Category: Uncategorized

So, this post is somewhat off topic. Voters’ Revenge is supposed to address fixing dysfunction in our current political system, via construction of a tool which promotes and even enforces methodologies that have been shown to work.

However, this post was originally created on a sub-reddit, to deal with not that, per se, but rather censorship and suppression by the MAGA persuader class ( who have the opportunity and, arguably, obligation to function as activists ) of tools like Voters’ Revenge, itself.

Voters’ Revenge is really for populists, in general, not just right-leaning ones like the MAGA movement. Hence, I never intended to post the following, here. But, my hand has been forced, because not only was it rejected at a sub-reddit called r/AskTrumpSupporters (currently being appealed), but subsequently when I tried to post a copy TO MY OWN SUBREDDIT, it was immediately censored there, also.

So, the origin story of this post is critique of a potentially very important class of reformers, as insular and even censorious; which is rejected at a sub-reddit that I have no control over; followed by censorship by some reddit algorithm, on a sub-reddit that I ‘own’; finally followed by publication at this website, which I also own.

As I point out, the same sort of dynamics are occurring in the left populism world. I’m a fan of Jimmy Dore, and suggest you listen to his show, not least because you may doubt that analogous censorship and dysfunction is occurring in that world. It most certainly is, and it doesn’t take an Einstein to see the parallels.

Well, here it is:

Re: The MAGA Persuader Class
viz. : Steve Bannon, Jack Posobiec, Charlie Kirk, Dinesh D’Souza, Dan Bongino, Raheem Kassam, MTG, Matt Gaetz, etc.

From the point of view of being optimal with regards to political strategy and tactics, I don’t have much faith in these people. I’m not generally casting aspersions at their motivations or ethics, but given what I see as the enormous opportunities at the present time, which are not being exploited by the Trump campaign, the MAGA persuaders are failing to force the Trump campaign to reach a higher level. They are also failing to exert pressure ‘downwards’, on the MAGA base, to get the best out of them. In short, these persuaders are failures as activists. I am left with the uncomfortable feeling that they generally are more concerned about maintaining their careers, than of empowering the public.

It is not easy getting success as an activist, and I’d recommend to everybody to listen to Ralph Nader narrate how doors to Congressmen that were generally open to him, in the 60’s, came to be shut as the lobbyists cemented their control over Congress. Having said that, the increased difficulty, compared to the glory years of the 60’s and early 70’s, should have been taken as a challenge to get more tactical and strategic. Not to mention brutally honest about failures of the MAGA movement, and populists, in general.

Let me explain:
I’ve been a rather bitter critic of Trump’s (see my subreddit The_Donald_GoodAndBad/) However, I have voted for him twice, and if I vote this year, will certainly vote for him, again. My criticisms of Trump sometimes involve policy, but just as often concern his deficiencies as both a leader, a politician, a strategist, a tactician, a (good, i.e. honest) propagandist and a {cough}{cough} communicator.

In this thread, I don’t want to discuss any policy issues. Instead, I want to discuss political strategy and tactics, relative to Trump, his campaign, his MAGA fans, and – perhaps most of all – prominent populist supporters of Trump that have an audience, and SHOULD be leading both MAGA and Trump into more productive areas. These are folks like Steve Bannon, Jack Posobiec, Charlie Kirk, Dinesh D’Souza, Dan Bongino, Raheem Kassam, MTG, Matt Gaetz, etc.

This last category (MAGA persuaders that have an audience) is of a sort of activist, and my view of activists, in general, is that they are sort of an immune system for the body politic. They are supposed to fight to correct something that they see as unjust, or counter-productive for some desirable end-goal. Thus, they should be ready, eager, and willing to slap down not only members of their tribe (in this case, the MAGA tribe), but also their leaders. Yes, including and especially Trump! (Obviously, activists from across the political spectrum can and do have opposite views about what is a disease in the body politic that they are fighting.)

So, regarding Trump and the Trump campaign as politically-dysfunctional-to-the-point-of-idiocy, exhibit A is a post of mine which may as well have never been written, considering it’s complete lack of any noticeable effect. Now, I rarely listen to any speeches by Trump (partly because they’re just not that interesting), but I do read the headlines and blurbs at thegatewaypundit.com and citizensfreepress.com, and follow some prominent MAGA types on gettr (like MTG and Karri Lake). Thus, I do have continual (and low-cost 🙂 ) input about the doings and sayings of Trump. Plus, if the Trump campaign were to take my suggestions for a ground game, I would see evidence of it with my own eyes, here in NJ.

The post I’m referring to was posted to The_Donald_GoodAndBad. It’s called “(BAD TRUMP) The Opportunity Cost of Just One Campaign Vector is $3 Billion Dollars (est.) that the Trump Campaign is Just Pissing Away”. The gist of it is that Trump could convert his ginormous social capital into political/campaign capital, basically by simply asking his millions of fans to adopt a zero-cost (to him) ground game. And if he was smart enough to focus on two issues that supersede tribal affinities of Democrat types, and run against the Democratic Party, as a whole, he could CRUSH the Democrats in the current election.

One would think that somebody connected to Trump or his campaign might have shown enough interest to at least acknowledge the existence of the ideas in that post. After all, even if Trump beats Harris, he will not be having much fun as President, if the Democrats control Congress. In this case, he’ll be opposed and harassed at every turn by Democrats (and, of course, the Deep State). We’ve already seen this movie play out, and it wasn’t pretty.

Now, frankly, I haven’t made much of an effort to contact the Trump campaign, directly. I’ve been conditioned from literally years of trying to push my vision of “Voter’s Revenge” (see votersrevenge.info). This was initially motivated mostly by my fear and loathing of TPP; hence, I initially pushed it to both the Trump and Sanders campaigns. I never heard back from them, and I doubt either Trump or Sanders learned of my proposal.

That began a long, multi-year, process that’s consumed an embarrassingly large amount of my time (contributing to my current near-penury), and encompassed me developing software design; and failing to attract coders, then coding the initial implementation, myself. I’ve also “re-imagined” the initial application, as it was sort of boring, frankly, and wouldn’t render well in a mobile device.

Efforts at evangelizing that vision are ALMOST invariably met with the same reaction. Viz., NO RESPONSE, AT ALL. Not even insulting, negative ones!

So, I’ve instead opted to try and contact persuaders. You know, the folks that evidently have some genuine activist genes, like myself. And furthermore, are populists, as the MAGA folks largely are.

AH, BUT THE RESULT HAS BEEN THE SAME. BASICALLY NO RESPONSE, AT ALL.

While this may be sort of interesting, from a psychological point view, I guess I’m not particularly interested in discussing underlying psychology, either. What I’d like to know – if anybody has any insight they’d like to share – is what happens at an organizational and ‘practical-mental’ level with these putative activists.

E.g., when I point out to MTG, on a gettr post of hers where she expresses bitterness over Mike Johnson not using his leverage, that 1) Mike Johnson is (by that time) a known back-stabber (or flip-flopper, if you want a less condemnatory phrase) 2) there’s no point in wasting emotion on his perfidy, which by then had become utterly predictable 3) that the MAGA base is not using THEIR leverage 4) that comes down to them failing to make credible electoral threats to Johnson 5) that she could, in fact, help direct the MAGA base – who she REGULARLY addresses – into more productive means of politically pressuring Johnson 6) that Pam Popper had demonstrated the effectiveness of credible, electoral threats (as highlighted on votersrevenge.info) 7) that she would be justified in getting angry at the MAGA base for being such nothing-burgers in pressing Johnson …..

Well, MTG’s reply is the same as posts and emails made to Bannon, Posobiec, Kirk, D’Souza, Bongino, Kassam, Kari Lake, Gaetz …..

And that is: NOTHING.

NOTHING. AT. ALL.

(edit: ignoring form letters)

So, what process is ‘dictating’, if that’s the word, the silence of the persuaders, and their staffs? I don’t care about their psychological foibles, as much as what these folks are thinking. Not why they’re psychologically predisposed to thinking it; protective mother, paranoid father, beloved dog died early, whatever… Rather, I’d like to know what they think in their conscious minds, and what they tell their staff, if they have one.

While the country is swirling down the toilet, you’d think that if not these thought ‘leaders’, well, then, maybe somebody on their staff might actually read what I wrote, and send back even a short message that was more than a form letter. I don’t follow polls, but a credible political youtuber I do listen to, styxhexenhammer666, has predicted that the Republicans will lose the House, even though they’ll win the Senate. If these people were performing, against a Democratic Party that bears little resemblance to the Democratic Party of my youth, and utterly deserves to get CRUSHED, well I wouldn’t mind their insularity so much. Instead, we are likely to get a President Trump who will be met with 4 years of ruthless Democrats practicing political assassinations based on such incredible feces as the “Russiagate” hoax.

Oh, the joy! Just think of it, brothers and sisters.

But wait, it gets even better!

I mostly keep up with MAGA populism via Bannon’s war room, which I’m at liberty to listen to while working, in all it’s glorious 2 hour offerings. Well, some months ago, Bannon announced that the warroom now had a forum, and he encouraged people to sign up and share their thoughts.

So I did! All 2 of them. After the 2nd one also got censored, I said “never, again”.

Now, being an activist, and naturally inclined towards problem-solving (my college degree is in math and physics; I tend to look at the systemic mess our government exhibits as problems to be solved, rather than something to just emote about), my posts were in this vein. They were attempts at presenting ACTIONABLE ideas.

A common Steve Bannon utterance is “action, action, action”. Now, while he doesn’t explicitly say “tactically and strategically clever action, tactically and strategically clever action, tactically and strategically clever action”, I just naturally assume that people strive to be effective, and not just spin their wheels.

Well, apparently whatever censor has mod privileges there, doesn’t look at it that way. (I suspect a Deep State mole, BTW, but have zero proof.)

These posts, which I will link to in their resurrected form, shortly, have such competition, as follows, that are NOT being censored:

“President Trump should impose taxes of human rights protection on the imports from China”
a substantive post on a policy issues, but no actionable ideas

“A Shot Heard Around The World”
a commentary; no actionable ideas

“ADD RFK TO MAGA”
a one line comment; no actionable ideas

“Not true on a deportable offense”
A 2 liner: “It is a misdemeanor, not a felony, for an illegal alien to vote! See attached (18 U.S.C. § 611). Not sure where Mike Davis gets that a misdemeanor is a deportable offense. “

This correction is both interesting, and worth noting. However, it has no actionable ideas (though perhaps an implied one of “don’t make a fool out of yourself”)

…..

“The Truth About Hell! … It’s Real! … Escape Now!”
Details omitted.
No comment, except to say that there are no politically actionable ideas. 🙂

Due to the wonders of reddit (and notepad++), you can still view my actionable ideas, which the CENSOR at warroom saw fit to keep out of reach of a website that preaches “action, action, action”.

THE POINT IS, THAT IN AT LEAST SOME INSTANCES, SOME MAGA TYPE PERSUADER, OR THEIR STAFFS, ARE ACTIVELY CENSORING IDEAS THAT COULD ADVANCE POPULISM/MAGA, INSTEAD OF MAKING FOOLS OF THE CITIZENS BY MAKING THEM SPIN THEIR WHEELS.

I don’t expect that this is generally the case, but I genuinely don’t know.

Now, it IS plausible that this is generally the case*. We live in a deeply manipulated society, which is engineered to divide the public and maintain control by the elite 3%. If it’s still available in the wayback machine, look up old versions of leftgatekeepers.com. Also, look at https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/CIAcultCW.html to see to what extremes the CIA would go to mold public opinion.

I’m tired of writing, so with these final links, I will end this labored elaboration of my question.

I’ve elaborated on characteristics of ‘shotgun messaging’ ground game that I believe would be maximally effective @ https://www.votersrevenge.info/?p=194

And further elaborated on details of what specifics of shotgun messaging to crush the Democrats in the coming election would look like in “Also Censored at Warroom – Who Needs Effective Activism, Anyway?” @ https://www.reddit.com/r/LeftRightGatekeepers/comments/1f2hy0c/also_censored_at_warroom_who_needs_effective/

Censored for 2.5 months at Bannon’s Warroom forum @ https://www.reddit.com/r/LeftRightGatekeepers/comments/1ezn7k7/censored_for_25_months_at_bannons_warroom_forum/

When Speaker Mike Johnson showed us – again – who he was, I wrote a spec, back in April, for a “Dump the RINO’s” website/app that could have been made for $2,000. This also elicited no reply by MTG (e.g.), and MAGA has failed to organize a Dump Johnson movement, to this day, AFAIK. (This is distinct from having a MAGA opponent to Johnson.) Note that Louisiana has no primaries, so it’s still possible (well, ignoring filing deadlines) to dump Johnson while still voting Republican.

See: Voter’s Revenge has a Baby! (SPEC for DumpTheRinos.org)
https://www.votersrevenge.info/?p=182

• Though I’d certainly exempt Charlie Kirk from such suspicions, as his Turning Point Action is too much on point for him to be a Pied Piper.

On Oct. 16, 2002, President George W. Bush signed into law the “Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002” I had signed up to attend a very large antiwar protest in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 26. My knee was injured, and I was hobbling around. Also, I had about $200 in my bank account. I knew that the protest would fail, as the die was cast for war.

I went, anyway, feeling an intuitive conviction that I needed to attend.

As I recall, all Republicans had skipped town. Certainly, no Republicans came out to speak to us. I think there was one or two Democrats. The rest either skipped town, or just didn’t bother showing their faces.

I think it was on the bus ride home I started thinking about the strategic usefulness of large demonstrations. Certainly, large demonstrations had helped end the Vietnam War. However, there was a finality to the move towards war, in 2002, that, I assumed, would defy repeated, large, demonstrations – even if they were to occur. The Federal government had basically ignored us, as much as possible, and then just proceeded with their war preparations and propaganda.

I don’t want to look up the history, but the fairly robust antiwar movement that was still exstant, at the time, seem to die a silent death with the coming of President Obama. There would be no more large, antiwar demonstrations, in the forseeable future.

In my case, I had taken a bus from Princeton, NJ. We could conveniently come and go, on the same day. Other Americans obviously would have to sacrifice much more. California residents readily come to mind. As moral as protesting the wars of choice may be, it can also be a huge burden. A burden so large that it necessarily constrains how often such large protests could be attempted.

I’m not sure, but I think the seed of the idea for my preferred means of doing political messaging, in the Voter’s Revenge scheme, dates back to these considerations. I also personally have a great distaste for any sort of ingratiating supplication. I’ve worked many years as a waiter, and my job wasn’t to wait for customers to even ask for what they needed, but to try and anticipate their needs and wants. Why should we beg Congress Critters to do anything? Don’t they work for their constituents? (Well, probably not. See represent.us. But I am describing my emotional input to my strategic conclusions.)

Regardless of how, exactly, I came to view Shotgun Messaging as the preferred way to do political messaging, it is definitely going to be pushed in the opinionated tool that Voter’s Revenge is. This was the case in the retired version, and will have additional arguments for it in the reimagined version, which didn’t apply in 2002.

In 2002, I already knew that the traditional media was very corrupt, and served the Military Industrial Complex. I used to listen in Democracy Now and Gary Null quite a bit, in that time frame, and knew that the military had agents embedded in the major TV news organizations. Noam Chomsky had been a frequent enough guest on Null’s show, and analysis of media bias was one of his specialties. I’d also discovered Michael Parenti, somehow, and he also was a revealer of media biases.

The first sign that censoring and biasing of internet dissident media sources would now fortify ‘traditional’ media manipulation, that I can remember, was an article that I read concerning the deprecation of Google search results for antiwar websites. As my rather faulty memory thinks it recalls, the most suppressed website was the World Socialist Web Site, wsws.org. Looking it over, it is still running the kinds of articles that will get you suppressed and/or cancelled, today. wsws is a marxist website, just as surely as chroniclesmagazine.org is a paleo-conservative website. It was in chroniclesmagazine.org that the best anti-war essay I ever read, by it’s brilliant foreign affairs editor, Srdja Trifkovic, was published. It was called “Iraq and the Necons’ Pseudo-Reality”. Alas, I cannot find it online, anymore.

Left or right, the censors ultimately spare nobody.

Since President Trump’s appearance on the stage, manipulation of both traditional media, and alternative, internet-based media, went next level. Probably the most serious example of this manipulation was the backdoor access that Federal employees had to Facebook, which was used to expedite censorship and suppression. This was revealed in documents obtained by Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai, a candidate for US Senate who ran against Elizabeth Warren, who was apparently defrauded by obviously cooked vote tallies. The documents came to light during his subsequent lawsuit.

What I am calling “Shotgun Messaging” is obviously much the opposite of a large demonstration. These are ‘demonstrations’, of a sort, that are 1) ubiquitous 2) frequent and 3) targeted at citizens (as opposed to politicians).

ubiquitous

We live in a systemically corrupt country (the arguments for which I’ve not developed for Voter’s Revenge, which is clearly focussed on elected officials, though I’ve expanded the theoretical scope to target members of the unelected regulatory apparatus.) There are severe problems at the Federal, State and local levels. These problems will never get fixed with current levels of civic engagement. So, just like one could expect to see “Uncle Sam Needs You” posters all over America during World War 1, if there’s a ‘war’ for America’s survival as a democratic republic, the reminder of this should be everywhere.

One of the first posts I ever made, online, concerned the near total absence of politically themed billboards. If you think in ideal terms of what one would expect of a country where the US government spends 36% of US GDP, and federal taxes average 19% of income, you might hope for maybe 20% of billboards to concern federal government issues, if the citizens’s input was desired and relevant. Instead, there is, and was, almost nothing that might rile up citizens, for or against any issue. (Although libertarians and some conservatives would object, paying for these billboard ads could be accomplished through some sort of mandatory subscription plan, similar to the way the BBC is funded. Citizens would choose which sort of political messages their subscription fees went to.)

Absent ubiquitous reminders, it’s much easier for citizens to live out their lives as mere consumers. The modern word “idiot” started out it’s linguistic life in Ancient Greece, as “idiotēs”, which was a “private citizen or someone who wasn’t actively involved in public affairs or politics”. A nation full of “idiotēs” essentially FORFEITS it’s opportunity to keep their nation from degenerating into a manipulated hellhole.

frequent

Advertising works partly because it’s repeated. From memory, I thought that 30 exposures was the “magic number”. Just checking with gemini, it mentions the “rule of 7”.

Whether 7 or 30, I’m quite sure that Coke and McDonald’s will keep advertising more than 30 times per generation. The weighty issues being decided for us, against the public interest, should receive no less repetition.

targeted at citizens (via face-to-face interactions)

As mentioned previously, part of this is purely emotional, on my part. However, there’s more objective reasons for not overly wasting time trying to “just get Congressman X to understand”, as opposed to just growing the electoral threats implicit in wrangler posses, and explicit in voteslinger posses.

Firstly, size matters, and Pam Popper’s results indirectly underscores this. Said Pam, who I quote on the home page of Voters Revenge:

Look, last time you won your election by a couple of thousand votes. We have almost 20,000 voters in your district, and if you don’t vote to impeach {?}, we’re going to take you out this November, and I brought a list of our registered voters so you can see that I’m serious.

20,000 is much more than 2,000. Your governor and Congress Critters all understand this sort of math. You don’t need to waste time trying to make them understand something that they already understand, very well.

What you understand, I’m sure, is that if your Congress Critter won their last election by 20,000 votes, and your list of voters is only 2,000, you’re not going to strike fear into their perfidious heart.

As I wrote elsewhere,

From my point of view, one of the MAJOR purposes, if not THE major purpose, of ubiquitous, frequent demonstrations is Recruitment. On a similar level of importance is educating the public. The LEAST important reason for shotgun type demonstrations is to immediately influence a public figure. When the activists grow their numbers sufficiently, and FOCUS their efforts on removing bad public officials from office (especially during primaries), THEN we will see real world changes, indicating that their activism had paid off in the longer run.

You basically have zero opportunities to “Recruit, recruit, recruit” into your posses while you’re interacting with a Congress Critter and/or his staff, and he likely isn’t going to be truly concerned about your issue unless you carry a big enough stick, anyway.

So, don’t waste your time focusing your activism towards your ultimate target. A Pareto ratio of 80%/20% is probably invalid here. Rather, I would suggest something like 1% public facing activism will yield results equal to the 99% of activism facing the posse target – i.e., the politician, or their staff.

Therefore, spend 99% of your time recruiting into your posse, and educating the public, and only 1% of your time leaving messages in your Congress critters’ voicemail, which he will likely never listen to, anyway, until you deliver your political message with a big enough stick.

N.B.: By “messaging”, I’m mostly thinking about pamphlets and hand-held signs. However, there’s other means: 1 or 2 question push polls come to mind; also, in heavily (foot) trafficked areas, you could do skits and even stand-up comedians.

Voter’s Revenge is a generalized, but opinionated tool to facilitate populist organizing.

It can also be used to organize anti-populist goals, but that is a ‘necessary evil’ in creating a generalized tool. It can also be used stupidly or smartly, strategically speaking, though the tool will attempt to guide users along more productive paths.

It can target Democrats and Republicans. Indeed, as will be the subject of a future post, transpartisan efforts can be facilitated by creating allied posses, which target both Democrats and Republicans, toward a single end. (See Glen Greenwald’s youtube Should the populist left ever work with the populist right? – System Update with Glenn Greenwald for real world examples of transpartisanship in Congress).

Development of the re-imagined version of Voter’s Revenge has been languishing, regretably.

Even so, my recent reading of BREAKING: RINOS WIN – AMERICANS LOSE: FISA 702 Again Passes House by Vote of 259-128 – Here are The 117 RINOs Who Voted for Warrantless Spying on Americans , pushed me to try and come up with a shortcut, that would address part of the vast problem with government. While RINOs may only be a part of the problem is, they constitute a HUGE target.

It wasn’t so much the article contents, but the comments that pushed me over the edge. There is nothing terribly surprising about the dark path that Congress is on, including RINOs, given the history of corruption by elites going back decades. Corrupt Congress Critters are going to Corrupt Congress Critter, RINOs are going to RINO, etc. It’s what they do, and who they are. Unless the populists develop real political muscle and more strategic smarts than they typically manifest, things will not get better.

As far as I’m concerned, the public is very badly led by it’s activists, including those who aren’t actually shills for “the man”. It’s the activists that should be looking outside-the-box for any edge against financially superior, entrenched, plutocratic opposition, so they can supply leadership to the “bewildered herd” of non-activists.

Ah, but where is the ground game? For anything? The only politically oriented things I can see, currently, in public spaces in NJ are billboards, both for and against Israel in it’s current military actions against Gaza. The support for Gaza could be considered left populist, but what about any other issue? The left populists used to have a significant anti-war movement, but that seems all but dead, overall. It’s quite dead with respect to Ukraine, even if not Gaza.

So, public spaces, that aren’t controlled by the usual censors infecting mainstream media and Big Tech media (like Facebook) are being ignored by the activists, by and large. 1

Therefore we should not be surprised that the commenters at thegatewaypundit are clueless about how to proceed, but it isn’t entirely their fault.

Anyway, to help out clueless right wing populists, led by strategically inept right wing activists, I am publishing a spec for “DumpTheRinos.org”. It’s tool which just lets nearby right wing populists find each other, via throwaway public emails they create just for this purpose, use geospatial distance calculated by zipcode. The zipcodes and throwaway emails provide a good measure of privacy.

Once these populists find each other, they can self-organize to vote out their common RINO during his/her next primary. (Or even general election, if they have the nerve; which they probably don’t. Once again, this lack reflects the persistent strategic cluelessness I observe on left and right, though it might be more rational for this particular election (for right wingers) because of the political configuration involving Trump facing relentless lawfare, and the enormity of damage that the Democrats have wrought, under Biden).

In the Voter’s Revenge world, the DumpTheRinos posses are voteslinger posses. The goal of such posses is termination of the political career of the target.

Today I tried to get developers on freelancer.com to implement this spec, but the two I talked to severely lowballed their bids. Apparently, to get a serious developer interested, you need at least $1,000 to $2,000. Chicken feed, compared to the $2 billion or so that will be spent in this Presidential election, but that is what it is. I can’t spend this sort of money, right now.

Finally, I’ll note that political websites are, and have been, WASTELANDS for publicly oriented political organizing. This is true of lefty ones (like dailykos) and righty ones (like thegatewaypundit.com and breitbart.com). They could EASILY ask for zipcode information and a throwaway public email, themselves, and provide spatially ordered search results. And thus, facilitate self-organization. Indeed, they could show geographic distance right in their comment sections, for users who are logged in, which would reveal geospatial info at a much smaller scale, but provide a constant reminder of what local organizing is possible.

I don’t think this is an accident. I think the “powers that be” want to contain and control the public, by just providing a place for them to vent; and then, during election season, be guided towards establishment candidates, where it’s understood that, rhetorically speaking (at least), establishment left and establishment right can be very different. After the election is over, the mobilized suckers are demobilized. As reported on more honest lefty websites (like firedoglake and openleft, both now defunct…) Obama’s organization deliberately dismantled his very enthusiastic base, at least after his first Presidential election. Wouldn’t want to let the rubes interfere with Obama’s neoliberal agenda, after all. I’m not aware of Trump asking his enthusiastic base to do much of anything, either, when he got elected.

I’m basically on lifelong independent, but in my previous online life haunted mostly progressive websites. There was a very lefty (but very decent) guy named Jeff Roby, who I ended up meeting, befriending, and even collaborating with. We only found out that we lived in adjacent towns (Newark and Jersey City) by accident, as it fell out of an online conversation. The host website, like basically all of them that I had surveyed way back when, didn’t bother facilitating any face to face organizing. (Some websites and organizations do occasional, social meetups, perhaps only when attended by the “big cheese”. E.g., I think nakedcapitalism does the “big cheese” version, and dailykos will serve up these meetups without markos present.)

1 – here in NJ. I’ve seen headlines about blocking bridges in CA. Hey, it’s a big country, and my point remains.

I found a version of the original Voter’s Revenge source code on my laptop, which I’ve now uploaded to a new github repository @ https://github.com/sldev2/VR . (Note that this project began from a clone of an open source project called Mvc5IdentityExample.)

I probably have a more current version of the code, somewhere in a disk in storage, as I made some modifications to demonstrate the basic functionality using a date in the past when the data was current. (I posted an article about this on codeproject.com called “Allow Users to Selectively Override your Website’s Default Date” ). The bits indicated in my article are not in the code, so for sure it’s not the very last thing I worked on.

At present, I don’t think it’s worth it trying to dig up the very latest source code.

I’ve abandoned this version of the project long ago, and have since re-imagined it, though I’ve done no coding on a new version. I’m posting this mostly because any programmers who might get interested in the re-imagined version might make use of the database as a starting point, whose structure can be reproduced using the ‘modelBuilder’ calls.

“Recruit, recruit, recruit”

The “prime directive” in Star Trek was to not interfere in the evolution of planetary civilizations.

Posses should also be mindful of a prime directive – namely, the need to grow the posse, since it’s political muscle scales with size of membership. We can adopt the slogan “Recruit, Recruit, Recruit” to express this idea. Even after a posse reaches a critical mass where it can more or less guarantee the removal of an incumbent during their next primary, it’s important to keep growing the posse. The reason being that a removal in no way guarantees that a better replacement gets elected, and a larger accountability group of local citizens is required to coalesce around a primary challenger to therefore all but guarantee a primary victory for this challenger. In purple districts and states, we can easily anticipate a yet larger accountability group membership milestone, which is a size large enough to all but guarantee a victory in a general election.

“Accountability group” is introduced, here, instead of just “posses”, because posses (at least as originally conceived) were punitive in nature, and I’ve described them as “negative vote blocs”. (More recently, I’ve introduced 3 flavors of posses, including supportive posses; however I anticipate more reform coming from watchdog and adversarial posses.) However, when the public is more integrated into large enough accountability groups, they will naturally want to act as a positive vote blocs, conduct unofficial votes before official elections and primaries to determine a champion to rally around, and install new elected officials that they are confident of being better than the bum they intend to throw out.

Voter’s Revenge is an opinionated tool, and thus will try to steer posses in the direction of public facing payback actions (which result from redline violations), which simultaneously exploit opportunities to “recruit, recruit, recruit” during the payback action. Nevertheless, there is some freedom involved in choosing payback actions, so having “recruit, recruit, recruit” in mind, is important.

Posses can be used wisely or foolishly. E.g., payback actions need to aim for a goldilocks zone of aggressiveness. It’s easy to see that most actions by the public towards Congress critters are not nearly aggressive enough. These are actions such as emails, petitions, faxes, etc. Is your Representative terribly concerned about his constituents’ emails? Compared to how many campaign contributions he got that week? Probably not. On the other hand, we have seen some lefty activists, in recent years, engage in tactics that are too aggressive, and even illegal.

So, in considering payback actions, let’s say that, against, well, my recommendations, they engage in typical email campaigns. Such campaigns have the same target (e.g., Congressman), but the emails fail the “recruit, recruit, recruit” principle. Therefore, it is hoped that Pareto Principle considerations prevail, and the email campaigns are either abandoned, or at least viewed as merely part of the 80% that are not expected to yield the same relative benefit towards the end goal.

The new requirement of QR codes, which provide links to specific posses, are sort of a no-brainer, and shouldn’t require much explanation. They are used for providing, e.g., links to restaurant menus. Because a posse will live in a distinct corner on a website, it doesn’t suffice just to provide the votersrevenge.com website, along with items to search for. (As a backup means of finding a specific posse, that is fine, and anticipated.)

Voter’s Revenge was originally conceived as primarily an adversarial tool. Posses were expected to be either downright hostile; or else all business, where the reining in of elected officals – the posse targets – was the norm. It was expected that incumbents tend to be sell-outs, even if they made the right noises during their election runs, and the posses were there mostly to punish them if they strayed too far. The posses were to be public-facing, with communication to posse targets something like this: “Your next redline is 3 weeks from now. Our posse is now up to 82,000, which will vote you out of office in your next primary if you cross our redline (by not meeting the demand.) Well, we have a few hours left today to grow our posse by another 1,000 folks. So, ta ta, have a nice day.” In other words, in my initial conception of things, relationships were cursory, while potential political threats were primary. The posses were not about either supplications or shmoozing (relationship). Instead, their spirit was along the lines of Frederick Douglas’ famous quotes “Power conceded nothing without a demand” and  “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”

I’ve since realized that it’s advantageous to make the sentiments of the posses towards their targets explicit, and to broaden the expected sentiments allowed, especially for “supportive” posses. See https://www.votersrevenge.info/?p=145   So much so that the expectation of the posse is to promote their target, acting like a sort of push poll, wherein the the redline demand is a softball, sure to be met. The “payback” of having the target respect the redline is also public-facing, but this time the “payback” is a favorable message, intended to educate the public of something done right, which (likely) should be rewarded during the target’s next primary or election. A supportive posse will typically reinforce an incumbent or candidate’s strength.
 

Now, cue this David Knight interview of Connor Boyack, who led the effort to successfully change over 100 laws in Utah “covering a wide range of areas such as privacy, government transparency, property rights, drug policy, education, personal freedom, and more.” Hey, that’s 100+ more laws that I have gotten changed in New Jersey. :-). Boyack’s efforts are focussed at the state level, and he relates the story of a principled friend, Mike Lee, who was elected to the US Senate, but has been “woefully unsuccessful”. Boyack’s methodology involved groups of citizens meeting with the state official on a friendly basis and nurturing a continuing relationship. He also recommends taking state legislators to lunch.

(15:26 – 17:30)

Number 2 – take a politician to lunch. Don’t do it during their busy season. So if the legislatures’s in session, then maybe wait a while Because everybody’s got to eat and you’ve got to think gthrough how can you create value for them.

So, if I was to do this, I would find my state representative on the website, see what bills he’s been running, you know what he’s been working on and I would email him or text him and say, “hey I really love this bill that you’re working on. Super important. I’ve been talking with some friends of mine, and some stakeholders. I’ve got some ideas for how you can actually improve this, or something else related you can do, or whatever. Could I take you to lunch?” And very often they will say “yes”. Now they will say yes even more if you are known as a connector. So if you do Step 1 and then Step 2, the cottage meeting and the  networking and then you start making those requests, then you will be more successful. This doesn’t take a ton of time, hardly any time, but this all boils down to relationships.  That is what drives this  business. This is why lobbyists are so successful. You need to foster relationships. When you just show up to the capital, to city hall, when you raise your fist and say “AH AH AH AAAAH” you know, “I don’t like this” they all know that you’re just going to speak your mind and go back to sleep. And they don’t have to pay (any attention). You’re not going to be there every week, you’re not going to be watch-dogging them, whatever, right? But if you have relationship, then when I text a legislator “Hey, I have questions about that vote you just made” or “hey, are you going to work on that bill” they know that I’m out there not only watching them but talking to a ton of people because they know that I’m a connector, that I’m not going away, that I have a lot of relationships, that can be helpful to them, or harmful to them. So the average citizen, you want to get involved, you want to start developing some relationships, and these are just a few of the easy, low cost, low time ways that the average citizen could start to do it.

So, this contradicts my original vision of Voter’s Revenge, but it’s all to the best. Boyack’s scenario is how we would like elected officials to behave, and which I’d come to view as unrealistic. It apparently IS (generally) unrealistic, at the Federal level. Consider how Ralph Nader, who used to have many an open door to Congressional offices, came to have those doors shut, as the lobbyists took over Washington.  I don’t want to go searching for whatever interview or talk of Nader’s told this story, but given that the book When Corporations Rule the World first came out in 1995, we can assume that the era of easy access by public citizen Ralph Nader was over by 1995.       

Well, wherever it happens to be still possible to have such a non-financially driven (non-corrupt) relationship with an elected official, it should be facilitated, even if the very name Voter’s Revenge implies it can’t be.

It’s expected that SweetTalkers will be a small minority of any given posse, as politicians can’t be spending every lunch with a SweetTalker. They will function as ambassadors of a posse, and update their posse members with details of personal meetings with the posse target. It’s also expected that

1. Adversarial posses won’t have any sweettalkers – only watchdog and supportive posses
2. As per Boyack and Ralph Nader, while the new spec will call for sweettalkers at all levels of government, nobody should hold their breath for initial, great success of sweettalkers at the Federal level, only State Level and below. (Though we can imagine that, if Voter’s Revenge begins to get scalps at the Federal level, then Congressional lawmakers will become much more amenable to schmoozing with ordinary citizens, as compared to favoring well-heeled lobbyists.)
3. As per my experience training for my ill-fated, 1/2 day stint as a telemarketer 40 years, ago, people in MidWest and Southern states are far more polite and patient than from other parts of the country. So much so, that they may not say “no”, even though they will never say “yes”. Boyack is from Utah, which I presume is much friendlier and patient than NJ. So, the effectiveness of sweetalkers will vary according to a number of factors, including culture, and the personalities involved. There are 350 million citizens in the US, so sweettalking should be at least tried at for all non-adversarial posse types, and levels of government. Hence, VR will enable this role for all non-adversarial posse types (i.e., pro and watchdog posses) and levels of government.

Connor Boyack personal website is: https://connorboyack.com/

His activist website is: https://libertas.org/

I floated this idea, years ago before the Voter’s Revenge website was created. (E.g., I mentioned it in 2011 at dailykos.com, here.) – Of course, there are already candidate pipelines and vetting mechanisms, for at least some mainstream Democrats and Republicans.   E.g., Barack Obama’s experience meeting vital, well heeled Democratic donors, before he was fast-tracked for President, was described in the blog BlackAgendaReport.com. Though I failed to find the specific, relevant article I’d read there, after a brief search, you can get the flavor of this vetting from this quote from Awakening From Obama’s Seductive Spell.

However, contrary to complaints from a few disgruntled liberals, Obama isn’t a morally compromised, spineless individual, betraying his most cherished ideals. Quite the contrary, Street documents via exhaustive examples that Obama has been consistently to the right of center throughout his public career and is doing what he was groomed to do. It was the combination of a brilliant marketing strategy, beguiling rhetoric, and something approaching a cult of personality that put him over the top in 2008.

Why has all this occurred? You won’t find it in high school civics (or college) textbooks but the truth is that one doesn’t obtain the nomination for president without first being carefully vetted by our political, media, and corporate masters. Or, as Street quotes Lawrence Shoup’s apt phrase, this is the “hidden primary of the ruling class.” Only after being reassured about the candidate’s enthusiasm for advancing the corporate domestic and foreign agenda, does the funding and media attention begin to materialize and this is precisely what occurred with Obama.

Apparently, details of the Obama vetting by the rich will be found in Paul Street’s book The Empire’s New Clothes: Barack Obama in the Real World of Power

While the Republican and Democratic parties have their donor base vetting processes to generate the ‘right’ candidates, Voter’s Revenge is intended to primarily to enable sincere populists and reformers, not deceptively branded neo-liberals like Obama.

Briefly, a Candidate Pipeline is a web portal that serves as a repository for people who believe they may want a career in government as an elected official. I.e., it is more for future candidates than actual, current ones. And the idea is twofold:

1. Give the future candidates a place to blog about political issues; plus aggregate reports and links about the doings (speeches, debates, town halls, meetups, activist activities, etc.) of the future candidates. The future candidates can thus become known to constituencies over a period of years
2. Make electoral threats to current politicians more credible, by decreasing the friction needed to run challengers. An elected official may scoff if they are “in the money” and well entrenched, when told that some of their constituents (i.e., a posse) will likely vote them out of power if some redline demand is not met. VERSUS receiving the same electoral threat, along with admiring words for 2 or 3 potential challengers who have been building a political legacy which is documented on the Candidate Pipeline for years, and are already known and respected by significant portions of their constituency.

So, we can conceive of a Candidate Pipeline as a stand-alone, independent political tool, just like we can conceive of Voter’s Revenge as a stand-alone, independent political tool; and furthermore, that both tools could and should be’ joined at the hip’ via embedding links and even content from the Candidate Pipeline within the Voter’s Revenge app.

Finally, we can point to a useful analogy. Having a stable of credible future candidates at the ready is similar to have well trained and maintained peacetime armed forces with logistical capability near – or within striking distance – of a potential future foe. It takes many years to spin up a significant, and capable armed forces. If you go to war with an inferior army, which is also at a logistical disadvantage from the get-go, then you should expect to lose your war.

VR is a neutral tool, that can be used by people of any political persuasion, though it’s intended to fortify populists’ (left, right, and middle-of-the-road) political muscle, as opposed to non-populists. It can also be used smartly or dumbly. An example of a dumb use is on a “lesser evil” basis, which is apparently organically used by most American voters. This diary is a reprint of a diary I posted at dailykos.com in 2011. I am not reprinting the comments, so readers may want to check out the original.

I’ve long thought of writing a diary called “If the CIA is smart enough to hire a political game theorist, then why aren’t progressives?” Indeed, I’ve threatened to write such a diary.

This diary may or may not substitute for such a diary, due to overlap. We shall see.

A more accurate title for this diary is certainly “The Albert Einstein of Political Game Theory on the Stupidity of Lesser Evilist Voting”. Who is this Albert Einstein / Jesus Christ? Well, none other than the political game theorist Bueno de Mesquita, who was featured in the New York Time in an article called Can Game Theory Predict When Iran Will Get the Bomb?. A brief intro to the subject of political game theory can be viewed online here.

The reason that de Mesquita is better compared to Einstein, is because he’s a smart guy. The NY Times article tells us:

among national-security types and corporate decision makers, he is even better known for his prognostications. For 29 years, Bueno de Mesquita has been developing and honing a computer model that predicts the outcome of any situation in which parties can be described as trying to persuade or coerce one another. Since the early 1980s, C.I.A. officials have hired him to perform more than a thousand predictions; a study by the C.I.A., now declassified, found that Bueno de Mesquita’s predictions “hit the bull’s-eye” twice as often as its own analysts did.

(emphasis mine)

However, the comparison to Jesus Christ makes for a catchier diary title, and also expresses my hope that progressives (and voters in general) might be saved from their disempowered state, by voting more intelligently. And bravely, for those who are too afraid of splitting the vote of the legacy party candidate that they are more closely aligned with, thus potentially handing a victory to the “evil other” legacy party. For progressives, they tend to be hamstrung by being afraid not to vote for a Democrat, no matter how bad. An analogous situation holds for a good deal of the Republican base, who may well be afraid of throwing a Republican under the bus due to fears of electing a dastardly Democrat.

Because I don’t want to spend a lot of time writing a polished diary, I will simply do the following:

First, I point to the unpleasant discussion I had with Mike Hersh, who wrote a blog diary on the Progressive Democrats of America website, called The High Cost of Voting for Spoilers, which prompted me to email Bueno de Mesquita.

Secondly, I quote my email to Bueno de Mesquita, verbatim.

Thirdly, I quote de Mesquita’s replay, verbatim, which he has given me permission to do.

Fourthly, I’ll mention that interesting discussions and debates on voting strategy, as regards jeffroby’s proposal for a Full Court Press, were had at openleft.com and firedoglake.com. Google is your friend. The Full Court Press (FCP) was a plan to alter the political dynamics of progressives who vote as Democrats, and hopefully spark the beginning of an effective progressive movement. Basically, the FCP would try and enlist 435 challengers in Democratic primaries for the House of Representatives, who could be minimalist candidates, whose minimal requirement was to appear in Democratic debates and argue the FCP’s progressive platform.

Fifthly, I’ll mention that Anthony Noel of the New Progressive Alliance (NPA) participated in the discussion comments of The High Cost of Voting for Spoilers. NPA embraces an aggressive voting strategy, which eschews lesser evilism. (I’m afraid that it will be too aggressive when it starts pursuing Congressional races, but that is another matter.)

Sixthly, I want to state that I sincerely hope that sincere political groups of diverse ideological stripes will avail themselves of individuals like de Mesquita, to hone more effective voting strategies. De Mesquita, himself, does not consult on elections (in the US, I presume), but I’m sure that individuals with his sort of political game theory background can be found.

My Email to Bueno de Mesquita

Dear Mr. De Mesquita:

I have mentioned your work many times at progressive blogs and forums, and I find it amazing and depressing that there is generally no support amongst progressives for hiring somebody with your background. Firedoglake is a happy exception, but, until today, I knew of no other progressive place similarly disposed.

Well, an unpleasant discussion at the Progressive Democrats of America website ended with this statement by the author, who had objected to my description of PDA’s implicit voting strategy as “lesser evilism”:

“PS—please ask Bueno de Mesquita (and anyone else you think would like to help) to contact us. We’re always looking for smart, effective people. Thanks for bringing his name into the discussion.”

This was at the following web page URL:
http://www.pdamerica.org/…

So, there you go! You have an informal invitation to provisionally offer your services to the PDA (pdamerica.org). Of course, the PDA should be seeking you out, not so much the other way around, but it’s the end result that matters.

BTW, would you be kind enough to remark on my conviction that lesser evilism, as I have defined it (basically, always voting in the general election for the person from your party, no matter what he or she does; confine your electoral efforts to the primary, unless you succeed in voting out the incumbent) is a stupid voting strategy? I never studied game theory, though I’ve read a Scientific American article or two on it. I was the top chess player in my high school, but never read a chess book. I assume that I have an intuitive ability for strategy, even if I can’t calculate it, as you can.

Finally, you may be interested in some diaries of mine involving voting strategy:

Recommended Short and Long Term Voting Strategies for the Dump Obama Movement

“Dump Corporate Dems” – Going Green at the State Level, to “make Dems do it” at the Federal level

I’d just love it if you or a grad student of yours analyzed the voting strategies that I have recommended.

Sincerely,
XXXXX

Bueno de Mesquita’s Reply

Hi
You are right – it is a stupid voting strategy if you care about the outcome. A colleague and I just wrote a very technical paler on this subject.
Az a matter of policy my consulting firm does not use our capabilities to influence electoral outcomes. It sounds like this is what your colleagues are looking for. If they are interested in shaping specific policies that is another matter. Let me know if influencing legislative outcomes is of interest and if they have a consulting budget.
Thanks for thinking of me
Bruce

The current specs for Voter’s Revenge don’t allow for posses to be self-characterized (by their founders) as either (largely) supportive, (largely) adversarial, or neither of these (call this state analogous to a “watchdog”; or neutral).

This might create some reticence to join a particular posse, if the potential joiner perceives a fundamental difference in sentiment and optimism between themselves and the posse’s founder and current members. So, if the reimagined app is ever made, it will allow for explicit support characterizations. (Update: actually, the new spec will demand that the posse’s support level will be made explicit, with the default being “watchdog”)

adversarial type posse
As examples, consider an adversarial posse against Lindsey Graham, whose creation is motivated primarily by Graham’s hawkishness, which sank to the level of encouraging Russian citizens to assassinate Putin. To many a citizen, this is beyond the pale, and they can’t imagine supporting a Graham re-election, except in the rarest of circumstances. Consequently, they would be more comfortable joining a posse with this name:

“Graham is Crackers Possee”
Subtitle: “an anti-Graham, anti Ukraine War posse”
ID: “FEDGA-202-224-5972”

In such a posse, voterslingers will predominate, as compared with wranglers. In the event that Graham starts satisfying the posse’s redlines, the redlines will (likely) be made more difficult, to the point of impossible. Such a posse will be terminally soured on Graham, and wants to use the VR posse mechanism to remove Graham from office, even if he (apparently) has a change of heart.

watchdog type posse
OTOH, let’s say you’re a citizen of South Carolina, you see some redeeming social value in Graham, and merely want to curtail his warmongering. Let’s say you’re a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, and could vote for a Graham even if he remains a warmonger.

In this case, a voter would be more comfortable joining a posse with this name:

“Stop Graham Warmongering Posse”
Subtitle: “a watchdog, anti Ukraine War posse”
ID: FEDGA-202-224-5982

In such a posse, both voteslingers and wranglers will have a significant presence.

supportive type posse
Finally, consider the case of pro-Ukrainian-war citizens of South Carolina. In this case, wranglers will predominate over voteslingers (if there are any voteslingers, at all), and the redlines will be analogous to push poll memes, designed to boost the electoral prospects of Graham, rathen than to damage them. Such a voter would be more comfortable joining a posse with the name:

“Graham – Stay Tough on Ukraine Posse”
Subtitle: “a pro-Graham, pro-Ukraine posse”
ID: FEDGA-202-224-5992

There was a brilliant essay I read many years, ago, by paleocon foreign affairs analyst of Chronicles Magazine Srdja Trifkovic, called “Iraq and the Neocons’ Pseudo-Reality”. Unfortunately, I can’t locate it online, anymore.

However, from memory, Trifkovic noted at the beginning of his essay that Saddam Hussein was an awful man, and the world would be better off if he was dead, already. His essay SHOULDN’T have needed this disclaimer/elaboration, but Trifkovic lamented that it did, because of the war frenzy and irrationality that followed the 911 attacks. Trifkovic argued against the war against Iraq, but correctly anticipated the obvious smears that would be hurled his way, for this position.

Likewise, it shouldn’t be necessary to explicitly state that Voter’s Revenge is a tool meant for legal and peaceful organizing. But, in light of the current war of the US Deep State, slimy main stream media, and Big Tech giants against Trump supporters, and populists, where, e.g., largely peaceful election protesters have been relentlessly smeared as “insurrectionists”*, it makes sense to make an obvious disclaimer, similar to Trifkovic’s. So, here it is:

Voter’s Revenge is a tool meant for legal and peaceful political organizing, only.

* You know, the 1st Amendment favoring mob that left their weapons at home, on the very first day of their “insurrection”. The Pentagon is only an 11 minute drive from the Capitol Building, so this “insurrection” seems considerably less well considered than John Brown’s attempted insurrection.