- thrakkorzog
- Nov 16, 2007
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This is a very good point and tbh I already thought about it. I kind of compare wanting to get into a higher tier of elected office to people who play League of Legends or DotA and dream of being pro. Most people aren't going to make it for whatever reason and so I don't think it'd be worth it to spend my time trying to run for something like Federal Congressman or other top tier office. Sort of like setting your goals lower so that they're more realistic.
Besides, even if I were to get to that kind of position, there's still the argument (at least in the USA) that's raged on for centuries about whether the federal government should have more power or whether the individual states should have more power.
I would love to do that, of course, but I think maybe if I can at least make whatever town or state I live in a bit more sane then I can at least say that I did my part. Similar to how soldiers go to war, come back, and say that they did their part... except instead of protecting the country it's trying to make it not suck so much. I'm probably just really naive.
It's not that naive. In Plano, TX they elected an 18 year old as Justice of Peace twenty years ago, and he's been a pretty decent judge by all accounts. http://www.dallasnews.com/news/comm...ted-as-ever.ece
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Apr 2, 2014 07:35
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May 12, 2024 16:32
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- thrakkorzog
- Nov 16, 2007
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Eh, I mean it's not like at the lower levels there's some sort of doctrinal certification exam. If you're running for school board or even State Attorney General or whatever nobody gives a poo poo about your opinions on foreign policy (so long as you're not openly racist) and it's not like it'd come up anyhow.
But yeah, I think there's a realistic expectation from the guys who campaigned for you and fundraised for you and voted for you that you're going to vote generally in line with their values. But on the flip side, once you're in like a state legislative seat, you're fairly high up in the state party itself. So for something that's not a canonical issue like abortion or whatever, you can help decide the party's policy - there are a lot of issues where you as like one of the few guys in your caucus who cares about it can have a huge impact, especially if you can get other legislators to generally agree it's a good idea. Get a few guys from across the aisle to see it your way and suddenly it's a bipartisan effort and you're one or two newspaper editorials away from getting it done.
This even scales up to the Congressional level. I mean there's only like 19 folks out of 435 on the House subcommittee for scientific research, probably half of whom skip most of the meetings. So you get 9 of those guys to generally agree with your reform on how grants are allocated or how psychology ethics boards or whatever work and it'll probably be in the bill when it winds up on the House floor. Get on the conference committee (or convince someone on the conference committee) and the change will probably become law. Won't make the news, but you'll have made the world a marginally better place.
Primaries are not a large advantage. There's usually nothing stopping independent candidates from starting their campaign around when the primaries start. Heck, there's usually nothing stopping you from starting the year before the election. Also the presence or absence of primaries depends on the area and how safe the seat is in the general election - if it's a deep-blue seat with a full-time job and salary there will be a half-a-dozen Democrats fighting for it in a primary while the local Republicans will be looking anywhere and everywhere to find a non-crazy candidate. And vice-versa obviously. For instance, in my home state of VA, there were about a dozen people running for VA-8 in the primary because it's D+15 so the general election's a cakewalk and they're there for life while down in VA-7 they spent months casting around and finally got a professor at a third-tier school who writes erotic vampire fiction or whatever as their candidate, and he was less crazy than the alternatives, because the seat is R+10 or something so victory is unlikely and any winner would be crushed in the next Republican-trending year. This scales all the way down to County Board - you'll get a primary in a winnable seat against a weak opponent, but you'll struggle to recruit for a race in a really tough seat.
Primaries are also often less about ideological purity (Cantor vs. Brat) than they are about campaigning and organizing skill (VA-8). Don Beyer won in VA-8 despite being one of the more conservative Democrats because he was a previous Lt. Governor and owned the local car dealerships. He beat out the real liberal state senators for the seat because he could raise more money and recruit more volunteers and get more endorsements. Even in the case of Cantor vs. Brat, Cantor basically didn't campaign.
The Cantor vs. Brat campaign is a pretty good example of how all politics is local.
Ignoring tea party vs establishment divides. Brat was decent campaigner who went out and knocked on doors, shook hands, and kissed babies. He told potential voters that Cantor was more interested K street and Wall Street than main street. Once Cantor realized he had a fight on his hand, he started pushing out negative against ads against Brat, which raised Brat's profile, but it didn't make Cantor look any better.
If you want to know why Texas hasn't gone blue, most of the Republican candidates in heavily hispanic districts speak enough Spanish to kiss rear end in two languages.
thrakkorzog fucked around with this message at 09:48 on Jun 26, 2014
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Jun 26, 2014 08:43
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Apr 2, 2014 07:35
