How to Lose an Election

Winston Churchill once said “The biggest argument against democracy is a 5 minute conversation with the average voter.”

Luckily, the typical English voter would often confuse Churchill for an overweight, diabetic dog so no conversation with Churchill never made it more than a “Good boy!” and a concerned glance when the dog would start pounding back some of that Devil’s oil at 11am in the morning. 

Fucking Churchill.

 Now, I know I pretend to be a political pundit with a vast array of insider knowledge and an even larger collection of Obama 2008 Presidential Memorabilia. #LimitedTimeOnly #OnSaleForOnlyWhenHesPopular #SameWithObamacare

But, truth be told…the only campaign I ever worked on, I quit in a moment’s breath and the candidate went on to lose in a dramatic who-gives-a-shit fashion. So when I tell you what is really threatening America, I want you to know that I don’t have as much experience as Churchill does but still probably more than any of those other bozos you see stroking their own cocks on the nightly news.

There is a Brain Williams joke in there somewhere, but it  ends with his cock spinning like a shot down helicopter and my readers don’t want to hear that shit. They are highbrow.  Always keep your audience in mind.

My point is that I have no idea how to win an election, I haven’t done that yet. I am loser. 

But dammit, I sure know how to lose an election and better than most people too.

I moved to Colorado in August of last year to work for Fair Share which is the Super PAC that supports Democratic candidates around the nation. I had worked tirelessly all summer, applying for jobs every day and sending out resumes like I was a Nigerian prince. Finally I got hired to run the Boulder office for the Super PAC supporting the democratic senate candidate, Mark Udall. 

Now in case your current events knowledge is comprised of getting stoned and watching The

Interview, then I will explain how a Super PAC works.

Super PACs are allowed to receive unlimited contributions from individuals and corporations with the understanding that they are not allowed to coordinate with the official campaign. This means that companies and wealthy individuals can spend millions of dollars to support the campaign, but not have to be hindered by those pesky campaign finance laws.

The downside of this? It’s ruining our democracy as well as the candidates that run for office, and how our government works.

Now I am about to give you a firsthand account of how a Super PAC operates, the horrible ethical misconduct that occurs to its employees as well as the voters, and how to limit their power in the upcoming election. But I know some of you might feel tricked because you wanted more weiner jokes and some accurate self-deprecating jokes.  It's been a hard year and the economy hasn't come back like it should. I give you permission stop reading now and watch the video below. It’s what not what you came here for, but it isn't the worst entertainment you have settled on today. #PawnStars

How to Lose an Election

By John "Magic Fingers" Kelly

When I stepped in the door on my first day, I thought I was going to be a Joshua Lyman who uses pragmatism and cleverness to form statewide strategies to break down opponents. Instead, my job title was closer to that of Satan and my job was to trick the poor and desperate to knock on doors and hand out leaflets that were deceptive at best and criminal to any objective reader.

I had to build an army and I had to build it fast. 100,000 doors. Between August and Election Day I was required to knock on 100,000 doors. That’s over 1000 doors a day or 128 doors an hour in a normal 8 hour working day.  

This meant that we had to hire 100 people within in a week and get them sprinting around Colorado yelling about birth control and folksy values. #TheIssues

The amount of money the Super PACs dropped on this campaign was insane.  Between both campaigns and outside spending they spent close to $75 million dollars on this election just in Colorado alone. 

The crazier part?

They spent about 75% of that money in the 3 months in the lead up to the election. It was a stimulus package that instead of putting money towards schools and roads, it put money towards annoying people and hurting the environment. 

This amount of money meant that I had an unlimited budget in hiring as many people as I possibly could get into the office. But that was the only thing that I had control over.

This Super PAC was ruthless and only cared about the bottom line. This meant that if any one of these people that I hired didn't meet their quota just once in the first two weeks, they were fired. If they didn't meet their quota 3 times in their employment there, they were fired. 

It didn't matter if they told their mother that they finally got a job, it didn't matter if it was snowing when they were running from door to door, it didn't matter if they quit another job for this one, it didn't matter that this was the only break of light for them in a depressing economy that labelled them worthless and disposable.

 I was forced to fire them if they didn't meet their quotas and then hire two more people to replace them that day or I was fired.

100,000 doors. It was the only thing in they cared about.

Within a week, I hired 120 individuals and was forced to fire 40. There was not one care given to any of the unlucky 40. They had $75 million dollars to spend and those who couldn't knock on 80 doors in 5 hours were just slowing them down.

The worst part you ask? What they were fucking spending our money on.

All of my readers have seen these stupid paper advertisement. You are bombarded every election by them and hopefully have no input in to who you are going to vote for. The sad part is that Churchill sort of has a point, the average voter will change their mind to this stupidity. This bullshit works better than anything else they have tried.

The ad was your typical ad. It lied about who we were and said we were non-partisan and called us a “fact finding group” as though we are a bunch of fucking archeologists sniffing some boners in the field to see if dick stink was still a problem for the cavemen. #FundedbyRomneyForAmerica

The canvassers would have 4 minutes to talk to the person, drop off the flyer, and run to the next house before they started falling behind. This treated the voters like they could be convinced in 30 seconds. All of these Super Pacs opperate under the assumption that Churchill was right and the voters were as stupid as we believed them to be. That any sort of complexity was a vice and that all they needed was another ad to convince him that our opponent was “on the wrong side of every issue.”

Sounds non-partisan to me.

The Democrats and Republicans spent close to half a billion each on the midterm election doing this sort of bullshit.

This has become a fight that it is all about quantity over quality. It doesn’t matter what type of ad you have, just as long as it reaches more voters than your opponent. You find your wedge issue and then you attack at it with a multi-million dollar ad by.  You can see this political reality all over the nation. 

Gardner outspent Udall in Colorado by $10 million and won by less than 50,000 votes.

That’s $200 a vote for the final stretch. If any political candidate just gave out $200 instead of leaflets, they would win in a landslide. But ironically enough, giving the money back to the people is what is against the law.

The terrifying part? 2016 is going to make this past election look like it was funded by a bake sale.

The Koch Brothers recently announced that they would be spending $1 Billion dollars on the next election. For a comparison, the entire GOP spent $673 million dollars on 2012 and the entire Democrat party spent close to $640 million.

Now this money could easily be dismissed as something that is part of politics as usual, but this amount shows that it is not and it has the power to limit your rights and turn politics into a spending war where both parties are spending billions of dollars to give you an ad that makes Nazi propaganda look like a church pamphlet.

Allowing unlimited spending like this allows families like the Koch brothers to completely buy an election and ramp up the costs so that only people with deep money ties will be able to run for office. It treats voters like a problem and lowers the level of debate to deciding between which President I would like to have a beer with and whether or not they believe in my "family values"

What family values are those? Unhinging every time when trying to put together an IKEA table?

This election is absolutely crucial because if Super Pacs are able to spend the money they are proposing without public backlash, then there goes the ball game. We don't even have to play 9 innings.  The next election will be even harder to stop than this one, and the next one even harder. Campaign Finance Reform will look like a pipe dream rather than a difficult political reality.

How do you defeat this unstoppable force you ask?

Stay informed and don't be distracted.

Your attention and what you respond to is the most powerful tool you have in your arsenal. The ads they are creating are targeted for you to become distracted and they are pretty damn good at it.

Clinton's email gate

Christie's bridge gate

Ted Fucking Cruz

Obama's Birth Certificate 

None of these things matter. None of these would go anywhere if it wasn't for the political machines keep this shit alive. No one cares if Clinton wanted to use a private email, or if Christie thought it would be clever to shut down a bridge for a few hours 2 years ago. Those issues don't matter and make you forget about the ones that do.

• A child has a one in five chance of being born into poverty in the United States

• There needs to be $285 billion dollars in school reconstruction and it needed to happen yesterday.

• There are more black men in prison in the United States than there were enslaved before 1865

• 97% of rapists will never see a day in jail

• There were 32,000 deaths caused by a gun last year

Everyone has an issue that they care about. Something that allows them to speak with passion and excitement in their voice. An issue that pushes them to research their opinions so that they too can contribute to the conversations. An issue that motivates them to stand up, not stay silent and say that 

"I'm right, you're wrong. I'm strong and you're weak."

 I guarantee you that no one's issue that they have planted their feet on has anything to do with whether or not the candidate followed state department email protocol. Fuck, I am writing this blog at work for God's sake. I follow none of my workplace's protocols. The only reason that issue is pushed forward is that it fits great in an advertisement and moves votes from those who are distracted.

Churchill is wrong, the average voter isn't stupid. The political operatives know that Americans care deeply about the issues, but when their candidate doesn't have the facts or issues on their side or they have been dragging in the polls, they call up the Super Pacs and start bombing with leaflets about how the other guy had a father born in Kenya. 

You can help stop this bullshit. You can make the Koch's brother 1 billion dollar investment look like the worst gamble in a century. If they spend 1 billion dollars and not make a difference, you bet your ass that corporations are going to hold off donations next time.

 Make a pledge to not click on another bullshit link or listen to another bullshit story. If someone starts talking to you about, scream and yell until they feel bad about their conversation topic. The more views they get, the more it validates their decision to dump billions of dollars into these false issues and continue to keep shoving sludge into our news cycle when there are some many issues that need to be talked about.  Read and stay active and when you start to hear these terrible stories in the news start to dominate the news cycle, speak up and make them shut up.

Patriots deflated their footballs? Talk about how 1 in 4 women will be severely beaten by their intimate partner in their life time. See if they care about the 2 PSI then.

Another round of Benghazi hearings?  Talk about how our foreign policy destabilized the entire Middle East and almost all of North Africa in less than a decade. The republicans are really hoping that everyone forgot about the Iraq War.

Obama reads mean tweets? Well no you can watch that, that's pretty cute and funny. 

Never under estimate the power of what you chose to listen to, what you chose to click on, and where you divert your attention.  These people invest millions of dollars into figuring out what you want. Say it loud, say it often, and don't listen to anyone who tells you what you should be caring about. There are issues that not only we care deeply about, but NEED something to be done on them. 

Super PACs shouldn't be allowed to dominate the debate. 

Net Neutrality was dead in the water because of all of the Super PAC money that was up against it. The only reason it became a reality was that the people took their computers and said "hell no."

Don't let the issues that decide the next election be determined by whoever has the biggest piggy bank. Join the conversation and shape the debate more than any dollar amount can by ignoring the bullshit and speaking truth. The voters aren't dumb, they just haven't heard anything smart since they can remember.

John Danger Kelly

Live Deliberately