The biggest elections in Mexican history will take place on June 2. Citizens will vote to fill more than 20,000 offices: electing a new president and governors from eight of our 32 states, filling the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies (the equivalent of the U.S. House of Representatives), and installing a new head of government for Mexico City and thousands of other communities.

If that sounds hectic, it’s because it is. In Mexico City, braving a month-long heatwave, literal tons of political propaganda litter the streets. Every free wall, pedestrian bridge, and lamp post has been overtaken by multicolor plastic signs and candidates’ smiling faces. Plastered one on top of the other, most end up crumbled, half ripped, or destroyed. Clara Brugada and Santiago Taboada, political rivals running for head of government in Mexico City, have denounced each other’s teams for taking down the propaganda. It gets put back up within days.

Despite the posters’ bright colors, these contests can only be described as gray—the opposite of exciting. Rather than being about the future, they’re stuck in the past.

In México, people often see the president as a villain. Things seemed different when the leftist Morena party leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador ran for the office in 2018. As Mexico City’s mayor from 2000 to 2005, López Obrador expanded the Periférico, the city’s biggest urban highway; renovated the city center; provided government pensions for citizens 70 and over; inaugurated the Metrobús system; and stood up to President Vicente Fox.

Despite a prominent bribery scandal, López Obrador positioned himself as an outsider, speaking often about fighting the Mexican power mafia, politicians and businessmen who acted against the true interests of Mexico. López Obrador lost in 2006—by a mere 0.56%—and again in 2012. During these years he traveled the country calling himself the “legitimate president” who had won the 2006 election. In 2018, he won a decisive victory, defeating his runner up by 31 percentage points, and becoming Mexico’s first “president of the people,” as he would put it. He launched a daily, two-to-three-hour 7:00 a.m. press conference called the “Mañanera,” in order to speak to his people. He opened the Mexican White House to the public as a museum.

Many Mexicans believed that perhaps this man would be the change the country needed, after enduring decades of corruption and scandal. On Sunday July 1, when López Obrador’s victory was announced, hundreds of thousands gathered in Mexico City’s Zócalo, or main square, in a moment of joy, hope, and catharsis. I went there with my mother; she was truly happy, because she had supported him for years and thought it would never be possible for him to win. That day, in front of the roaring crowd, López Obrador hugged himself as if he were hugging all of us and said, “I love you.”

López Obrador named his movement “La Cuarta Transformación,” or the Fourth Transformation, suggesting his presidency would mark a historic shift comparable to the Mexican Revolution of 1910—an era of “Primero los pobres,” where the poor come first.

Reality has failed to meet expectations. The president promised to combat elite private sector interests, but promoted a model of austerity and reduced public spending that erased dozens of government programs in favor of a model of direct monthly payments for some disadvantaged groups. These payments, made by bank transfer, have been denounced for irregularities, and for being used as a way to condition voting, and have only increased private sector power. Some 30 million Mexicans lost access to health care.

López Obrador leaned into divisive, authoritarian, populist rhetoric. He also instituted changes to the police and military that made Mexicans less safe. In many states today, including Michoacán, Zacatecas, and Guanajuato, organized crime factions force residents in mining, transport, or agriculture to pay a fee just to do their work. In the country there is a crisis of over 300,000 internally displaced persons that have relocated due to violence.

Almost six years have gone by, and López Obrador is facing the end of his term. Many people are pleased with the monthly payments; salaries have increased, too. For many Mexican voters, the president still represents a moral alternative over politicians from traditional parties. He was, they say, chosen by the people.

But for the rest of us, the mood is no longer joyful—just skeptical. These elections have involved a huge outpouring of resources. They have been loud. Cars drive through the streets with boomboxes announcing the names of the candidates. Politicians dress in the colors of their parties (phosphorescent orange from head to toe for the Movimiento Ciudadano party). It’s like being at a carnival—noisy, colorful, unserious—and on social media the frenzy is even more intense: You can see videos of candidates dancing and giving away Cheetos with their faces stamped on the packages.

The flashiness is not accidental. Money is the driving force behind these elections. It is the criterion for selecting local candidates, who pay a fee to run for office. It pours out to thousands of consultants to feed the endless publicity and influence votes. Organized crime money finances campaigns and buys candidates. The whole exercise feels like a marketplace, not a forum for ideas.

The day of the election may be a chaotic one. Already, electoral violence is at an all-time high, with more than 30 candidates murdered. Mexicans expect to see the same kinds of disruptions that occurred in the midterm elections of 2021, as well as confrontations between candidates when results are close.

There’s one change that’s certain: Mexico will have its first female president. Physicist Claudia Sheinbaum, the candidate for Morena, has spent the past six years as mayor of Mexico City, and all polls suggest she’ll win. She is running against another woman, former Senator Xóchitl Gálvez, from the opposition PAN-PRI-PRD party, a conglomeration of former opponents whose uncomfortable marriage has the sole purpose of forming a unified front against Morena. Sheinbaum, López Obrador’s designated successor, has promised continuity: to defend the poor and represent the people, fight corruption, and uphold the principles of La Cuarta Transformación. But her promises are hard to believe. Sheinbaum’s government in Mexico City failed to show accountability for incidents of negligence like the collapse of a subway line in 2021 that resulted in the death of 27 passengers, reduced investment in public transportation, and failed to uphold promises to make a greener, less polluted city. She is also working within a divided, fractious party—and a movement so identified with one charismatic politician that many wonder if it can outlast its creator.

Xóchitl Gálvez, meanwhile, is inexperienced and little-known. Her candidacy reflects the traditional parties’ inability to produce strong opponents. It is as if none of the big names wanted to contend against Morena.

Idealists might say that these elections are a decision between two visions for Mexico’s future. In my mind, they are something less profound: a reaffirmation of a movement that prophesizes extraordinary morality while sadly copying previous governments’ vices. It feels as if today’s Mexican political system is run by the idea, rather than the reality, of electoral change. Through elections we can put a woman in power, an outsider in power, a different party in power; we can punish the ruling party, or the traditional parties.

Change alone is not hard. What is hard—extremely hard—is change that makes things better.

The elections are all people talk about here, but they feel like background noise to me. More competition does not necessarily translate into more democracy, or better democracy. It’s the scramble for power that truly drives Mexican politicians. Little can be said for the exercise of power itself, or if leaders care at all about what happens the day that follows the election.

The post Mexico’s Noisy, Colorful, Unserious Election appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

You’re a prisoner, held in a dark cave. Your hands are tied behind you and you can only look straight ahead at the cave wall. Your captors keep you occupied by putting objects on it. To pass the time you and your fellow prisoners play games. Who can be the first to shout out the name of the object? Who can correctly guess which object will appear next?

You feel pride when you’re right—because being right about the objects is the only thing of value you have.

One day a fellow prisoner escapes their chains, and looking around the cave, realizes that what you’ve all thought were real objects on the wall were only shadows cast by a fire that’s burning behind you. The escaped prisoner manages to find a ladder, climbs out of the cave, and rushes into the blinding sunlight. As their eyes adjust to the brightness, they realize that the cave isn’t reality at all; it is only a dungeon for the mind.

They decide to go back into the cave to rescue you and your fellow prisoners by telling you the truth about the world as it actually is. But when they try to explain about the shadows and the sunlight and the colorful world outside, you and your fellow prisoners refuse to believe them. When the former prisoner urges you all to come to terms with your delusions and free yourself, you band together and kill them. Rather than follow your liberator out of the cave, you collectively turn your attention back to the shadows.

This story is, of course, Plato’s “allegory of the cave” from his book The Republic, written in the second half of the 4th century B.C.E. But it’s also us, today. Our 21st-century cave is our modern media system, where truth is a spectacle controlled by propaganda. Some of us are prisoners, some of us are creating shadows, and some of us are escapees. All of us are vulnerable to manipulation.

In Plato’s allegory we’re supposed to conclude that the deluded prisoners are both victims and villains and that the escaped prisoner is a tragic hero, motivated only by pure knowledge of the truth. But it’s equally plausible to draw different conclusions about the cave and its prisoners.

What if the escaped prisoner didn’t have noble goals? What if they only claimed they’d escaped the cave and can now reveal the “real” truth—but are instead just selling a dangerous, fraudulent fiction? What if, for example, conspiracy clowns, manipulators, or demagogues (or conspiracy clown manipulator demagogues) tell us they’re the hero freed from the cave’s shadows? If you’re imprisoned in the cave, is it better to believe the “truth” of the shadows or the “truth” of the escapee?

How could you tell the difference? The uncomfortable truth is that you can’t. That’s why we’re all equally vulnerable. We ought to beware of the shadows on the wall, but also, we ought to beware of anyone who claims that the shadows are shadows.

Most Americans cannot have direct, first-hand experience with political events, either in our state capitals or in our nation’s capital. If we want to know anything at all about the decisions that affect us, we have to trust some source of news or another. Those sources “cultivate” political reality for us. None of us really know if we’re looking at shadows or if we’re blinded by the sun. We only know what we think we know through the media we consume.

There used to be a consensus around this political reality because there was a common news agenda set via mainstream media organizations. Like the prisoners looking at the cave wall, most of us agreed on a basic set of facts, and we mostly trusted the government and accepted its policies. That consensus was achieved via the “manufacture of consent” model of propaganda, where political and business elites used media to shape our opinions so that we’d passively accept elite decisions.

When we think of propaganda, it’s usually that top-down “manufacture of consent” model. Examples of this model could be 20th-century war films, posters, and leaflets created by the government and disseminated to the masses; patriotic symbols and slogans, and monuments to political leaders; or messaging foreign governments use against their citizens (in schools, in the news), and more recently, against the U.S. and its elections.

But over the last two decades, the rise of the right-wing media ecosystem and participatory media has enabled a new form of propaganda in our public sphere. Called the “manufacture of dissent” model of propaganda, it uses communication as a weapon to attack established institutions, norms, and the government itself. Its major premise is that politics is war and the enemy cheats. Those who produce dissent propaganda circulate endless conspiracy theories, accusations of hypocrisy, ad hominem attacks, and ad baculum threats. It’s the politics of creating fear and turning people into hate-objects.

This “manufacture of dissent” model of propaganda has challenged consensus media’s ability to control our political reality. It screams that the old propaganda is “propaganda,” while claiming that its own twisted messaging is the truth. All of this has led to a historic crisis of distrust in our government institutions, with an entire political agenda built around dismantling government power.

But whether propaganda is manufacturing our consent or our dissent, both are a kind of force imprisoning our minds—and both are fundamentally anti-democratic.

Propaganda, after all, is communication as force; it’s designed for warfare. It uses strategies like fear appeals, disinformation, and conspiracy theories to deny our ability to consent. It erases complexity and nuance, and it encourages groupthink and partisan discord. It asks us to think too much like others on our side while preventing us from thinking with others on their side.

The powerful point to the things that divide us rather than the things we agree on and use those differences as a wedge. Or, even when we can agree on the problems, the way that the powerful frame them prevents us from agreeing on the solutions. We don’t have a common reality that can help us mediate those differences.

In The Republic, Socrates, the narrator, solves this problem by advising the escaped prisoner not to return to the cave at all. The cave-dwellers, who only perceive the world through their senses, would not be able to absorb the bright light of truth, and the newly enlightened former prisoner would look foolish, Socrates thought. Worse, the escaped prisoner would harm themselves by trying to commune with the deluded—after all, they no longer agreed about reality, how could they find common ground?

Plato thought that the enlightened ought to rule over the cave dwellers as philosopher kings, but Plato’s solution won’t work for us in the 21st-century (and it didn’t work for Plato back then either).

There isn’t an obvious solution, except for people to agree to communicate for the democratic way of life. That means using persuasion instead of propaganda.

Persuasion is a dialogic meeting of minds in which one person asks another person to think like they do, to value the same values, to remember or forget history in the same way. It doesn’t force. It affirms human dignity by inviting. A person who seeks to persuade gives good reasons and formulates arguments in the best way they know how, always affirming that the recipient of the persuasive message has a mind, values, and experiences of their own and may not change their mind.

Unlike the fast, exciting, and entertaining work of propaganda, persuasion is slow, difficult, and unsexy. It doesn’t make good TV or internet content. But until we’re willing to persuade, and are open to being persuaded, we’ll stay in our 21st-century cave, which provides us with a never-ending propaganda spectacle to imprison our minds.

In today’s era of ubiquitous propaganda, the shadows aren’t real, but the sun blinds. We want to know the truth, but it’s hard to know who to trust to tell us the truth. Most of us throw up our hands and give up—avoiding political news altogether—but some of us dig into one version of the truth or the other, motivated by the status and prestige we get as rewards for being right.

There are those of us in the cave smug in the fact that what we believe—what we’re motivated to believe—is actually true. Simultaneously there are those of us standing outside of the cave looking down at the cave dwellers smug in the fact that what we believe—what we’re motivated to believe—is actually true.

One or both of us are wrong, and it’s tearing our nation apart.

The post What Is 21st-Century Truth? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

“Poles are idiots!”

“What are poor people going to do?”

Last October, just days after Poland’s most recent parliamentary elections, I listened as my craggy-faced 83-year-old father angrily shouted these words through the phone receiver in his apartment on the outskirts of Kraków. He and my mother were both distraught. Their party, the populist, right-wing Law and Justice Party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, or PiS) of Jarosław Kaczyński had just lost its majority.

For Poland’s last three parliamentary elections, my parents have put on their Sunday best and exercised their democratic right to vote by opting to support PiS. Yet simultaneously, the party has eroded key pillars of the very system that granted them that fundamental right. As historian Brian Porter-Szűcs has summarized in the Globe Post, since PiS first took power in 2015, it has “transformed the state-run media into a propaganda mouthpiece, purged the civil service, strengthened partisan political control over state-run businesses, and above all, eliminated the independence of the judiciary.”

While it’s tempting to reduce my parents—and the 7.6 million others, 35% of all Polish voters, who voted for PiS—to uninformed right-wing zealots, such simplification lacks empathy and further marginalizes these individuals. Instead, it’s important to understand the roots of PiS support—which for many people, including my parents, is deeply embedded in their experiences of communism and the country’s transition to a capitalist economy in the 1990s.

Born during World War II in poor working-class families, both of my parents were shaped by the Polish People’s Republic. Like most Poles, they never engaged in political struggles for or against the communist regime. Rather, socialism gave him and my mother opportunities they could not have dreamt of without it. They became a classic example of social mobility in postwar Poland.

Between the early 1960s and late ’70s, with no money or higher education, they moved to the vibrant city of Kraków, secured decently paying jobs, acquired an apartment with a modest down payment, had access to free health care and free education for their child, and could afford most there was to be afforded.

There were shortages, but the sausage for which they queued for hours, often at night, tasted much better, they say, than any of the things they have access to in abundance today. There was no real chocolate and no bananas, no nice clothes and no fancy perfumes, but this lack was equally distributed: They did not have things, but their bosses didn’t have them either.

To this day, my parents remain grateful for those years. So when the PiS government rose to power in the mid-2010s, it offered a vision that seemed rooted in the socialist economic order they remembered fondly. (Unlike the Republican Party in the U.S., Polish conservatives like PiS do not embrace libertarianism, but instead campaign on populist economics of fair distribution of wealth. One of my dad’s main arguments in support of PiS has been its “500 plus” policy, which gives families 500 Polish Zloty, around 130 USD, per child every month.) Most importantly, the party addressed my parents’—and millions of other voters’—anger at the unfulfilled promise of capitalism and democracy.

In 1989, when the ruling communist party was abolished, my parents were both 50 years old, a stay-at-home mom and a white-collar professional. In other countries, people their age might be eagerly looking toward retirement. But for my parents and millions like them, turning 50 meant the end of the only world they knew.

The initial exhilaration of political change and freedom quickly gave way to anxiety and fear over employment, money, and the future. The “shock therapy” policy imported from the United States brought about such a rapid transition from a socialist planned economy to a neoliberal capitalist regime that there was a widespread loss of employment: For instance, my father’s state-run company was closed, taking with it his job. He witnessed the rampant corruption of rapid privatization with wild takeovers and fortunes amassed overnight by the shrewd, the lucky, and often the unscrupulous.

My parents did not lose their spirit. They dreamt the big dreams of storied capitalism. They applied for an alcohol license to run a small beer wholesale company. I will never forget how they danced, cheered, and celebrated the day it was granted, our little apartment bursting with hope and joy. In 1991, they opened the business.

But without capital or training in ruthless business acumen, they were destined to fail. After three years, they went bankrupt, left with huge debts and bailiffs knocking on the door. My mom fell into a depression. My dad struggled to make sense of it all.

That was how the great historical moment of transitioning from socialism to capitalism played out for our small family and millions like ours.

For the next 20 years, my parents aged while watching Poland make its phenomenal ascent “into the West” as an Eastern Bloc economic tiger. Neighbors moved out to nice villas further in the city outskirts. Beautiful cars appeared in front of our shabby apartment building. Well-stocked supermarkets mushroomed, killing familiar small neighborhood stores.

In turn, they felt more and more isolated and aggrieved. Receiving pensions of 250-300 USD per month, they felt that the new, democratic Poland had left them by the wayside—and that the liberal governments did not care for or about them.

Then came PiS, speaking directly to the core of my parents’ discontent. The party offered the millions of Poles barely surviving on minimum pensions and wages simple imagery of those who got poor and those who got rich at the poor’s expense. They used an easily digestible vernacular of good and evil, enemies and heroes, patriotism and treason, in the relentless propaganda of public TV. They promised to hunt down the thieves and weed out corruption. They manipulated retirees’ religious devotion and their discomfort with rapid, left-leaning changes. They spoke of “us”—villages and small towns, or what the liberals disparagingly called “Poland B”—versus “them”—corrupt elites.

In all their demagogic nonsense, there was always a kernel of truth that my parents could use to justify their support: corruption. We all knew it was a real problem. The 1990s privatization process was rife with criminality. The wealth gap was growing. The PiS promised to “cleanse” the society of all these ills. If democratic institutions got destroyed in the process, so be it.

But the tide has changed with a record-breaking 74% of eligible Polish voters turning out in an election that ousted PiS from power. Now my parents are worried. They fear that the benefits they received under the PiS government—increased monthly pensions, additional annual payments, and an expanded list of free medications—will be revoked.

Will their fears come true? Will the new government ignore them, and millions like them?

Given that so many of my parents’ generation are in desperate need of assistance, I hope not. Beyond addressing their obvious material needs by increasing minimal pensions and lowering medical expenses, I hope that the new regime understands that it is important to respect them for who they are. Their limited education, socialist nostalgia, and elderly religious devotion should not relegate them to a marginalized social status, akin to a disparaged “Poland B.”

Already there are promising signs: A new state budget for 2024 has maintained additional annual payments for pensioners. The new Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, has reassured PiS voters that no previously existing benefits will be “taken away” from them. He has also repeatedly stated that his government will respect and care for all citizens, not just his constituency.

Two and a half months after the elections, even my parents have taken note. My dad surprised me recently when he said that he feels that the country is going in the “right direction.” I hope that the new government will continue to craft its rhetoric and policy with compassion to allow my parents and others dignity in the twilight of their lives.

The post Why My Parents Backed Poland’s Far-Right Party appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

On a blustery day in early October 2023, half a dozen volunteers stood outside a street market in Łódź, Poland’s fourth largest city, handing out flyers, stickers, and cherry cakes. We were campaigning for Aleksandra Wiśniewska, a 29-year-old former humanitarian aid worker and political novice, who was running for parliament from the Civic Coalition (KO) list, the largest Polish opposition party. I was her campaign manager.

Unexpectedly, Zbigniew Rau, the Polish foreign minister and a member of the nationalist-conservative ruling party, Law and Justice (PiS), appeared. He interrupted the event and started a shouting match with several other opposition candidates campaigning at the market. Instead of engaging in the melee, Wiśniewska turned her back and firmly spoke to a camera held up by a volunteer.

“Poland deserves a real foreign service. Our ruling party does not represent us,” she said.

Within minutes, the video—uploaded online with the caption “#bazaardiplomacy”—had garnered hundreds of thousands of views.

Just a week later, Polish voters overwhelmingly backed the opposition in the historic elections, ending eight years of PiS rule. The turnout of more than 74 percent smashed all previous records. Ten percent more people voted than during the first partially free elections in 1989, when Poles ended communism at the ballot box. This election compares in significance: It was a case study of how a highly motivated and well-organized opposition can win, even against a ruling party that cheats. For that reason, it deserves to be better understood around the world.

For the past eight years, PiS has eroded media freedoms and undermined judicial independence, moving the country towards authoritarianism. Despite the opposition’s win, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) noted that “the ruling party and its candidates gained a clear advantage from the misuse of state resources,” meaning that the election was fought on a “tilted playing field”: taxpayers’ money donated by state companies and newly created “foundations” was used to back the ruling party. State-run media, the only broadcast media available in parts of the country, was more than biased. It has been turned into a Goebbelsian propaganda machine that twisted and manipulated video and spewed hatred against the opposition, minority groups, and civil society organizations.

PiS had also passed a series of restrictive laws, including an abortion ban so drastic that women with problem pregnancies died because they were refused abortions that would have saved them. A nationwide women’s strike followed: for many younger women, participation in that march was their first experience of politics. Polling data from election day strongly suggest that young and female voters, many of whom had not voted in the past, propelled the opposition to victory. Four years ago, only 46% of voters under 29 voted; this year, over 68% did.

The success of Wiśniewska—now the youngest woman MP in the parliament—was part of this change. Our team was entirely made up of young people in their 20s. None of us had been involved in Polish politics before. Despite our lack of experience and despite starting from a lower position on the party’s list of candidates, Wiśniewska received more support than four sitting MPs. We showed voters how an innovative, grassroots, and energetic campaign can change the political arena.

Three strategies enabled our success.

The first strategy was our team. Wiśnewska has charisma, international experience, and a compelling story, but the campaign was not only about her. We knew that our potential electorate consisted of many open-minded, young, and curious people who were looking for someone to vote for, but perhaps felt they had been overlooked by politicians or parties. We featured photos, ideas, and profiles of our team members in our online communications.

When we went to early morning markets or stood on street corners handing out flyers, we always went as a team. We spent countless hours on the streets, talking to people, proving that democratic engagement isn’t boring. At our events, we brought together musicians, artists, and other young experts to talk about issues in Polish society. Our idea was to talk about things that younger people care about, and by doing so, show that Wiśniewska was part of a greater movement of younger people who were daring to take the first step into the world of politics. We think that we succeeded because this was true: we were all committed to changing politics and we think we transmitted that commitment to people.

Our second strategy was to stay positive and patriotic.

PiS ran a remarkably nasty campaign. The day we announced Wiśniewska’s candidacy we made national news when PiS media accused our candidate of falsifying her entire life story, as well as insinuating that she was not a “real Pole.” Our social media was inundated with hateful messages. Some particularly aggressive people stopped us on the street, calling us frauds or Germans. But we knew politics would be dirty, and before the campaign started, we had created a social media campaign encouraging young people to be brave and get involved in politics.

We stuck to our strategy, proudly wore Polish flags, didn’t engage in shouting matches, didn’t reply to trolls, and didn’t dwell on the negative campaign of the ruling party. Instead, we focused on our values, urging our voters to vote not based on political promises that particular campaigns made, but based on what kind of people they wanted to represent them in parliament. For us that meant people who promote hope, responsibility, and kindness. We laughed and smiled through every campaign event, emphasizing personal conversations with voters over large rallies. Once again, this succeeded because it was real: We were enjoying ourselves.

Only once, when a prominent PiS activist shared racist memes implying our candidate was in a Russian pornography film, did we retaliate. We went straight to court, and within a week won a defamation case against the activist who had to publicly apologize. We found this was the most impactful way to deal with hate—by standing up for your values and for decency through established checks and balances.

The third strategy is perhaps the most obvious. But bizarrely, it was the one which so many Polish political campaigns lacked.

In order to convince people to vote for you, you have to reach them where they are. And every single young voter is online. We built an around-the-clock social media presence on every platform—Twitter, Instagram, Tik Tok, and YouTube.

We also took advantage of micro-targeted online advertising. Understanding that voters are different also means that you are forced to consider what different groups may need. Campaigns can send different messages—or the same message in different ways—to voters depending on their age, gender, income, neighborhood, or what they like on Facebook. We leveraged publicly available data about historical voting patterns to target particular areas with specific messages. It’s common sense too. Your message and tone to young people attending a music festival is going to differ from your message and tone to older voters and small businesses at an early morning bazaar. On the street, this tone shift is so obvious it is automatic. But it needs to happen online, too, and it allows you to more effectively convince voters that you have the ideas and values that can enact positive change.

Over the next year, voters go to the polls in India, Venezuela, Georgia, and Mexico, all countries run by authoritarian populists. In each of them, young people who want something different will be fighting incumbent parties that tilt the playing field, cheat, or steal elections. In the United States, the incumbent president is not an authoritarian, but in many states, younger, democratic candidates are also fighting in conditions that aren’t as different from Poland as many Americans imagine. They will work inside gerrymandered systems, fight off vicious smear campaigns, and face consistent media bias.

Winning in these conditions is difficult, but as the election in Poland shows, it is not impossible. Success comes more readily to campaigns that look like a team and work like a team, that project a positive message in an overwhelmingly negative atmosphere, and that make full use of the tools available to them.

The post How Poland’s Opposition Won an Unfair Election appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

On the phone, I was gruff, sarcastic, dismissive. Don’t you know, smart-rich guy, that California’s governmental dysfunction is built on top of ballot initiatives that don’t work? Passing more initiatives would make things worse; it’s like trying to fix the Winchester Mystery House by adding more rooms, dude. California needs a change in its thinking and its system, with a new constitution, I told him, before signing off.

Of course, I didn’t tell him how you convince enough people to change the system because, well, no one has figured that out yet. A few hours after the call, I found myself re-reading a book, How America’s Political Parties Change (and How They Don’t), by the incomparable Michael Barone, who edits the Almanac of American Politics. The book, on top of the call, inspired a flurry of thinking and reporting that led me to email the Silicon Valley guy: If you want to make a big systemic change in California, or in the U.S., you probably need to build a new political party.

According to the conventional wisdom, I had just given the tech dude terrible advice. As Barone points out, America’s political parties are history’s most enduring; the Democrats, who got started in 1832, are the oldest political party in the world. The Republicans, dating to 1854, are the third oldest. (The U.K.’s Conservatives rank second). These parties survive because they change and reshape themselves with the country, and because our constitutional system incentivizes having just two parties. Rare is the moment in this country when another party could take power and alter the American system.

Of course, we are now in a very rare moment in history. These might even be the craziest times ever in California. But are they crazy enough to birth a true unicorn—a political party—the sort of institution rarer than a $1 billion tech start-up?

I dare to say the answer is yes, in full knowledge of how loopy this will sound to our state’s governing and political professionals.

California history tells us that new parties can bring the greatest changes—be they the early Republicans who helped form our state’s institutions in the 1850s, or the short-lived Workingmen’s Party that established our constitutional structure in the late 1870s, or the Progressive Party, which split from the Republicans and established women’s suffrage, our state’s system of commissions, and direct democracy in the 1910s.

Our present circumstances cry out for new parties. The Republicans have cracked up, with reasonable members departing, and the remains reconstituting themselves as a social club for conspiracy-mongering. Meanwhile the dominant Democrats, obsessed with national politics and owned by labor unions, pursue narrow policies instead of providing the very basics Californians are lacking: education for all, reliable and affordable healthcare, sufficient housing, a stable economy, dependable emergency response, and energy that doesn’t constantly shut off.

Neither party seems capable of delivering the essentials of 21st-century life. Which is why we need a new political force to do that.

We need a Water Party.

Why Water? Because it’s something we all require, regardless of region or occupation or ideology. Because water puts out fires, which would be useful right now. And because, most profoundly, it defines our state, and its dysfunction.

Water—our rivers, our coast—connects us and divides us; water is all around us, and yet we manage it so poorly, and create such confusing laws around it, that we don’t have nearly enough of it. Water, like housing and jobs and energy and health care and education, is artificially scarce here. If we could fix the water, and make this a place of abundance, we could fix the state.

But mostly, water is the metaphor that shows us the way out of our nasty contradictions.

Californians cling to old infrastructure and systems, even ones that aren’t working. But water can wash away the past.

California is split up between regions and thousands of local governments. All those pieces don’t fit together. But water naturally fills in such cracks.

In California, we often prefer to let decisions be made by algorithms and formulas. Perhaps we should leave more of the decisions to humans, whose bodies are more than half water.

Indeed, our state, so full of constraints and limits, needs to re-dedicate itself to the value of flexibility. Because we will need to be fluid to deal with the difficulties and horrors of the future. In this, the Water Party would do well to adopt the practical philosophy of the San Francisco-born martial artist and film star Bruce Lee, who famously advised:

Be formless, shapeless—like water. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.

The people now in charge of California will dismiss the idea of a Water Party, just as I dismissed that Silicon Valley caller, but their actual behavior betrays their desperate wish that they could be more like water. Look at Gov. Gavin Newsom, who, caught in the inflexible vise of state government, keeps forming task forces, strike teams, and special commissions that have more freedom and fluidity to dig into the big problems and respond to all of our current emergencies.

Forming the party itself wouldn’t be so hard. Under state regulations, you must first hold a party caucus or convention, and then qualify as a party either by collecting enough voter registrations, or sufficient signatures on a petition.

By starting from scratch, a Water Party wouldn’t have to follow the practices of the Democrats or Republicans; it could forge new ideas and new practices to fit our age of apocalypse. The Water Party could experiment with “liquid democracy,” a system in which voters can either vote on issues themselves, or turn their vote over to a personal proxy. Or, like Italy’s Five Star Movement, it could build an online environment to allow its members to determine candidates and policy positions directly.

In Barone’s book published last year, he predicted the continued dominance of the Democrats and Republicans, arguing that “the parties have been a force for stability.” But right now, the parties themselves feel unstable, with some of the most bitter fighting happening not between the parties, but within them.

Around the world, traditional parties of left and right have split apart in recent years. It’s no longer hard to imagine the Democrats dividing between Democratic Socialists and Social Democrats, and the Republicans splitting between White Nationalists and Never Trumpers.

At a time of such uncertainty, a flexible, California-centric party, devoted to water and the other basics, would have enormous value. The nation’s rigid divide might crack up, but California would have a force fluid enough to shape a better future.

Be water, my party.

The post Californians Need a New Political Party That Can Keep Us Afloat appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

To understand how polarization harms parties, consider its most direct effects. As a party’s size and base shrink, so does the diversity of its membership. Consider the situation of the two major parties in the United States. Recent Gallup figures show that 43 percent of voters now identify as independent. Meanwhile, Pew surveys show that ideological entrenchment within each party is alienating moderate voters. In effect, the two parties are burning each other’s tents to the ground.

Some critics would celebrate the demise of parties, but revitalizing modern politics requires rejuvenating parties, which remain the best means for organizing voters with common interests. The question is, how can we rebuild parties in a way that ensures better elections and a better government?

Ironically, one potential solution to the party problem would be to combine two political reforms that are often championed as the surest ways to weaken parties: ranked choice voting and the top two election system.

Ranked choice made the news cycle this summer when Maine voters used it for their primary election, while passing a ballot measure to make this system permanent. Ranked choice lets voters rank their preferred candidates in order. Election officials tally voters’ top picks and then, as needed, eliminate the last-place candidates one by one, reallocating their supporters’ votes to their next-preferred choices until a winner is determined.

The other reform is a top two election—a popular version of what is often called an open primary. In this system, all the candidates for an office appear on the same primary ballot, regardless of party. The top two finishers advance to the general election.

Advocates of these reforms often portray top two and ranked choice as ways to weaken political parties that they view as insular, ideological, and ineffective. In response, party leaders have fought ferociously against these reforms. Parties already holding power prefer closed primaries in which only those belonging to the party choose its candidates.

This opposition has a clear logic. Ranked choice and top two give independent voters more voice and give all voters more choice. This makes it harder for party leaders to elect their favored candidates.

As both reforms have been put into place, however, each has produced peculiar results to which we should pay close attention. The top two system can produce undemocratic results when the most popular political party fields many candidates and a minority party runs only two. This has happened in California, for example, when Democratic candidates in strong Democratic districts divided up the primary vote such that only two Republican candidates advanced to the general election. Subsequent turnout in the general election can plummet because majority party members, along with supporters of smaller parties, have no candidate on the ballot.

Ranked choice can also cause problems, particularly when used in combination with an instant runoff. When the top candidate in this system doesn’t win a majority of first-place votes, a runoff process eliminates the lowest-ranked candidate and distributes his/her votes to whoever was listed in second place on their supporters’ ballots. This can produce worrisome results. In 2010, the winner of the Oakland mayoral race flipped in three of six successive tallies, as lower-ranked candidates were dropped. In fact, a 2015 Electoral Studies analysis showed that instant runoff winners routinely fail to win a majority of ballots.

Critics have pointed to these difficulties as reasons for repealing ranked choice and top two. Moreover, critics argue, neither reform has proven a reliable means of empowering political moderates or encouraging political compromise.

A more realistic approach recognizes that changing election rules always involves trial and error. Rather than rejecting these reforms outright, one can look for a way to build on their strengths and shore up their weaknesses. As it turns out, pairing top two with ranked choice might yield a powerful combination—one capable of moderating the excesses of the strongest political parties and broadening their bases of support.

Last month, this idea received the endorsement of two prominent civic organizations. The Independent Voter Project, which backed top two, and FairVote, which advocates broader reforms, announced plans to merge these reforms in California. They envision a “Top Four” primary in which the four highest vote-winners compete in a ranked choice general election.

Ranked choice could curb the defects of an open primary, especially one that selects only two winners. When voters must choose a single candidate, those with narrow support can sneak through to the runoff election over preferred opponents who split each other’s vote. Letting voters name second-, third- and fourth -choice candidates who have similar platforms will produce winners with broader support.

Meanwhile, a top two—or better, a top four—open primary could curb the excesses of ranked choice with instant runoff. Instead of electing people in one sitting, voters would get two rounds of election. That would allow for further consideration of the top candidates, instead of letting the initial rankings of a small primary electorate determine the winner.

The top four concept is particularly appealing. A FairVote analysis shows that top two systems exclude third party and independent candidates more than 90 percent of the time. In the vast majority of cases, the top two system simply advances one candidate from each major party. With four winners, major parties would almost always have a candidate advance—protecting them against lockouts—while minor party candidates would have a greater chance of advancing. This likelihood motivates voters in all parties to cast ballots—both in the primary and general election.

Admittedly, these reforms make voting a bit more complicated, particularly if they’re combined. There’s no denying that it takes more mental effort to rank a few candidates than to pick just one. Dealing with such complexity requires bringing into the mix two more reforms: ballot simplification and voter education.

To simplify the open primaries in this combined system, states and municipalities should leave off the ballot any contest that has four or fewer candidates. In such cases, all the candidates can advance automatically without cluttering voters’ ballots.

In the second round, or general election, every ballot needs to show voters each candidate’s party affiliation, if any, even in open primaries. Party affiliation is a powerful signal for many voters and including it aids voters who may not know or recognize individual candidates. For the same reason, each registered political party should have the right to display on the ballot its endorsements, so long as the candidate accepts. This will result in some candidates having multiple party endorsements, but more information aids voter decision making.

Simplifying life for voters helps, but a higher purpose is making elections more deliberative. The best elections are ones in which voters learn key pieces of information, weigh alternatives, and then make informed choices.

To help busy voters make informed choices, election officials should experiment with new forms of public education. In doing so, however, they face a dilemma. University of Arkansas communication scholar Robert Richards has found that conscientious election officials often struggle to tell voters what they need to know because they fear looking partisan.

Emerging online tools can help address the information deficit. Around the globe, tools such as Vote Compass ask voters to complete surveys, then show which parties (or candidates) best align with voters’ values. Social networking sites, in spite of their hazards, can also help voters get advice from like-minded friends who have taken the time to sort through crowded fields of candidates.

Other educational reforms may be less familiar but have the potential to be tremendously helpful. The state of Oregon, for example, aimed to improve voter education by launching the Citizens’ Initiative Review in 2010. This process convenes a panel of two dozen randomly selected citizens to hear from both sides of a ballot issue, talk with experts, then write a one-page analysis that goes into the state’s voter pamphlet. For example, the inaugural Review explained to voters that “an unintended consequence” of one proposed law “is that juveniles [would be] subject to twenty-five-year mandatory minimum sentences.”

I have long argued that such a citizen-based system could be used not only for ballot measures but for candidates as well. Randomly selected citizen panels could sift through materials provided by candidates to distill the most essential information to place in a voter pamphlet. The panel could ensure the fairness of its process by having equal parts Democrats, Republicans, and others. Final approval of each contest’s candidate summaries would require supermajority support within each of these subgroups.

Putting these reforms together, such a system could result in better candidate pools—but also better long-term results for the major parties. This system ensures that the parties have ample opportunity to remind voters of candidates’ party affiliations and endorsements. Thus, winning the final tally in a ranked choice top four election will usually require belonging to one of the two major political parties.

But, at the same time, successful candidates will need to court independents, or even moderates from the opposing party. Reaching across party lines wins a candidate what might prove to be decisive second-choice or third-choice preference rankings.

These countervailing forces permit the major parties to win elections and widen their bases, but only by recruiting and electing more moderate and capable candidates. Parties with broader bases of support are stronger.

With insufficient data at hand, these concepts remain nothing more than a hypothesis. But uncertainty is not an argument for inaction. If anything, it should inspire experimentation with different reforms—and packages of reforms—to give voters more choices and more information, while making sure winning parties are powerful enough to govern and diverse enough to remain broadly representative.

Ultimately, the goal is for political parties to seek better candidates who enter and win elections, then wear their party badges proudly while enacting good legislation or administrating effectively. In the end, this requires not just one election reform, but many.

The post Here Are Two Voting Reforms That Could Counter America’s Hyperpolarization appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

That was the big takeaway from an August 10th Zócalo panel discussion at the National Center for the Preservation of Democracy in downtown L.A.’s Little Tokyo district. Titled “Is the Republican Party Dead?” the conversation amounted to a kind of autopsy not only of the GOP, but also of the American two-party system as a whole.

“I think you’re seeing the lug nuts come off and the wheels are starting to rattle,” said panelist Mike Madrid, a political consultant at the Sacramento-based public affairs firm GrassrootsLab, who previously served as the political director for the California Republican Party.

Madrid’s dire assessment of the donkey-elephant dyad that has dominated American politics since the Civil War was largely shared by his fellow panelists: Cassandra Pye, a public affairs strategist who was the deputy chief of staff to former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger; and Leslie Graves, publisher of Ballotpedia, the Encyclopedia of American Politics.

The panelists concurred that American voters increasingly define their politics by what they’re against, not what they’re for; by the politicians they hate, rather than the politicians they admire; by the party they revile rather than the one they identify with.

If American voters are united in anything these days, it’s in their bipartisan contempt for both major parties, along with most major institutions, the panelists suggested. For many voters, as for many politicians and their cheerleaders in the increasingly partisan and echo-chambered mass media, winning simply means that the other team loses, as if politics had no higher stakes—and no more broadly shared idea of a greater public good—than a Giants-Dodgers double-header.

“You could say the [Republican] party is in the most trouble—except for the other one,” Graves said.

When moderator Christina Bellantoni, assistant managing editor, politics, at the Los Angeles Times, asked the panelists how they would sum up what the Republican Party stands for to space aliens landing on Earth, Graves responded: “It’s that they’re not Democrats.”

Bellantoni was the first to mention Donald Trump, and the discussion turned to the furiously anti-establishment, drain-the-swamp sales pitches that won him the White House. The panelists agreed that the anger that propelled Trump to the presidency went deeper than mere disgust with Washington’s legislative dysfunction. The nation is suffering from a deeper malaise, the panelists said, because many Americans feel that the political system has failed them, and that neither of the two major parties is going to be able to solve the problems of stagnant wages, rising homelessness, and other challenges that voters experience in their daily lives.

While the media obsesses over “culture war” issues, voters are preoccupied with what Pye called “real-people stuff”—the fear of not being able to attain better lives than their parents, for example, and the lingering ripple effects of the Great Recession.

“We’re at a time when both parties are dealing with very serious cleavages in their base,” Madrid said. “The populist dynamic that is driving both parties is really across the spectrum.” For the Republicans, those fissures resulted in the multi-candidate “clown car” of the 2016 Republican Party primary season, Madrid said.

If the national picture for both major parties is jumbled and increasingly bleak, the picture for Republicans in California at the state, local, and federal level is as poor as it is for Democrats across large swathes of the Deep South and the Great Plains.

“One has got the impression that there is at least a nail or two in the coffin in California” of the Republican Party, Pye said. For a California Republican to have a viable chance of winning a statewide office, she added, “It’ll take a great candidate, it’ll take a lot of cash, it’ll take some good timing, and a little bit of luck.”

But Madrid said that recent low turnout in California shows that, although many voters know they really dislike the Republicans, they’re not strongly motivated to show up at the polls to back Democrats.

And Graves pointed out that, although it’s conventional wisdom that voters are clamoring for change, congressional incumbents keep getting re-elected in droves, and have huge advantages over first-time challengers.

In that same vein of reasoning, Graves questioned the idea that Trump is going to drag down California’s seven most vulnerable Republican Congress members, who’ve been targeted by Democrats for 2018. After all, she pointed out, those Republicans did manage to win in 2016 with Trump at the top of the ticket, even in congressional districts that went for Hillary Clinton.

Madrid said that when he first became active in politics, the Republicans were the party of rich old white people. “That party is now the Democratic Party,” Madrid said. “The Republican Party is now the party of poor white people,” who now regard themselves as an oppressed minority in need of protection. But while economic issues remain paramount, appealing to racial hatred is not a good—or effective—strategy for the GOP, panelists agreed. Pye said she thinks that one reason Trump’s approval rating is so low is that he repeatedly has flirted with white nationalists.

When the evening opened up to the audience Q & A, a Green Party supporter asked why there isn’t more discussion about backing measures that would dismantle the “winner-take-all” system that favors the major parties and stifles third-party alternatives. Graves said proposals for such measures may get onto a few state ballots next year, but such a serious shake-up to the status quo won’t happen overnight.

Another audience member asked how the major parties could be restored, and kept from being hijacked by the extremes of right and left.

“I think the first thing we have to acknowledge is that the system doesn’t work for a rapidly growing segment of our society,” Madrid replied. It was a disquieting conclusion to an evening that offered little cause for optimism for Republicans—or their main rivals.

The post The Two-Party System Is Not Working—and Not Going Anywhere appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Perry’s home state, California, is full of celebrity calls to get to the polls, clothed and unclothed. But such stunts obscure the essential problem with voting in the United States—too often our electoral rules actually discourage participation in elections.

I know something both about publicity, and about getting people to vote. I’m a musician who has also worked for years to improve our elections, serving as chair of FairVote, a nonprofit pushing for election reform to make democracy fairer, more functional, and representative.

Fundamentally, people are drawn to vote for many reasons—they want a choice, they want to vote for a party and a person who shares their values, and they like to participate in races that are close and important. But our state laws undermine each of these ways of luring people to the polls.

Take California’s top-two primary system, which is similar to what we use in my home state of Washington. With this system, voters, through a ballot measure, got rid of exclusive state-sponsored partisan primaries in favor of more choices on a primary ballot. More choice is a good idea, but top-two comes with a big problem: It restricts choices in the November election—when most people are paying attention.

In California, all state and congressional candidates run in the June primary, the top-two vote getters then advance to the November runoff regardless of party. This means there are only two candidates campaigning for any given office over the summer and fall. Sometimes, as in the state’s current U.S. Senate race, those two candidates are of the same party. This leaves other parties—and ideas—out of the contest, while no write-in votes are permitted.

California also suppresses political association. Party candidates are not actually nominees of a party. They can self-identify with a party—on the ballot itself—and the party can do nothing about it. This is the result of a 2008 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in which the Chief Justice John Roberts somehow compared political association to preferring a favorite can of soup. I would try to explain Roberts’ reasoning, but can’t in the course of this article.

However, I will opine that political parties, in democratic systems, are supposed to be the voices for groups of people. Parties cultivate profiles that frame issues so busy voters can better understand candidate positions. A nominee should be the ambassador to voters regarding the needs as values of the party. But California protects a candidate that is no such ambassador; a candidate, by way of the fine print on the ballot, merely prefers a party.

California is restricting association, one of our First Amendment freedoms. And it’s not just in state elections. The association problem is also local.

Like state elections, local ballots in California are also nonpartisan. But instead of candidates preferring parties as if they were their favorite brand of canned soup, on local ballots there are no party labels at all—we don’t know the soup or the soup brands.

The research on this lack of labeling is comprehensive and conclusive. Without a cue on the ballot about party affiliation, many voters don’t have enough information to make a choice that fits their preferences. And without parties in local races, there are fewer institutions and grassroots activities to pull people in.

It doesn’t have to be this way. It’s time to adopt voting systems that offer more choices and closer contests to get people involved and to the polls.

Indeed, some cities in the Bay Area have adopted one such system, known as Ranked Choice Voting. Instead of just choosing one person to support, voters get more choice by ranking a ballot with their first choice of candidates, second choice and so on. Those rankings allow an “instant runoff” that virtually folds the primary and general into one election.

Researchers such as the University of Iowa’s Caroline Tolbert, Western Washington University’s Todd Donovan and the University of Missouri-St. Louis’ David Kimball have shown how ranked choice voting is having a positive impact. Voters in ranked choice systems understand and like the system, report more direct engagement with candidates, are more likely to vote in the general election, and are electing more women and people of color.

Ranked choice voting has a long track record in other parts of the world as well, including national elections in Australia and Ireland and mayoral elections in cities like London and Wellington, New Zealand. This month, Maine voters are considering a ballot measure that would establish ranked choice voting for 2018 elections there for governor, U.S. Senate, U.S. House, and state legislature.

The California legislature this year passed SB 1288. Led by the seven legislators who represent cities with ranked choice voting, this bill would have given more small cities in California the options of using it. Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed the bill, but those of us who support the idea won’t give up trying to convince him, and other California leaders, it’s time for a change.

We ultimately need a broader conversation about fair representation in California, and the nation. In California cities today, for example, candidates in many elections run at-large with winner-take-all rules. This means the whole city votes for all council members or school board members; this means that the majority can elect everyone. That method has led to under-representation of racial minorities in local governments.

Ranked choice voting’s proven record of producing more diversity in government (a study of Bay Area cities found they elected more women and minorities than their neighbors) can help address this problem—especially when it’s used in these at-large elections. In an election for five school board members using ranked choice, a 51 percent majority of votes would not be able to elect all five seats; the majority could elect only three seats. Like-minded groupings of voters making up about one-fifth of the vote could elect someone to represent them, and ranked choice ballots would proportionally reward inclusive behavior that attracts second and third choice support.

Californians, often leaders, should feel proud their cities were early adopters of ranked choice voting. It’s time for more of California’s 125 charter cities to adopt it, as they can under state law, and explore options for how it can improve state and federal elections. And a win for ranked choice voting in Maine will bring statewide reform into focus elsewhere.

It’s great Katy Perry is encouraging civic participation. She may be tempting people to peek at the nude form, however, let’s look at restrictive election rules as the emperor not wearing any clothes.

The post It Takes More Than a Naked Katy Perry to Get Out the Vote appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The Clinton ad imitated an offering from Lyndon Johnson in the 1964 presidential campaign. That year, a Johnson ad featured quotes from three prominent Republican governors—Nelson Rockefeller of New York, William Scranton of Pennsylvania, and George Romney of Michigan—denouncing their party’s nominee, U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona. The ad concluded, “Even if you’re a Republican with serious doubts about Barry Goldwater, you’re in good company.”

Much like Trump in 2016, Goldwater ran an outsider’s campaign, far more popular with the party’s grassroots than its establishment. Goldwater’s uncompromising anti-communism and vote against the 1964 Civil Rights Act (which he considered an unconstitutional federal intrusion on states’ rights) attracted support from conservative Democrats, especially from the South. But his campaign’s high-profile defenders of segregation, most notably U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, repelled moderate Northern Republicans. So did the candidate’s intemperate statements on the campaign trail, as when Goldwater mused about lobbing nuclear weapons into the “men’s room at the Kremlin.”

President Johnson effectively served as his own chief strategist. During the summer of 1964, he lamented the media’s excessive interest in the backlash—Southern Democrats who were abandoning the party because of its support for civil rights legislation. “They talk about all the South quitting me, and they talk about everybody quitting me,” Johnson complained to one aide in August. But polls indicated that the greater number of partisan defections had come from Republicans, who distanced themselves from Goldwater. It was time, Johnson believed, to focus on “the Republican backlash—all these extreme statements [by Goldwater], and Ku Klux Klan, and all this other stuff.”

Johnson eventually deemed the phenomenon “the frontlash” (a term he thought would appeal to journalists). Upper middle-class independents and moderate Republicans normally didn’t vote Democratic in national elections, but they could be wooed through a relentlessly negative campaign that portrayed Goldwater as a dangerous extremist. Talk “about the danger of a woman having a two-headed baby, and men becoming sterile, and drinking contaminated milk, and these things,” Johnson privately explained, and “they’ll know who they ought to be scared of without our ever saying so.”

This strategy reached its most aggressive point on Sept. 7, 1964. A Johnson commercial featured a little girl, plucking the petals off a daisy, counting one to ten as she did so. Her voice, then image faded, eventually replaced by a bomb countdown and a mushroom cloud. Finally, Johnson’s voice emerged: “These are the stakes. To make a world in which all of God’s children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die.”

The daisy ad, the most famous attack ad in any presidential campaign, generated furious protests from Republicans, who argued it unfairly demonized their nominee. The commercial, which appeared only once but received massive media attention, helped firm up the connection between Goldwater and nuclear war.

While Johnson’s strategy was tactically brilliant, it came with a drawback: the President struggled to articulate a positive agenda. Instead, he fell back on clichés about patriotism and biblical values, generic themes that would alienate neither the union activists who then formed the Democratic Party’s base nor the traditionally Republican suburbanites, mostly women, who he hoped to attract to his coalition.

Clinton has run her version of a frontlash campaign in 2016. But the problem that Johnson confronted has, if anything, become even more pronounced. Bridging the enormous ideological gap between millennials who backed Clinton’s primary rival, Bernie Sanders, and “never Trump” Republicans would challenge even the most talented politician. As a substitute for Johnson’s paeans to patriotism, Clinton has relied on appeals to identity politics, but, like Johnson in 1964, her approach has primarily been negative, focused on convincing voters that electing her opponent could have catastrophic consequences for the republic.

On Election Day 1964, Johnson carried 44 states and won 61 percent of the popular vote. The next day, however, the President worried that his enemies would present the outcome as the voters having voted against Goldwater without embracing the specifics of his program. Journalists, he lamented, would ignore the “love and affection” voters had shown him. Instead, they would present him as “the lesser of two evils. Corn pone. Southern.”

Even a Johnson victory lacking a meaningful ideological mandate yielded significant congressional gains for his party. In the 1964 House contests, Democrats picked up 37 seats, giving them a more than 2-to-1 advantage for the 1965-1966 session. And despite holding 26 of the 35 Senate seats up for election, Democrats gained two additional Senate seats in 1964. But the surge was temporary; Democrats suffered major losses in the 1966 midterm elections. And the party’s popular vote came in almost 20 points below Johnson’s 1964 level in 1968, when Richard Nixon’s victory returned Republicans to the White House.

Although Clinton has never enjoyed a polling lead comparable to LBJ’s in 1964, the lessons of the past would suggest that her updated frontlash strategy should produce a victory this November. But it seems unlikely a Democratic Congress will accompany any victory. For the party to secure even a one-seat majority in the House, Democratic incumbents would have to go undefeated and Democratic challengers would need to win 27 of the 29 seats the non-partisan Cook Political Report currently lists as either toss-ups or leaning toward Republicans. The party’s Senate chances initially looked more promising, but in recent weeks, declining fortunes in Ohio and Florida mean that the Democrats might need to win on unfavorable terrain in either Missouri or North Carolina to retake the Senate.

In our vastly more polarized era, it might well be that only a positive message from the top of the ticket—such as that offered by Ronald Reagan for Republicans in 1980 or Barack Obama for Democrats in 2008—will meaningfully affect down-ballot races. But at the presidential level, Johnson’s frontlash model has been revived more than 50 years later, with the Democrats once again facing a Republican whose political and personal positions render him particularly vulnerable to the tactic.

The post Hillary Clinton’s Negative Ad Campaign Style Is Vintage appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

But no candidate for President carried the reform banner for honesty and competence more naturally, or tragically, than Horace Greeley. In 1872, Greeley was the nation’s leading newspaper publisher and editor. His incisive analysis of contentious issues, dramatic, witty, and prolific writing, his insertion of literary content, and appeal for higher journalistic standards, elevated the entire newspaper profession. In his words: “Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, and riches take wings. Only one thing endures and that is character.”

For three decades, Greeley was among the loudest advocates for important and sometimes odd causes. The New York Tribune, which he founded in 1841 at age 30, was “anti-war, anti-slavery, anti-rum, anti-tobacco, anti-seduction, anti-grogshop, anti-brothel, and anti-gambling house.”

Greeley also advocated for cooperative economic movements and was called “The Farmer of Chappaqua” because he tended several acres near that small town north of New York City. Expansion of the free common school was one of his deepest passions—though his family’s meager circumstances afforded him just three years of schooling, he read the entire Bible by age five. He promoted trade unions and was the first president of the Printers’ Union. “Honest Horace” believed in American progress and good government.

Horace Greeley, 1868.

 
Then he entered it. In 1848-1849, he was appointed to fill a vacancy in Congress for three months as a Whig. In Washington, he introduced the first bill to give small tracts of free government land to settlers. But when he exposed abuses in reimbursement to members of Congress for travel, he became the target of their personal abuse. By 1852, the Whigs were breaking apart as a political party over the question of slavery, so Greeley opted not to seek re-election.

In any case, he was an unlikely politician. His appearance alone was alarming. He was tall and angular with long stringy hair, chin whiskers, and wire-rim glasses. He carelessly dressed in a long linen coat called a Duster, and wore a tall white hat—his trademark. As the nation’s leading reformer and political oracle, Greeley had many detractors who called him a moral zealot and “scatter-brained.”

In 1854, Greeley was among those who, along with Joseph Medill and Alvan B. Bovay, gave the Republican party its illustrious name—co-founding it on a platform opposing expansion of slavery. He churned out editorials in favor of the first two Republican presidential candidates, John C. Fremont and Abraham Lincoln. But in 1868, his support for General Ulysses S. Grant was lukewarm—he’d condemned Grant as a “drunk” during the Civil War.

Horace Greeley and family.

 
Greeley’s fears about Grant’s competence were quickly realized. The 18th President was cozy with Wall Street speculators and handed out government positions to family, friends, and army acquaintances, some of whom engaged in corruption that soiled his administration.

On May 1, 1872, a month before President Grant’s re-nomination at the Republican convention in Philadelphia, a desperate collection of several hundred “anyone but Grant” Republicans—Liberal Republicans, they called themselves—convened in Cincinnati. “The Civil Service of the government has become a mere instrument of partisan tyranny and personal ambition and an object of self greed,” their platform charged. The reform party also denounced Grant’s “hard money” policies that hurt western farmers and helped eastern bankers who held their debt.

The President had agreed with Greeley’s editorial advice and persuaded Congress to pass the anti-Ku Klux Klan Act. But Liberal Republicans thought the law put too much power in the hands of the federal government to suppress individual rights. They called for “universal amnesty” for Southerners, and feared Grant’s tough Reconstruction policy would fuel long-term hatreds and turn the South against Republicans for decades.

Having adopted a platform of principles, the Liberal Republicans turned to the main business of nominating a presidential candidate. Greeley hoped it would be him and had sent his top editorial assistant, Whitelaw Reid, to Cincinnati to help organize support. On the convention’s first ballot, Charles Francis Adams, son of one president and grandson of another, took the lead and Greeley came in second.

But Adams had sailed for a European vacation and had refused to say if he would accept the nomination. So on the second ballot, the New York publisher took a two-vote lead, which continued to build until he won a majority of delegates on the sixth ballot.

Chappaqua Farm, Westchester County, N.Y.: The residence of the Hon. Horace Greeley. By Currier & Ives, 1872.

 
Some 10,000 Greeley supporters greeted news of his nomination with a “monster rally” in New York City under a fire sign declaring him, “The People’s Choice.” Greeley clubs sprung up across the country and supporters donned “the white hat of peace,” like the one worn by their disheveled political hero.

A month after the regular Republicans re-nominated President Grant in June, Democrats convened in Baltimore for the strangest convention in party history: it lasted just six hours. Party leaders could not agree on a Democrat to become nominee. But they were determined to find someone to challenge President Grant, whose military occupation of southern states they hated. And Greeley, though not a Democrat (he’d been a bitter critic of Democrats for decades) opposed Grant forcefully. There was no prohibition against becoming the nominee of two parties. So the Democrats, with fewer other options, turned to Greeley. The Democratic party adopted the Liberal Republican platform, including support of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments that had outlawed slavery and given citizenship to former captives.

Greeley’s campaign was frenetic. He traveled by carriage and train through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana, drawing massive crowds (who wanted to see the eccentric reformer) and delivering upwards of 200 speeches—more than any candidate before him.

“Let us forget that we have fought,” he exhorted. “Let us remember that we have made peace…” He called for a “New Departure” to heal the wounds of Civil War. He answered hundreds of letters, turned out campaign literature, and met with hordes of well-wishers. By mid-summer Greeley’s supporters were confident that his message of national reconciliation was taking hold and that he would win.

But the incumbent president counter-attacked. Grant-backing hecklers disrupted Greeley’s rallies, relentlessly denouncing him as “Old Chappaquack” and a “Know-Nothing.” Cartoonist Thomas Nast lampooned him on the pages of Harper’s Weekly. One caricatured him shaking hands with John Wilkes Booth over the grave of Lincoln. The cartoon stung—Greeley had been among those who posted bail for Confederate president Jefferson Davis.

Horace Greeley honored on a 1961 U.S. postage stamp.

 
During the summer, the strain of the campaign and the attacks proved too much. Greeley was sidelined with “brain fever.” Then, a week before the election, his invalid wife Mary died. “I am not dead, but I wish I were,” Greeley told a friend.

On election day, Nov. 5, 1872, some Liberal Republicans abandoned Greeley because he cared little about civil service reform and did not support the party’s free trade sentiments. And many Democrats couldn’t bring themselves to vote for their recent rival. Grant, still a war hero to many American people, attracted nearly 3.6 million votes or 55.6 percent of the total. Greeley swayed 2.8 million voters. Broken and humiliated by his loss, Greeley wrote, “I stand naked before God, the most utterly, hopelessly wretched, and undone of all who ever lived.” He was committed to a sanitarium where he died on November 29, just three weeks after the election.

On Dec. 4, 1872, President Grant’s carriage led the editor’s funeral procession down Fifth Avenue. Tens of thousands of admirers joined the cortege, including Vice President Henry Wilson, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, numerous Congressmen and the city’s mayor. Horace Greeley had lost an election, but the nation grieved its loss of the man poet John Greenleaf Whittier called “our later Franklin.” Grant’s second term was marred by even more scandals than the first. Reform would have to wait for another day.

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