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I am a student of big city politics... I have helped run campaigns for City Council, Municipal Courts and Mayor in Cleveland as well as in the inner ring suburbs... Mostly from the demographic perspective...
One thing that really kicked me in the ass is the difference in voting turnout between these areas and the more affluent suburban districts… Simply put, people most affected by government, the poor, disabled and the struggling young, do not vote with the same passion as suburban voters... They are registered but rarely, if ever, turn out in numbers approaching suburban turnout... In Cuyahoga County, the suburban vote in a presidential year can approach 70% while in the inner city and inner ring suburbs; 50% - 55% is considered a good turnout...
I have my theories as to why this happens... For instance, some people may register to vote just to establish residency and have no real interest in actually going to the polls on Election Day... But I feel strongly that the reason these folks choose not to vote is because the national, state and local political agendas haven't addressed anything important to their personal lives in the last twenty to twenty five years...
From the Reagan Welfare Queens and trickle down economics all the way through to the current Bush blabber about personal responsibility in the economic arena, the poor and down and out and struggling, economically distressed people have been singled out as one of main reason our economy is not working... They have been pointed to by the high and mighty Calvinists that people who are facing economic disasters have only to look in the mirror to find out the root cause of their distress...
So, how do we re-energize these people to get back to the polls and vote...?
Certainly not by embracing welfare reform that was good in some ways but punitive and destructive in others... Not by calling for the elimination of the Estate Tax… Nor does touting the economic miracles that will occur if we cut or eliminate Capital Gains speak to people who wouldn’t know a capital gain if it came along and bit them on the ass.. And it doesn’t help our cause that no one, who doesn't represent an economically distress district, stand a progressive agenda or champion the poor, distressed and disabled….
So, WCGreen, you ask, how do we fix this…?
Simple, we need to make people on the outside looking in realize that they in fact do have a stake in the political process… And that that stake is only recognized when they vote…
We have to make sure that they know being a Democrat is not the same as being a Republican… How do we do this…?
By pushing hard and constantly about the need to guarantee our constituents a shot at the American Dream… We need to push for a living wage, no matter what the people at CNBC or Fox or the wealthy newsreaders at CNN, CBS, NBC and ABC have to say about it… We need to start now and continue until November of 2008… We need to, quiet simply, energize our base…
That isn’t as hard as it may sound… Perhaps a campaign that says no matter how much money the rich have, in America, when you cast your vote, you are the same as they are…
What we have to do is mine for our votes… We have to reach out to these people… Activists have to make the first move… Show those in power that there is a huge bloc of voters just waiting to be touched by more than negative rhetoric…
And you know what… I don’t want to hear any crap about Diebold or stolen elections… That is defeatist and counterproductive to our goal… We need to win and the way we win is by including this segment of the population in our coalition… If we don’t, we might as well just be republicans….
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