Democratizing the Democratic Party: A Manual
Contents
Introduction: Towards a More Democratic Party: Part I
Towards A More Democratic Party: Part II
Towards a More Democratic Party: Part III
Schism and Severance in the Grassroots
Vignettes of Leadership and Followship
Personality Aspects of Leadership
How to Reach Democratic Constituencies
Issue-Directed Precinct Organizing
Issues in Politics: A Preliminary View
Past Organizing for Action: an Example
Conducting an Issues-Driven Campaign
Organizing
Summary and conclusion
Introduction: Towards a More Democratic Party: Part I
The election of 2016 shocked America, indeed the civilized world, from a business as usual state to one comparable to the mobilization of American democracy under the threat of Hitlerian regression. We do not know how far America will regress, given the totalitarian assertions by Donald Trump, especially in the context of a disparate world divided into camps, all with nuclear weapon capabilities. Blunder on the part of our new leadership could be fatal. Given that danger, we must structure our political future carefully guarding its democracy every step of the way, despite looming regression. Furthermore, to offset widespread panic and any tendencies to over-react in such a climate, we must come to understand that such regression is an inherent aspect of history’s cycle of progress, its backward reach a search for transaction and renegotiation of ties to the past.
That renegotiation of human beings, with all its foibles and assets is of the essence of democracy. This essay, originally penned at the turn of the millennium, addresses the great task of the moment: that is, our safe passage through the era of Trump,and into the next phase of Democracy’s progress. Central to that progress politically is the instrument founded early in the 19th century, that of the Democratic Party. A lag in its development of late may account in large fashion for the failure at the polls in the last political cycle. Let us make up for that lag by advancing it and American Democracy through a renewal envisioned in these pages, through the further Democratization of the Democratic Party. Towards that end, we must re-engage a singularly absent sector of the population from the Democratic fold; white, male,working-class voters. In recent years, they had dropped out of the party. This population needs to be reincorporated as a revitalized constituency. Their jobs may be gone, but they can be transformed through retraining and reorientation into a leading edge of American industry. An example of such is envisioned in the massive transformation of our energy future. The transformation of this white working class, also involves relinquishment of white supremacist and misogynistic ideologies, and reintegration with our Founding Fathers’ vision of liberty and equity for all. Their inclusion, alongwith Black, Brown, Asian, and gender constituencies in a revitalized coalition, calls for a paradigm shift in the party’s self-concept and operation, one involving a vision of a new future for America.
Trump’s visions for the future is based on a Post WWII economy and workforce which saw its seeming heyday in the early 1960’s. (In this regard we can see the linkage between his call to make America “great” again to the concept of that time of America’s “greatest” generation.) But, we need to look to those of the future. To that end, modern economists are developing concepts and practice of economic democracy. This involves reconceptualization to bring forth the best of the capitalist and collective approaches to the productive and distributive process. The initiative of William Edwards Deming in revolutionizing Japanese industry is illustrative. He assembled all of the occupations and disciplines, participating in production of a Japanese automobile, leading them to transact inequity towards a quality product. Authoritarianism was replaced by authoritativeness, all within the context of a democratic society. The promise to revolutionize a broadly diverse future society has along with it, the advances of energy generation and transmission. The best of traditional housing and land use will be extended with new and invented modes.
We envision The Democratic Party at the forefront of these creative changes - enlisting the best of our younger, middle and all the generations, in conceiving of this threshold of the future. The regressive challenge of Trump will undoubtedly result in massive reengagement of previously latent and disfranchised populations in the political process. The party needs to make sure to reach through to that grass roots segment of that population, engage it with an authentic sense of mutuality and train its leadership. It also needs to reach through to academia, industry, and popular culture to consciously engage their energies. The Democratic Party needs to be at the forefront, not only the salvation of America but also of our modern world.
In this piece, we shall go into the nuts and bolts of Democratic organizing, at the risk of pedantry, to the illumination of what I call “issue relevant politics.” The reader is challenged to alter this text as s/he proceeds to best suit the circumstances that s/he faces in whatever segment of the population they reside.It will not be enough to patch up the electorate in Michigan where we lost out on the white male segment or even elsewhere where we showed weakness. We need to attend to the entire red interior of the map of America. Moreover, we need to inquire into the interpersonal and intrapsychic dynamics of the electorate and its relationship and their relationship to enormous currents at loose in our emerging global world.
History
The Democratic Party’sorigin can be traced back to the great enlightenment movement, which led to the French revolution and to English democracy. Prominent philosophers such as Hume and Kant advanced human reason as the basis for authority. Jefferson, Franklin, and Madison, incorporatedenlightenment principals and language in the Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution. Thomas Paine led a populist strain through American political thought. As an example of the importance of the media in social progress, Paine, with his pamphlet, Common Sense (1777), was vastly influential in the inception of the American Revolution and since.The Democratic Party has been in existence as such since 1828, holding its first national convention in 1832. Initially, it was called the Democratic Republican Party, and founded by Jefferson and Madison. It became the party of the people, as differentiated from the privileged. Its first constituencies were the Southern agrarians and Northern city dwellers. They self-identified as Democratic Republicans, despite the fact that many aspects of their formation and mandate did not reflect the values or visions of democracy as we conceive it today. Just because we call it democratic does not make it so! They may have certainly seen themselves as being so. Then again, we too, may be too short-sighted to see the limitations on democracy we ourselves hold to that hold us back as well. Indeed it may even be that this is one of the challenges that has arisen as an evolutionary step in our party truly embracing democracy with a capital “D.”
So, how do we know when we are truly engaging and practicing as a Party founded and operating in a democratic way?
America is going through a profound crisis in its yearning and identification with democratic ideals, a crisis that reaches to the very soul of the individual and his group, and it has to do with the capacity of its citizens to meet the challenges of current reality and the imperative of democratization. Society generally moves forward or backward, standing still only briefly. Likewise or as a reflection of the same, the party is going through an equally profound crisis. We look for leaders to take us through these crises, when in fact the answers we seek to these crises are inbuilt to the very nature of democracy itself. We are the answer we are looking for. In groups in general, but particularly groups whose core attribute and intention is to be and represent democratic principles, the autonomy and initiative is fostered from within. Each initiative that such a group conceives has its spontaneous initiator, who ipso facto becomes a leader, representing an aspect of the needs of the rest. Others follow, but not in a lock-step fashion as modeled by a more conservative/Republican model of group and community behavior that looks to a strong man/leader. In so directing the dialogue of this country towards a vision of crisis that needs an authoritarian approach and leader, the Republican Party has, in fact, created the necessity of a Trump-like figure to eventually emerge. And, we are living in that time.
Background Considerations
Our republic was founded by people who challenged the prevailing wisdom of the day: that people needed an aristocrat to lead, because the common man was incapable of self governance. That aristocrat, or exceptional individual, got his mandate from a Deity, and hopefully ruled from the highest of motives. Through that mandate and idealism s/he was protected from human frailty and protected the body politic from its imperfections.
One third of the people believed in the revolutionary idea that people could govern themselves. One third held to royalty, and the rest oscillated between, in accordance with the fortunes of the Revolutionary War. American democracy has developed considerably since then, but still has a way to go in practice, if not in belief. Therein lies the problem, having to do with how people practice democracy, and the role of the tyranny foreseen by the Founding Fathers.
Again, our Founding Fathers held that people could govern themselves, and, by the separation of powers, buttressed government against frailty and a regression to the ways of the past. The tyranny could be both benign and malign. The evident altruism and willingness to self sacrifice for the common good of their peers – requirements of the fledgling democracy – could quickly turn to acting like democratic aristocrats, if not outright declaration of kingship, as was in the case of Napoleon in France and those who importuned George Washington to assume royal status. In America, Aaron Burr was a good democrat who split away, in a vision of empire. That problem, of regression to a tyrannical self-righteous vision, continues to the present, as it is one of those attributes each of us shares with our brothers and sisters. But, we can see the bossiness in the other, hardly in ourselves.
This individual problem of our personal identity gets compounded when this shadow or mythic side of ourselves is not addressed and joins with others to form groups, be they religious, political, or whatever. It can be considered to be exemplified in the medieval legend of the PidePiper of Hamelin. A ratter, he sought revenge on the town’s peopleby luring their children over a cliff with his merry pipe. This legend may explain the mythic power of this Trump’s message. The mission of local political organizations, which regularly go into campaign mode, calling for action on the ground, activate our tendencies to act and feel justified in performing in accordance with our tyrannical tendencies. Campaigns are like small wars, calling for military ways, e.g. the term precinct captain. So we then assume the roles and responsibilities of officers and privates, all the while getting into the democracy of the trenches, pro tem. Thus in the name of democracy we develop hierarchies, pecking orders, insiders and outsiders – and eventually lose touch with the common base that drew us together in the first place.
We are made uncomfortable with how much bossing goes on in a campaign, and long for its end, so we can go back to being comfortably democratic and convivial, until the next election. Then on top of all that, we are recognizing that campaigning is inevitably turning into a year round activity, year in and out, for the foreseeable future. Thus, we never truly get to return to a place where we can actually identify with and rejuvenate our democratic principles. The perpetual activity lends itself to being implicitly tyrannical. And the bickering and insider fighting only escalates – something we saw play out in 2016 with the disfranchisement of the progressive constituency of the party by the party “regulars.”
A Unity Retreat paved the way for reconstitution of our party in all its elements, but may fall short of discussing the underlying problems I am broaching in this series, our crisis in democratization. This manual is devoted to that end.
Towards A More Democratic Party: Part II
Our Democratic party in all its parts has been going through democratic growing pains, and we have been approaching the issues, through looking at the big picture. In my previous communication, I identified what I consider to be a critical error we made recently within grassroots, resulting in a rift with a part of its leadership. An example of such a rift is the switch of the Bernie Sanders supporters to the Trumpian camp after Hillary Clinton’s nomination. I further advocated that we all come together, to understand the rift, learn from it, hopefully reconcile. Speaking of the capacity of a democracy to govern itself, we erred in waiting for our leadership to get us to talk through the election experience. Again, the rift persisted when we failed to do so on our own.
Democracy in Action
Grassroots may be defined as congregations, apart from those duly constituted, of like minded individuals for political and social action. As a result of British political and social evolution, the capacity of individuals for self governance was increasingly recognized. When they congregated in the Colonies to claim that function, they ran the risk of being held to be subversive, but we historically honor the coffeehouse groups that led to the Boston Tea Party as representative grassroots, as did the Sons of Liberty and their Committees of Correspondence. We decry the Massachusetts farmers’ Shay’s Rebellion (1786-7) and the Carolina backwoodsman Regulators (1760-71, for their excesses, but Jefferson went so far as to advocate such action as guardians of democracy.
This popular “subversion” of the established order led to universal suffrage and the direct election of all representatives, and is recognized, as a responsible subversion, to be an integral part of our democracy, enshrined in freedom of assemblage, speech and press. What was properly feared was tyranny from below and above, and a system of checks and balances was embedded in the Constitution.
Alongside backwoods insurrections, local congregations of citizens that could be called grassroots arose early in the republic, first in largely reactionary support of the Federalist Alien and Sedition Acts, which opposed immigration and the spread of the ideas of the French Revolution. In opposition to that were the farmers and journeymen who formed the Jeffersonian Democratic Republican Party. It is important to note that both had upper class leadership, but what would be later called Democrats extensively formed local political groups and clubs, and swept the Election of 1800, ruling for 28 years.
The cast of the Federalist group was towards maintenance of the established order, with emphasis on authority in its ranks and politics. The Jeffersonian group opted for representation from below, extension of suffrage, freedom of immigration, and support of worker’s rights. Emblematic, under President Andrew Jackson, the White House was celebrated as the “house of the people.”
But these democratic developments at the grassroots both had authoritarian elements, inherent in the character of the participants, and of course, “bossily” excluded a majority of the population, women and ethnic groups. An example of a mixed authoritarian and democratic group was the Tammany grassroots political organization. It was named for an Indian chief, had authoritarian rituals, but stood for Jeffersonian principles and practices. It had its own insurrections, such as the Locofocos and Barnburners, but settled into aiding immigrants in their acculturation, and electoral power through patronage. It had its share of colorful tyrants. Another example, on the frankly authoritarian side, was the Knights of the Golden Circle, started as the Peace Democrats, reorganized as the Order of the Sons of Liberty, which eventuated in military action against the Union. The KKK later in American history was another example of regressive political and social orientation, as differentiated from that which is progressive, enlightenment oriented.
The lesson to be drawn is that our political parties and grassroots are mixed in composition and orientation, in constant dynamic flux, moving backwards and forwards in their self governance. Authoritarianism and tyranny are inherent, and democratic growth, gradually emancipation of the individual from characterological ties to the past, is a painful and confusing experience on the part of both parties.Roberts Rules help, but the main guide is our sense of democracy, as we deliberate our way through our dilemmas.
Groups in Modern Democracy
American democracy has a long history wherein authoritarian politicians herded willing people to the polls. Early politicos ritualistically drilled audiences with rhetoric marked by repetitive slogans. Our political parties regularly declare war on their opposite number and engage in campaigns. Like armies, they train troops, and conquer territory consisting of political power and programs. Yet all that is left of military language are the words campaign and precinct captain. We have taken to calling those captains coordinators, and engage increasingly in low-decibel person-to-person, year-round dialogs with our natural constituencies, a tradition which began in town meetings in New England, also in the coffee houses of Boston. Now, we do it all over the country, and hold workshops, seminars, and issues groups on the precinct and caucus levels. At the same time, we have now the massive proliferation of digital or internet platforms, with its plusses and minuses. It is important to grasp and use this medium effectively without buying into the reactive patterns where tweets and blogs appear within moments of actual events and do not allow for time to mellow reaction. Furthermore, the more we rely on such virtual modes of communication and recruitment to dominate our actions, we may not fully appreciate some of the methodologies of the past, I contend that there is a place for the old time rally, with its bunting, costumes, marches, rituals and rhetoric. Rituals and rhetoric, coming up with slogs or mantras and fanfare using imagery that evokes strength and confidence, though manipulative in nature, use part of our brains which can be used for the better or the worse. One of the most effective uses of such, was the fact that Trump and Pence dressed as if they were already President and Vice President, suited up in red, white, and blue. Furthermore, Mr. Trump was able to keep the phrase “Lyin’ Hilary” a mantra throughout his campaign.