Two Different Mindsets at DU

[frazzled]

176. I don't think that's always true: let me give an example

Quite a few years ago the (very liberal) town I lived in was redistricted: essentially cut in two. Our longtime, liberal state representative got one half, together with a piece of a contiguous town that was far less liberal; and the other half (my half) was absorbed into a different contiguous district, far more working class, Catholic, and conservative.

Around this same time I was involved with the local chapter of a new group, Progressive Democrats of Massachusetts. Elections were going to be coming up, and the question arose as to whether we should, as a group, just skip making endorsement of the fairly conservative new state Representative we'd inherited. There was a well-known local Green candidate running for the spot, and people in the group would probably have liked to endorse her, but legally, if we used the term "Democrats" in our organization, we could not endorse someone from another party. The only options were endorse, or no endorse.

I decided that not endorsing was not going to be in the best interest of our burgeoning (but pretty powerful) organization. The Green candidate was not going to win, because our new district now consisted of more conservative Democrats from the other town. We were overpowered in numbers. What we did have was a more politically active, better educated, and frankly higher-income demographic. I argued that if we stayed out altogether (and people secretly just worked for the other candidate, individually), we were losing the chance to have any say whatsoever in the state government. We had a number of fairly influential people who had worked with state government, and members who had were active, experienced political agents. I thought we should try to leverage our assets to try to see if we could move this more conservative Democratic politician in our direction on a number of issues. I said we could sit from on high and judge, or we could try to use our power for change. But that sitting out would get us nowhere.

I was pretty shocked that my opinion ended up prevailing, at least tentatively, and we invited the incumbent state rep to meet with us for an interview. Obviously, the first issue to put to a Catholic representative of a conservative, working-class Catholic town was his position on abortion. He assured us that while, as a Catholic, he was personally opposed to abortion, that he would vow never to vote to rescind state laws permitting abortion, even if a Supreme Court decision on the national level were to (god forbid) reverse Roe v. Wade. Well, we had to trust him on that one. We grilled him on issues up and down for an hour and a half, and he was clearly looking to reassure his new constituency. He wanted, and needed, our endorsement. A Republican actually could have taken over.

In the end, we voted to endorse him, and we went out canvassing to convince our skeptical neighbors to vote. How did it work out? Well, our new state rep. actually became active in opposing dire legislation in the state legislature to constitutionally redefine marriage and ban same-sex marriage. He owed us one, and he delivered. He also became more liberal on a range of other issues involving labor, education, etc. I moved away a year later, but some 12 years later, he's still the rep, and I think he's doing a decent job representing his now not-so-new constituents.

We turned our political activism into change not by beating up on this guy, but by supporting him and working with him. We rubbed his back, and he responded in kind. You have to understand that the term "representative" means just that--these guys don't necessarily hew to hard and fast ideologies they want to see happen. They are representing constituents: when his constituents expressed their more liberal viewpoints--constituents who could contribute to his campaigns and go door knocking for him--he became more liberal.

It's not always that easy, but that's how it works. You will never make this happen from behind a keyboard. And you'll never make it happen by just carping. You have to get down in the trenches with these guys (and gals), and then they will get in the trenches with you. That's democracy.