Kevin Featherly has a nice post up on Bill Hillsman's new book, "Run the Other Way," which is both about his time as a campaign advertising executive in Minnesota and his gripes about the two-party system.
At the heart of Hillsman's book is an indictment of what he calls "Election Industry Inc." Among these he includes political parties, pollsters, political consultants, media mavens, special interest groups and lobbyists, among others who profit from the current political system. That is, everyone but voters and candidates.
Election Industry Inc., in the Hillsman view, is all about incumbency. Incumbents are already subordinated to the system, they don't create problems in the way that mavericks like Jesse Ventura and John McCain tend to do. Officials that are used to being treated like royalty, who have it in their power to write the rules of the game to prohibit the intrusion of outsiders, have little incentive to change those rules.
"Election Industry Inc. is a vast and mendacious enterprise that has fooled all but the smartest and bravest candidates into believing that their way is the only way. Using the power of money and media, it is debasing our democracy and aligns itself against the best parts of our nature. Election Industry inc. is an enemy of the people, with colossal advantages and odds that are overwhelmingly in its favor."
-- Bill Hillsman,
"Run the Other Way" (2004)
Kevin notes that Hillsman's prescription for the problems of the current electoral process is less than substantive, but the discussion got me to thinking about how a political insurgency might be fashioned.
If I were doing it, I would do the opposite of what the major parties do. The standard practice is to identify likely voters and send them your literature, knock on their doors, ring their phones. Rather than going to the registrar of voters to find these voters, I would ask the registrar for a list of registered voters who haven't been voting, or seldom voting. I would then try to identify what they want in a candidate, what issues are important, and then find a candidate to match that profile. Next I would use none traditional forms of communication (such as the Internet, but also text messaging) to start communicating with these candidates. I would avoid the media as much as possible. I would be as underground and backchannel as possible. In this day and age, I think it would be possible to mobilize undeserved and unrepresented voters at the county or congressional district level and win with an insurgency. The reason third-party candidates rarely win isn't because there isn't support out there for them, especially in our more cynical age; it's because third-party candidates try to compete with the major parties on the terms the major parties have defined. An insurgent candidate must build his own value network and concentrate solely on the portion of the voting market that isn't voting. I think it would take neither a large campaign staff nor a lot of money — just the right message delivered by the right candidate through the right communication chain.
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