that an “FDL Voting Bloc” would be smarter. Turns out, that was too simple a statement, as was made clear by PaulaT’s post:
Back when they had the Mass special election to fill Kennedy’s seat, there were threads on here with comments in the hundreds about what should be done. Some were in the camp of vote for Coakley because she’s progressive, though those were the minority. Some were saying to vote for Coakley because even an establishment Dem was better than a Republican. Others were saying to vote for Brown to send a message about how bad the Senate bill was before the House also passed it and they ended up with a crappy bill (not that it stopped them, after all, but at least there was some hope it might). After all the discussion and some really good arguments from all involved (plus some really bad ones from some), there was no consensus on what should be done. I don’t think there would be on future races. There would be those in the any Dem is better camp and those in the anything but an incumbent who has betrayed us to teach a lesson camp, and probably a few other camps as well depending on the particulars of the race. There are those who would like to see Kucinich gone and those who are mad about health care but say he’s been good on other things or they think the pressure was so great that they are inclined to forgive him or he’s the most progressive one we’ve got even if he’s spineless, or whatever, but want to keep him. When we had Romanoff on here the other day, every other question was about why anyone should trust him even though we know from very recent experience we can’t trust Bennett, who he’s running against. You’d think people would be okay with jumping in on that lesser of evils, but some would still rather go third party or maybe not vote at all, but something other than just trust him from what they were asking.
So how do you get this particular community to vote as a bloc?
My reply follows
Thanks for this fuller explanation. It’s clear that you’re asking a very good question.
So how do you get this particular community to vote as a bloc?
Hmmm. Well, I guess there’s two main points to be made.
First, in thinking and writing about voting blocs in the past (if you search OpenLeft.com for {“Nancy Bordier” + IVCS + metamars}, or {“Nancy Bordier + “voting bloc” + metamars}, you can follow discussions I’ve had on this subject in the past, with an inventor of a vote bloc technology), we’d mostly discussed what particular set of policy options any given voting would insist on, how different voting blocs could merge permanently or just temporarily ally (for a given election), the need for ranking policy options in terms of their desirability, and the filtering effect by certain voting blocs on insisting that certain policy options not be selected be it’s members.
An example I spoke about more than once was that of having a race with 2 progressive candidates, separately supported by 2 progressive voting blocs. How do you prevent the two blocs from splitting their real-world vote in, say, a Democratic primary? If one group mostly wants Kucinich, and another one mostly wants Howard Dean, it would be a disaster for them to split their votes in a real-world primary, and thus throw the primary vote to, say, a stealth Republican like Obama. (OK, I exaggerate, slightly.)
However, the really interesting thing about your question, to me, is it points to a complicating factor in maintaining a voting bloc’s real-world voting coherence. By “real world voting coherence”, I mean: do they stick together and vote as a bloc in real-world elections, as they must at least declare that they will do, via their online elections (or pre-elections, to be more precise, as they must complete their voting before real-world primaries and general elections.)? E.g., two progressive voting blocs’ members in a given state may agree, ahead of time, to a temporary alliance, such that whichever candidate jointly favored by both voting blocs in an online election, will be voted for in the real world primary. So, say that in Mass. there is a voting bloc with 3 million members, and 1,600,000 of them want Kucinich, 1,400,000 want Dean; and so the voting bloc is committed to voting for Kucinich as a whole, if it did so alone. I.e., all 3 million members, in order to maintain the voting blocs’ power (and to not make a mockery of the phrase “voting bloc”, as was done by the so-called “progressive voting bloc” in Congress this last year) will vote for Kucinich, absent an alliance with another progressive voting bloc. However, both progressive voting blocs have approved an alliance with the other (via voting), and, as it turns out the other progressive voting bloc wants Howard Dean over Kucinich, by a margin of 1,800,000 to 200,000. So, the net voting of the two blocs, together is : Kucinich: 1,800,000 vs. Dean 3,200,000. Even though the larger voting bloc would have gone for Kucinich, had it not formed an alliance with the smaller voting bloc, members of both blocs realize that neither Dean nor Kucinich will prevail, unless they unify their voting. And they sure as heck don’t want Obama.
So, what is the “complicating factor” that I referred to, above? The complicating factor is strategy. Your excellent question has got me thinking about other scenarios where even the general, and relatively (I claim) tidy and non-controversial alliance forming process I sketched out above, could fail. This is particularly easy to see in transitions that voting blocs must make in moving from primary to general elections, where their favored candidate has lost the primary. E.g., let’s say that the Mass. progressive voting blocs, despite their best efforts, fail to prevent Obama from capturing the real-world primary in 2012. Now there’s a general election, and the Republican Presidential nominee is Sarah Palin. If the voting bloc of 5 million voters collectively stay home, or even vote Republican (to punish liar and backstabber Obama), that would probably make all the difference – Sarah Palin would win Mass. in 2012. If one of the vote blocs had a “we’ve had enough of the ‘lesser of two evils’ strategy; we’ll vote Republican before we vote for a crummy DINO” strategic policy, but the other progressive voting bloc did not have such a strategic policy, what then? Well, assuming each voting bloc is separately faithful to it’s strategy, there’s not much doubt about what should happen in this case. Only one bloc will support Obama in the general election, and the other will not. An alliance that is not only possible, but quite natural in a primary cannot be carried forward into a general election. If a vote bloc alliance didnt’t forsee and accept such an honest difference of opinion, then that could create discord and distrust, going forward. And since nobody that I’m aware of has talked about essential differences of strategy as important components of a vote bloc technology, I’m now concerned that this will not be properly prepared for.
So, thank-you for your question. You’ve illuminated an important point.
I’ll guess that in a Day 1 rollout scenario of a vote bloc system, there doesn’t actually need to be any formal means of accounting for differences in vote bloc strategy, at all. This could be accomplished by simply strongly advising all new vote bloc members that vote bloc alliances are only provisional. I.e., vote bloc alliances are expected to maintain their united cohesion through primaries definitely; but through general elections only if their jointly favored candidate wins the primary.
If you examine jeffroby’s Full Court Press, you see that this is only a strategy for primaries. Nothing is said or implied aboout how FCP voters should vote during a general election. I view FCP voters as a voting bloc, and I think that it’s easy to see that this particular voting bloc would have no problem, whatsoever, sticking to a “loyalty to an alliance only through the primary” advisement.
The second point that needs to be made is that a lot of the differences that you’ve spoken about can simply be ‘flattened out’, within a voting bloc, via ….. drumroll, please….. voting. Of course, people will have different opinions about not just policies, but also strategy. Discussing and arguing about a particular policy option or strategy is quite appropriate, but everybody needs to understand that, unless they organize themselves into voting blocs, and honor the need for the voting bloc to cohere through it’s real-world voting, they will generally be powerless.
By going around some of the barriers and choke points of our current democracy, using the internet, people will increasingly be able to see, ahead of time, the result of their adherence to too many policy option, or to too few policy options. To a stricter, less-forgiving strategy vs. a less strict, more forgiving and compromising strategy.
Also, a viable and smartly put together vote bloc technology would make the migration of members from a less successful voting bloc to a (hopefully) more successful one easy.
So, in the case of FDL, let’s consider what your wrote, here:
There would be those in the any Dem is better camp and those in the anything but an incumbent who has betrayed us to teach a lesson camp, and probably a few other camps as well depending on the particulars of the race.
(I will now make a sleight of hand, and start responding to this question as though a fully featured vote bloc technology already existed. I believe that this is inevitable, though I’m concerned about overlapping systems… I’ll also make some other assumptions that readers can, hopefully, easily infer.)
Immediately we can see that FDL’ers will segregate into more than one voting bloc. For simplicity’s sake, let’s assume that there are 2 FDL voting blocs, that are quite similar in policy options, but have a somewhat irreconcilable difference in their chosen strategy options: FDL A Voting Bloc will not forgive Kucinich (having adopted a “no forgiveness” policy for the most progressive incumbents), but FDL B Voting Bloc (VB, henceforth) will. It’s 2012, and again, for simplicity’s sake, we assume that the Democratic party field consists of Kucinich, Dean, and Obama.
In Mass., FDL A VB has 2 million voters who collectively prefer Dean, and FDL B VB hs 3 million voters who collectively prefer Kucinich. Let’s pretend, further, that if FDL A VB did not have a “no forgiveness” policy, that a joint vote between FDL A and FDL B would select Kucinich. However, this is not possible – FDL A VB’s “no forgiveness” policy will not allow Kucinich’s name to appear on joint vote ballot. So, FDL B has to decide whether or not they are willing to participate in a joint vote with FDL A, knowing that they do not have the electoral muscle to get Dean elected, by themselves. This joint vote will only offer a choice between Obama and Dean. Everbody knows that Obama will not be selected. The choice for FDL B is thus whether or not they want to cooperate with FDL A, and thus at least get Dean. Or, will they say “no, that’s too harsh, and we won’t even co-operate with FDL A; I guess we’re stuck with Obama”?
I can’t answer that question. That what voting is for – to allow groups of people to determine their own fate.
Now, let’s say that FDL A decides not to cooperate with FDL B in 2012 (which doesn’t make much sense to me, but it’s a theoretical possibility). Consequently, Obama wins Mass. Well, three possibilities for what can happen in 2016 immediately spring to mind:
- FDL A will conclude that their no forgiveness strategy is too constricting, and collectively vote to remove it from their structure
- FDL A will maintain it’s structure, but will lose lots of its members to other voting blocs, especially FDL B VB. These members view the no forgiveness strategy as too constraining, but they are in a minority in FDL A, so choose to leave the bloc rather than try to change the bloc. With a mature vote bloc technology, doing so is very easy. Note that, if so many members leave to join FDL B, the pressure will become greater on FDL A to abandon it’s “no forgiveness” strategy than for FDL B to adapt to FDL A’s requirements, as was the case in 2012.
- FDL B will realize that they’ve been fools, and that Dean would have been much better than a 4th term of GW Bush – errr, I mean a 2nd term of B. Obama. They make no formal changes in their policy or strategy options, but now carry a collective memory, and conviction, that cooperating with FDL A should at least be attempted in some situations.
Life is a series of choices, many of them hard choices. A mature voting bloc technology will make things easier than, say, wailing at the current lobbyist-infested, moribund political system. But that won’t isolate people from ill effects of their choices. The burden of choosing wisely will fall on voters – which is as it should be. Better that, than letting Wellpoint lobbyists and disgustingly corrupted Congress critters decide your fate.