After realizing 1) the alternative to Keith Ellison will cause people to die, and set us back to the middle ages, and b) it turns out that Congressman Ellison will make an excellent Attorney General despite efforts to Al Franken him, sudden rush to un-judgement flooded the community and compelled the construction of the following letter.

It is signed by Indivisible leaders, because we are all in touch with each other, more or less. It would certainly be endorsed by many local indivisible groups, but there is simply no time to turn such a project around so fast, and, frankly, a lot of groups simply don’t endorse. I am absolutely certain that given another 48 hours, the number of signatories on this letter cold be increased from just over 50 to something closer to 1000. For now, you’ll just have to trust that leaders of various groups signed knowing that a good number of members of the various groups we work with also support Ellison.

So, here it is, ignore the typos. We did this fast.

November 1, 2018
Dear Minnesota Voters,

As leaders of local, grassroots, progressive organizations, we care deeply about gender equality, reproductive rights, civil liberties, racial equity, and freedoms and protections for the LGBTQIA communities. We are all strong and vocal advocates of the #MeToo movement and believe that all women must be heard. And we all agree that voting for Keith Ellison is vital to protecting many of the issues that we hold dear.

Please do not leave this race blank on your ballot.

The Attorney General may be the most important office that you will be voting for this election.The Attorney General is the state’s attorney, tasked with protecting the civil rights of all Minnesotans. Here are some things that State Attorneys General have done in the past two years:
Filed suits opposing the initial Muslim Ban.
Filed suits about families being separated at the border.
Fought for environmental protections.
Fought against possible financial corruption in the current administration.
In some states, they’ve supported lawsuits that would allow for pre-existing conditions to NO LONGER BE COVERED as they say that when the individual mandate was removed, the rest of the law should be invalidated.

There couldn’t be anyone better suited to serve as the attorney for the people of Minnesota than Keith Ellison, whose congressional campaign slogan has been “Everybody Counts, Everybody Matters.” Keith will make sure we have patient protections for preexisting conditions. He will work to lower drug prices for Minnesotans. He will protect the LGBTQIA communities, uphold a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body, protect everyone’s right to vote, and fight corporate corruption – all of which underscores the high quality of life we enjoy in this state.

Keith’s opponent, Doug Wardlow, will not just neglect Minnesotans’ civil rights, he will actively work to undermine them. The issues that matter so much to us have been the number one target of Doug Wardlow his entire career – and now he is on the precipice of succeeding. He has tried to weaponize the constitution against same sex marriage, against transgender kids’ safety, against voter rights, and against a woman’s right to chose. His first priority once elected? Politicizing the AG’s office by firing attorneys whom he suspects are democrats and filling the attorney general staff with extremists from the Alliance to Defend Freedom. He describes himself as “100% pro-life” and has spread false claims of fetal body part sales at the U of MN Medical Center. (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6raHdz8unOg&feature=youtu.be&t=30m23s)

His extreme views are no secret. After failing to be re-elected to the MN House in 2014, Wardlow took a position as a legal activist at the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a group that has been working to recriminalize homosexuality, opposes hate crime laws, and has proposed the sterilization of transgender individuals. The ADF is considered by the Southern Poverty Law Center to be a hate group.
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/alliance-defending-freedom

Doug Wardlow’s views are alarming and far from any mainstream position.

We’ve thought a lot about the allegations made against Keith Ellison and have read many summations. Our overall take, as non-experts, is that there was a full investigation and her claims are unsubstantiated. She has hired the former boss of Keith’s opponent, Doug Wardlow, as her attorney and has recently been prominently featured on many right wing conspiracy minded shows and has herself retweeted right-wing propaganda, such as the #walkaway hashtag known to be started by Russian bots. Furthermore, Keith’s now-public divorce proceedings revealed no history of abuse in his marriage of 25 years and Keith has the full support of his ex-wife.

Our groups comprise thousands of Minnesotans, all of whom are working very hard in the struggle for a more just, equitable and caring society. We will continue to work hard in that space and hold whoever wins the AG race accountable to our values. But right now, the choice is clear to us. If we want to protect the values of equality and justice for ALL people under the law, than we must elect Keith Ellison as the MN Attorney General. This is why each of us are voting for Keith Ellison and we urge you to do the same.

Sincerely,

Jena Martin & Laurie Wolfe
Co-Chairs, IndivisibleMN03

Scott Ickes
Chair, Minnesota Indivisible Alliance and Co-Chair Indivisible Minnesota Local

Taylor Winkel
Co-Chair, Indivisible Minnesota Local

Alicia Donahue, Su Reaney
Women’s March Minnesota Executive Board

Jordan Orzoff, Laura Eash, Curtis Johnson, Timmie Harriday
Stand Up Minnesota Steering Committee

Lyn Dockter-Pinnick
Chair, Menahga/Park Rapids Indivisible

Sara Chapman, Mark Frascone, Connie Sierras
Co-Chairs, Indivisible Resistance of Eagan Burnsville (IREB)

Kayli Schaaf
Executive Director, Indivisible North Metro

Aimee Engebretson
Co-Chair, Indivisible St. Paul

Pamela Dowell
Co-Chair, Itasca County Indivisible of Minnesota

Judy Dunbar
Chair, MN Indivisible Chaska

Caren Fine Gallagher
Administrator, CD2 Action
Board Member, Minnesota Indivisible Alliance

Kris Miner, Kati Simons
Co-Chairs, Indivisible Eden Prairie

Greg Laden, Clara McIver, Barbara Boldenow
Co-Chairs, Indivisible Plymouth

Chris Evans
Co-Chair, Indivisible NW Metro

Jennifer O’Brien, Lynn Speckhals Duane, Joseph Rapacki Jr.
Co-Chairs, Edina Indivisible

Lynn Rankinen
CD2 Action-Faith In MN Liaison

Barbara Prindle
Founder, Progressive We Stand – Golden Valley

Krista Peterson, Deirdre Mulcahy, Ryan Hankins
Co-Chairs, The Power of Many – MN

Ambre Quinn
Administrator, Postcards for America – MN

Katie McMahon
Chair, Swing Blue MN

Jaime McGeathy
Executive Director, Watch Your Reps MN

Tom Edwards
Board Member, St. Paul Regional Labor Federation Political Action Committee

Sonja Hendrickson
Team Lead, Action Together Twin Cities

Yurie Hong
Lead Coordinator, Indivisible St. Peter/Greater Mankato

Mary Messall,
Administrator, Indivisibile Allies of Minnesota

Carol Hanson
Founder, Indivisible/Undaunted

Cindy Mundahl, Rachel Mundahl
Co-Chairs, Indivisible Minnetonka

Suzanne Laing, Becky Lauderdale Nelson, Carol Zazubek
Co-Chairs, Indivisible Bloomington

Vicky Johnson, Elise Radtke-Rosen, Heather Tidd
Co-Chairs, Stand Up Dakota Country

Pernell Meier,
Indivisible Rochester

Susan Moses-Zirkes
Chair, Indivisible MN02 and Co-founder, CD2 Action

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred.

But in the western suburbs of Minnesota, in part of Congressional District 3 represented by Republican Erik Paulsen, it has a different meaning. The Light Brigade is a group of activists affiliated with Indivisible MN03. As shown here, they dress up somehow as giant letters and make words or phrases across overpasses over major highways, in order to get people thinking about certain political issues.

Recent events in Minnesota politics made me think about the Light Brigade as a metaphor for something very good, and possibly (but I Hope not) for something very bad as well.

I don’t know how many activists it takes to make a light-bulb into a sentence, because I have yet to join any of the Light Brigade’s actions (though I hope to eventually). But I imagine it takes at least one person per letter, and a few others to make the letters and organize the whole thing. “THIS IS TAX WARFARE” has 16 letters in it. So lets assume that some 22 people including organizers and sign makers were involved in that action.

One of the big issue on people’s minds in this area, and across the country, is health insurance. In fact, it was the Republican Party, under Trump, attempting to dismantle Obamacare that made Indivisible emerge as a group, and that caused all those angry town meetings. It isn’t just that the Republicans have a different view of health insurance. We are not stupid. We know that Trump fomented a racist theme of hatred of America’s first black president, and that Republicans are exploiting this to take and hold power, and part of that means dismantling a health insurance system that is almost identical to one proposed years ago by Republicans as an alternative to the one proposed then by Hillary Clinton. People are rightfully mad at the Republicans (though Indivisible is in theory “no partisan”) and at Trump, and Ryan and the rest of them.

So, let’s look at health insurance for a moment. There are two major views on what to do about it, at least around these parts. Everybody wants universal coverage, and ultimately, people might be OK with single payer, but there are two distinct opinions. One is to go for single payer health care immediately. The other is to not do so, to take several years to get to that point. One of the arguments for the latter is that across the country, and especially in Minnesota (we have lots of health care, health insurance, and insurance interests here) there are thousands and thousands of people who work in the health insurance industry who would lose their jobs. Many are in insurance, others work for hospitals or care providers handling that end of the vast plethora of paperwork that accompanies our current Byzantine system. Many want to see a slower change so those people and companies can transition out of the business. People who want to see an immediate transition understand that these folks will lose their jobs, and are willing to have the transition somehow address that problem with help of some kind.

I believe that the people who are currently very active in politics in this area, including the community that repeatedly sends our version of the Light Brigade into battle (but with more success and less bloodshed than the original one!), fall perhaps evenly across these two beliefs. I think the single-payer-now may be a majority, but if so, not by much. I also have seen some pretty serious vitriol over this issue. The two positions are not that far apart: universal coverage very soon, single payer either very soon or eventually but not too long. These two positions are almost identical to the positions held by Senator Sanders (now) and Secretary Clinton (incrementally) during the rather heated primary battle last year, and that important but not extreme difference cleaved many a good relationship back in the day, and may do so again.

So, now we get to the point of the matter. Look at that bridge with “THIS IS TAX WARFARE” emblazoned across it in carefully arranged arrays of LEDs. Now, ask all the people, the 16 holding the lights, to think for a moment if they are on the universal-single-payer-now bandwagon, or the universal-not-single-payer-now bandwagon. Now, everybody, all at once, who is in the former camp, move to the left side of the bridge, all those who are in the latter camp, move to the right side of the bridge.

Suddenly you get this:

In the words of Benjamin Franklin, “We must, indeed, all spell correctly, or most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”

Take any group of 20-24 citizens and they can do something important. There are groups in our area now writing post cards to potential voters hoping to increase voting turnout. There are people meeting to discuss issues, getting fired up, then going off to write letters to local papers. There is a group that organizes a presence at local parades and farmers markets. And, there is the Indivisible Light Brigade.

Now, imagine that each of these groups divided over the two different health care issues, and refused to work with each other. Not only do they do that, but they divert some of their activist energy into hating on the other group in the usual venues of social media.

Now, further imagine that we look at other issues. Are you pro nuke, or anti nuke? Do you think we should or should not build that composting facility up in Anoka? Should we borrow money to fix up the old bridge over the highway, and how do you sand on bond issues? Charter schools? Raising the minimum wage?

The truth is, that for many of these issues, most of the activists I have in mind mostly agree. But for each of these issues, there is a person here or a person here that doesn’t. Should those individuals be identified and driven into the swamp? One problem with that strategy is that when we look across all the issues, we can find that there is a subset of people who buck the trend on each, but they are not all the same people. We’re gonna need a larger swamp.

Let me put this another way. Think of issues from the perspective of oneself. Identify your own position on each of the issues. Now, create an archetype, a perfect theoretical entity that is exactly you. Now, expect all other individuals to fit that model, and if they don’t….

There probably are issues that really do divide people. The Republican party relies on abortion (against) and free access to firearms by anyone (for) to divide people. Democrats tend to pitch a bigger tent and include all sorts, but of late, Democrats have become very granular in their intensity. You don’t like my version of health care? Then you are untrustworthy and not worthy of my favor. I heard about your position on nuclear power. Satan, I name thee!!!! That sort of thing.

The latest is Al Franken. A lot of Minnesota Democrats are, I think rightfully, unhappy to lose Franken in the Senate, and I have to say, there is a good argument for at least, having seen the recent process through to the ethics committee conclusion. That’s what I think, anyway. But if you think something different, that’s fine with me. Franken’s alleged transgressions, even if all true, are not Harvey Weinbergian, and he is a man who underwent a major transition in life, going from being show people to being politician, and people can change. There is a wide range of reasonable opinions only one or two of which a given individual is going to agree on.

I decided weeks ago to not hold anyone’s opinion on this matter against them. I do not want to see my own community broken into tiny slices over issue after issue. If that is how we are going to behave, we might as well give up now, because that is no way to run a resistance.

Viva la resistance. Down with the tyranny of granular hatred. All you people up on the bridge, get over it and get back in line, we need you!

By the way, I don’t think the original charge of the Light Brigade is a very good metaphor for anything happening in my local activist community. Yet. Be vigilant!

I gave some advice a while back (see: Why Trump Won And How To Fix That For Future Elections). Since then, I’ve spent a lot of time with a lot of those folks who appeared on the scene, often as members of Indivisible groups, after the election. I see a lot of frustration with the Democratic Party (and our local DFL, which is what we call the Democratic Party in Minnesota). Here are my new suggestions inspired by what I hear people saying out there in the libraries, public meeting rooms, and town halls, at least in suburban Minnesota.

Be A Party

Remember when a judge ruled on an issue regarding voter suppression during the 2016 election? Well, there were a few such rulings, but one had to do with a consent decree against the Republican Party, forcing them to not actively force African Americans and other non-whites away from the polls using intimidation, fear, and misinformation. The concern was that the Trump campaign was doing this, therefore the several years old consent decree should be continued.

The court ruled against extending the consent decree. Why? Because the Trump campaign wasn’t threatening voters? No. They were. Because threatening voters can’t actually change an election’s outcome? No. It can. Because we decided it is OK to exclude minorities from the democratic process officially, not just by default? No. That was not decided.

The consent decree was not extended because the Trump campaign and the Republican party are two different things. Extending the consent decree on the Republican Party because of what the Trump campaign was doing would be like the police arresting you because I rob a gas station.

Crazy, isn’t it? Both major parties have a national organization, plus an organization that helps fund but otherwise has nothing to do with Congressional races. Then, each state has a separate iteration of the party, not quite fully connected to the national party. And, a given candidate’s campaign may or may not have various legal connections with other party entities.

This is actually very complicated, and varies across the landscape.

The point is, regular normal people who are not party insiders can’t really relate to a political party without frequently getting burned or being confused because there is not a political party.

Now, I’m not saying that there should be one entity to serve all the needs of the party across geography and at every level of government. I have no idea if the multi-headed hydra approach is a good thing or a bad thing. I’ve not analyzed that. Perhaps an expert or two will weigh in below, in the comments section.

But I do know this: A sense of oneness, simplicity, and therefore, accessibility to the inside of it, could be engendered to the benefit of the party. The way it works now, individuals can sidle up to what they think is the Democratic Party, then an entity one might easily think is the same entity does some bone-headed thing, and that’s when the regular normal person finds out that their friend, the Democratic Party, has a built in way of making excuses instead of taking responsibility for its actions.

The party asks for unity among its supporters. Fine. But the party should also develop some unity and coherence within itself, so that people can understand it better, and know, that if they are involved at the Congressional District or County level somewhere, that their voices are being clearly heard by the national party as well as the presidential campaign and all of that.

Early Endorsements Stifle

This is an example of what I want to expand on a bit below, but I want to get this near the top of the post because it is a very current issue. I’ve written about this recently. See: A plethora of early endorsements does not endear the new Democrats to the DFL in MinnPost and Collin Peterson, RT Rybak, and David Wellstone Play Inside Baseball? at Minnesota Progressive Project.

Go read those posts to get the details, but essentially, this: We are experiencing endorsement creep, especially by individuals but also organizations. The creep is towards the early date. Insiders, like elected officials or former elected officials, and key organizations, are starting to give Democratic candidate endorsements before many people have even heard which candidates are running. That is a clear message to the voters and would be party participants: Don’t bother, we’ve got this. Please, please, please, Democratic party activists and operatives and sympathetic organizations. Stop this. You are damaging the party, and forcing people to make what suddenly seems a very justified decision to walk away from the party and consider themselves independent. Or worse.

Again, read those articles to get more details.

Try To Act Alive Even While You Are Resting

Meanwhile, as endorsements are too early, other activities are too late. Many of the Indivisible activists I so frequently encounter are wondering where the Democratic Party is. Well, the Democratic Party is there, and they are having various meetings and such, but they are not very visible and the meetings are generally over rather esoteric stuff. A political party has seasonality, because elections are periodic. So, this makes sense.

But right now, people are scared, angry, frustrated, and are trying to do something about the current horrendous situation in American government and politics. Seasonality be damned, get into action!

Several months from now, the seemingly asleep Democratic Party will lumber out of its cave, look around, and try to decide which Republicans to eat. But by that time the rest of the people will have already killed several awful bills, made a large number of elected representatives rethink their strategy of ignoring the voters in their districts, and generally changed the mode and tenor of politics at several levels across the country. Without help or involvement of the Democratic Party.

The party will turn to those activists and ask for their help. The activists will look back at the party, and say, “Who are you? Oh, right, you are the political party that lost all those races. Don’t worry, we’ve got this.” then turn back to their work. I don’t think the Democratic Party wants that.

Political parties change their modus operendus and culture about every 30 years, a major exception being Tammany Hall, which, as a tightly run organized crime organization, kept going for much longer. Sometimes that turnover is accompanied by the disappearance of one party or the emergence of a new one. Seriously, Democrats, you are facing an existential crisis, and you don’t even know it.

Put People Choosing Candidates Above Other Party Business

A detail, but an important one. Please, at conventions and caucuses, do this. If there is a point at which people are expected to vote on candidates, do that first. I have never been to a DFL convention at which the time given to candidates to speak and the time given to participants to vote or caucus isn’t crunched by party business, at least a little, sometimes a lot. Do the esoteric party business last, even if that means doing it at a different meeting later on. (Fact: All DFL conventions are held in rooms that are available only up to a certain hour, at which time everyone has to be out of the room.)

Make Primaries Easier, Caucuses More Engaging

There has been quite a bit of discussion about this, and I have previously offered a solution, not too different from one being considered. (see: How to fix the Minnesota Presidential Caucus). The bottom line: The caucus is what people really need, and the primary is what the people really want. There is a way to have both, we sort of already have both. We just need to adjust a few things to make everyone whine less, which is about as good as it is going to get.

Acknowledge The Waking Giant

I’ve already said this above, in a different way, but it is worth repeating. I was at an Indivisible Event a couple of months ago at which several thousand people spontaneously showed up to yell at a Republican. The Democrats have never managed that, by the way. I was speaking to a woman who had previously never been involved in politics but who suffered through a major traffic jam and was now standing outside in the breezy cold to make her point. She said to me, “They have woken a sleeping giant. And she is pissed.”

I have yet to see any member of the Democratic Party, in any form, acknowledge this phenomenon. WTF, man? Fail to do this at your peril.

Don’t be a brat, eat a brat

Have more events that get people together. The party tends to have certain events and they tend to do a lot of work at these events.

Indivisible has a lot of events and they do a lot of work at those events. When people walk away from the Democratic Party events, they feel like they’ve been involved in something that could be important. When people walk away from an Indivisible event, they feel like they’ve just left a gathering among friends at which they started to figure out a way to survive an uncertain future.

The Democratic Party should start hosting community meetings of its own, inviting everyone including Indivisible to show up, not to have a candidate listen to the people but to have the people listen to each other.

See you at the Tax March, which was not organized by and seems to have nothing to do with the Democratic Party even though it is an event necessitated by the Democratic Party losing bigly at the national level.

I have been at a few Indivisible meetings over the last few weeks. One of the questions I have about the movement is this: How many people in Indivisible now had voted for Trump, or in my case, our local Republican house representative, Erik Paulsen, or the like, elsewhere? Also, how many people in Indivisible had not voted at all in the last election, or at least, were not reliable voters? And, how many people in Indivisible had voted, and generally voted Democratic/Progressive/Whatever but had not worked for any campaigns (issue campaigns or candidates)? How many people in Indivisible had not given money to candidates or politically relevant causes (like ACLU, Planned Parenthood, the Democrats, etc.) before? And, how many people in Indivisible didn’t know a lot of important stuff before but are now learning it, and want to learn more, about how our system works?

There are many reasons I want to know these things, but one pragmatic reason stands out: If we re-did the election of November 2016 right now, what would happen? How many people would vote differently, vote at all, or, prior to the election, work for a candidate that had not done so before, send off $50 to a campaign, etc.? And, how much better informed would that electorate be?

In other words, how different would the outcome of a Mulligan be, and how is that difference reflected in the apparently transformative rise of the Indivisible movement?

And, even more pragmatically, should I simply be depressed because all the people who show up at Indivisible meetings were already voting, mainly voting for Democrats, already worked for campaigns, donated some money, and were well informed about how the system all works?

The answer is: No, I should not be depressed. As represented, at least, by Indivisible people in my area, there are big changes.

I’m combining impressions of our very local group (20+ people) and our congressional district group (hundreds of people active, maybe thousands ready to do something). This comes in part from personal introductions at the beginning of meetings, a practice our local group leader has followed, and that has been very valuable to getting the group bonded and fired up. This also comes from conversations during, before, and after meetings, and at various protests or other events.

Here are my impressions.

Most Indivisibles have generally voted, but a small number have not done so reliably, and a few did not in the last election.

A small number of Indivisibles voted for the “wrong” candidate last election, locally (including at the Federal level) but perhaps almost none voted for Trump.

Combining these two numbers, if the election were held again in my district, one or two of my local state-level positions would have been Democratic rather than Republican, because it was a very close election this year (dozens of votes for our state Senator), and the state would be Democratically controlled in the legislature. I think, and some knowledgeable DFL operatives agree with me, that if we keep up this momentum, the state will turn full on blue (at the state level) in the next election. Thank you Donald and Erik.

However, that number of votes may not be sufficient to have turned the vote in our congressional race. Having said that, across the state, a couple of the races were close. If we held the election today, Minnesota would probably send one more Democrat to the House than it did, but not necessarily for my district.

What about sending money to candidates and working on elections? If a new campaign was started today, the number of individuals working for DFL (Democratic Party) candidates would be much higher, maybe 25% or even 50% higher, and the number of hours per candidate even greater. There would not be a corresponding increase in funds or work effort for the Republican candidates. Maybe a decrease. That would translate into a few percent of the vote, most likely. I believe (and I can never be proven wrong so I’m quite confident in this statement!) that if the campaign and election were redone today, because of this additional work on the campaigns, that my member of Congress would have been replaced, and more. It would be a good election. A very good one.

I’ll add this: One of the most interesting characteristics of the Indivisible movement, at least where I’ve been working in it, is the recognition that the Democratic Party is all about the election, and not about the politics, policy, and governing. Indivisible, locally, and I think this is true across the country, is doing a lot, has done a lot, and will do a lot. We will have a lot of stuff done before the Democratic Party finishes its morning coffee. We had done a big hug pile of stuff before the DNC elected its chair, just a few weeks ago.

It was Indivisible and similar movements that crashed the Republican effort to kill Obamacare. On the surface, it was the hard right Libertarians, but they mattered in this process because the more moderate Republicans were scared off by us. At the very root of the party discord that killed the Republican repeal and replace bill was the Indivisible movement showing up at the town halls, crashing the phone system, and filling inboxes with notes. The Democratic Party in Washington was able to make the moves it made because we gave them the room to do so.

You’re welcome.

When the Democratic Party finally gets its candidates for the next round of elections, Indivisible will be there to vote them in. But the Democratic Party needs to recognize that Indivisible is not an arm of the Democratic Party, and the Democratic Party needs to be asking Indivisible what it wants, now, and it needs to be helping, becoming a partner. And, by “asking indivisible” I mean asking the people who are in the movement on a local and regional basis.

I have seen that happening to a large degree, but it is not coming from the party itself. It is coming from individuals who are DFL officers who are also involved in Indivisible. It is an informal link that can’t be trusted to have much value unless it is backed by the party core, the party faithful. If that does not happen over the next few weeks, the Democratic Party is taking a very serious risk of losing relevance. Whigging out, as it were. They don’t want to do that.

What about being informed about how our system works? This is the area where the largest changes are being made. There are two entirely different areas of consideration here, and rapid change is happening in both areas. One is the system of government itself, the other is the system of power. First, about the government.

It is almost as though the system was designed to be confusing. For example, what is a “house member.”

Well, it depends. Do you mean state level or national? In Minnesota, you have a house member at the state level, and you have a house member at the federal level. The state house member is in the state house, and the federal house member is in Congress. We often use the word “Congressman/Congresswoman/Congressperson” for the federal house member. But, “Congress” also includes Senate. So, “The Congress” at the federal level is the Senate (you have two of those) and House, even though we use the term “Congressperson” to refer only to the house and “Senator” to refer only to the Senate. But not at the state level.

Unless you live, say, in New York, where you have no house members. You have Senators and Assemblymen/persons. That state, and some others, have a Senate and and Assembly. Some states don’t have two houses of their legislature, but only one.

Don’t get me started on committees and what they do (vitally important).

I think I’ve made my point. Individuals who are now indivisible but who have not been much involved before are learning all this stuff new, and believe me, they are learning it good.

Then there is the power stuff. We have a representative system where the people elect house and senate members at the state and federal level, and they toil in service of the voters. Right?

No.

First, voters are not relevant, the elected officials represent all the people whether they voted or not. Second, only some of them represent the people. Most of them represent special interests which occassionally coincide with the will of the people. So, Big Oil and the Sierra Club fight over votes, and we give money to Big Oil and the Sierra Club to do this.

The difference is, of course, how these various entities get the money that they use to shape policy in state houses and DC. It is all our money, we are the ones paying for all of it, but the route by which the money travels from you and me to a political campaign or PAC varies in a critically important way.

We give money to Big Oil because we want to drive our cars, heat our homes, use pharmaceuticals (yes, they are often made of petroleum), etc. Every time you spend money on anything, a tiny percent goes into a political or issues campaign, sometimes a candidate’s coffers, sometimes in a super PAK, sometimes to support an ad campaign about how great Methanol is, etc. We have a multi-trillion dollar economy and several hundred million dollars of that is channeled into political activism directed by several dozen individuals who control the largest share of that economy. It is baked in.

Funding for the Sierra Club and all the other organizations, or individual candidates raising those small number donations from the voters, etc., is not baked in. That comes and goes with how much interest the general public has in particular issues and that all depends on which shiny objects are about at the moment.

Indivisible has done two things in this area. A very large percentage, maybe about half, of the people now engaged in Indivisible, did not know very much about this power and money thing. They probably knew it was there, had a vague idea, but not the details. They are now learning the details, and the are creating ways to address it.

The second is what a new Indivisible member told me at a protest event the other day. She was one of those individuals somewhat but not fully involved in previous years. Now she is involved. She said, “A sleeping giant has been awakened. And she is pissed.”

There are some 100 million independent adults or households in this country. About 100 million entities that might decide to write a check for, say, a cause or candidate, or be members of Public Radio, or join a gym, or whatever. Imagine if 10 million of them decided to get serious about his. Ten million Indivisible individuals, where “individual” means household units, being serious. They decide to tithe themselves a total of $1000 a year to contribute to political campaigns. They get semi-organized, but informally so, using the Internet. They distribute their campaign dollars across state and congressional campaigns.

Ten Billion Dollars is a lot of money. Since the House runs every two years, if this was put into all of the Congressional races, that would be 20 billion divided by 538 per race. That’s about 37 million dollars per campaign. That’s ridiculous.

I would love to see that happen, of course. But here, I mention it only as a thought experiment. Here’s a fact: Indivisible is larger than the baked-in Big Industry special interests and the liberal and progressive organizations like the Sierra Club and the ACLU combined. We can kick big money out of politics, not by making it somehow go away, but by making it small. We can force elected officials to represent the people of their respective districts by doing something very simple but incredibly effective when the numbers are large: Insisting on it.

People like Erik Paulsen and Donald Trump will not do what we want (which is, simply, to govern fairly and intelligently) because we insist. They are not built that way and never were. But once we throw all the bums out, as the old expression goes, and replace them with thoughtful, intelligent, reasonable, moderate through liberal (depending on the district) and honest individuals, then we can do something remarkable. We can take over the country.

Imagine that: The people taking over the country.

Sticking with this last issue, of knowing stuff, I want to recommend two books. I’ve reviewed them both, so here are links to both my reviews, and the amazon pages. I’ve checked my local library for both, just to make sure they have them, and yes, they have several copies: they are all out, and the reserve backlog is months long!

Shawn Otto is a political expert, author (of non fiction, fiction, and screenplays) and a bunch of other stuff, and he wrote The War on Science: Who’s Waging It, Why It Matters, What We Can Do About It. (Full disclosure: Shawn is a friend, but he’s a friend BECAUSE he writes great books, of course!) Much of what we are seeing, including the buying off of the government by the aforementioned industries, is about the war on science. Otto sets this in historical and contemporary perspective, and provides a field manual for what to do about it. This is a must read. (My review is here.)

Jane Mayer’s Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right is a very well researched and engagingly written expose of how that baked-in money works, and thus, how our government actually works. It is also a must read. (My review is here.)

Plymouth is in Minnesota’s 3rd Congressional District, and is represented by Congressman Erik Paulsen. Paulsen took over, years ago, from a “reasonable Republican” that even Democrats in CD03 remember fondly. But Paulsen has quietly and without fanfare served as a Tea Party Republican since being elected. During the time that he and Michele Bachmann served in the same Congress, in physically adjoining districts, Paulsen and Bachmann voted the same way on almost every bill, and the few differences were trivial, such as, one was absent, or a division on a water district resource bill, or something really minor.

Other than being a lock-step Republican, Paulsen is famous for something else: Doing or saying absolutely nothing to anyone at any time, and keeping entirely to himself. Back when he was first elected, he had a town hall meeting or two, the last of which was done electronically, as far as anyone remembers, so no one would be in the room with him. That was close to seven years ago. It is like Paulsen is pathologically unable to be in a room with constituents.

Meanwhile, the voters of the third district are a mixture of Democratic union supporters and recent immigrants who are politically active and vote, wealthy Republicans who quietly write checks and vote, and workers in the technology, medical device, or Big Ag industries whose livelihoods depend on good science policy in Congress but who are not politically active and don’t vote. This is the education district. Some of the top school districts in the state are in this congressional district. But the voters prefer to send education-killing Republicans to the State House and an anti-Education member to Congress, then compensate for their bad policies by voting yes, sometimes, on school district bonding bills. It makes very little sense that Erik Paulsen gets elected every two years.

Part of this has to do with the inability of Democrats to get their acts together. One year, two medium-strong candidates slogged it out in the primary and caucus process, but caused so much hate that a lot of Democratic voters stayed home. Several year later, in 2016, that vitriol probably kept some of the Democrats that might have elected one of those candidates, back for another try, from being elected. One year we had a good candidate who was very honest, and thus, another candidate who was less than honest in his positions was selected to run against Paulsen, and he stopped running several weeks before the election for personal reasons. One year a really good candidate emerged, but a different candidate, very well connected in the Democratic Party on the national level, shoved him aside, ran, and lost. That sort of thing.

So, the other day, I was communicating with some environmental activists about an event we’ve got coming up. Somebody said, “hey, let’s bring some flyers for our event to that thing going on Thursday down at the church.” So I looked into the thing.

It turns out that an Indivisible group had organized a Town Hall for Congressman Erik Paulsen. He never has his own, so they kindly organized one for him. He was invited, but just in case, they got a big cardboard cutout to put up in front of the room.

The event was not that well publicized. I know a lot of activists in the area who did not know about it. I learned about it at the last minute from a random mention, as noted. And, I did go.

So, I got in the car to drive the five minutes down to the church. Partway there, traffic stopped. About 25 minutes later, I got to the church, crawling along in this huge traffic jam, that was going out in all directions from the church. Five minutes after that I got a parking spot a few blocks away, and walked down to the church. So, maybe a thousand cars were in this giant traffic jam, and hundreds of people were standing around outside the church. Inside, were the 600 or so maximum occupancy, and and the cardboard cutout.

One or two thousand, maybe a little more, citizens showed up to let Erik Paulsen know that they did not appreciate his having ignored the voters for so long, and demanding to know what he will do, as a member of the House, and as a Republican, about his fellow Republican, Donald Trump.

I hear the news reporters were there, but there were no TV trucks identified as being affiliated with a station. I saw one guy from MinnPost. I see zero coverage of this event on most of the news this morning, and where there is coverage, it is minor (the Strib did something small).

If people are wondering what they can do about Trump, one thing you can do right now is to contact WCCO, KARE, FOX-9, Eyewitness 5, and the Star Tribune and ask them why they did not cover the protest with a couple thousand people at it held in Plymouth.