The silver bullet

I just received this email from Justin Ruben, MoveOn.org Political Action, the progressive organisation, headed 'Super awesome news'. 

I think we may have just discovered the silver bullet that could help us win the whole election.

Although Justin never actually mentions who he means by 'us', it later becomes apparent that the objective is 'to keep Republicans from stealing the election', so I guess 'we' must be the Democrats, the only electoral force capable of preventing a Republican victory.

I don't think I need to elucidate the chasm between a Democratic electoral campaign and 'the progressive promise of our country'. 

What they are doing is soliciting donations to implement their secret 'new voter turnout method', to be matched by an unnamed 'major partner' to the tune of half a million bucks, and suggesting that this has to happen by tomorrow.

Two weeks ago, we ran a secret test of a new voter turnout method in a state primary election. There were 170,000 voters in the study. We just got back the results, and our new method was 3.7 times more effective, dollar for dollar, than the best techniques used by campaigns today. 

I can't give all the details of what we figured out, because we don't want the other side to know. So this has to be somewhat vague. But basically, we took groundbreaking research from social psychology, and for the first time, applied it to voting. And, wow, it really worked!

So it seems that MoveOn.org considers American progressives, who support the wonderful policies and practices of the Democratic Party, to be a bunch of suckers who will just fork over money on their say so. 

But it gets worse. Leaving aside the little matter of just what they are measuring and what counts as an improvement and how that was determined, remember that the 'new method was 3.7 times more effective, dollar for dollar, than the best techniques used by campaigns today'. They go on to assert:

Let me put that in perspective: Normally, we're delighted if we figure out something that gives us a 10% improvement. This test showed a 370% improvement.

This is sleight of hand, if I can even dignify it as such.

Imagine 100 people would vote if you did nothing. Assume that $1 spent deploying 'the best techniques' provides a 10% 'improvement', so 110 would vote. If the new method is 3.7 times more effective, then spending $1 would result in 137 people voting. Yes, a 37% improvement is very significant and really is 370% as much as a 10% improvement, but it is not a 370% improvement in the number going to the polls, which is what the email suggests.

I'm going to append the full email so you can see just what it says, and importantly, doesn't say, although I can't recommend it. It might or might not be significant that the email is couched in the first person singular, but signed 'Anna, Ilya, Laura, Wes, and the rest of the team', or that while Justin, Political Action, sent it, replies go to Anna Galland, MoveOn.org Civic Action.

Finally, if you have three and a half minutes of your life to squander watching Samuel L Jackson channelling Dr Seuss, this video links from the front page of the MoveOn site. 

Interestingly, it's not a MoveOn production, but funded by the Jewish Council for Education and Research, who use 'humor, viral video, celebrity, and social media to break through the election year clutter and reach millions of voters'. In case you're wondering just how deluded they are,

In foreign affairs, President Obama achieved three important goals: bringing American troops home from Iraq and beginning to exit from Afghanistan, stepping up the fight against Al Qaeda, and restoring America's relationships and reputation among our allies. In the Middle East, the President has backed up his words of support for Israel with an unsurpassed record on issues of security, while balancing American interest in democracy, human rights, and stability as the Arab Spring swept the region. President Obama has organized an unprecedented international coalition and made clear his determination to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. 

===========================================================

Dear MoveOn member,

I think we may have just discovered the silver bullet that could help us win the whole election.

Two weeks ago, we ran a secret test of a new voter turnout method in a state primary election. There were 170,000 voters in the study. We just got back the results, and our new method was 3.7 times more effective, dollar for dollar, than the best techniques used by campaigns today. Take a look at this simple chart:

Making phone calls |==

Sending mail       |=====

Going door-to-door |=======

OUR NEW METHOD     |=========================

Let me put that in perspective: Normally, we're delighted if we figure out something that gives us a 10% improvement. This test showed a 370% improvement.

This alone could be enough to tip the balance in the Senate, help Democrats win the House—and maybe even flip two or three swing states.

The challenge: We had no idea we'd get such great results, and to have everything ready in time, we need to commit by Monday!! Which means we have to raise a good portion of the entire $3 million budget by then. Arrgh!

But things are suddenly looking up, because at 5 PM on Friday, I got a call from a major partner who's as excited about this project as we are. They're offering to match every dollar donated, up to $500,000, with their own efforts! That means you'll get twice the bang for your buck.

So, whatever you're doing right now, can you take three minutes to make a contribution so that we can use this incredibly powerful new voter turnout method across the country? This is the moment to open up your wallet for this election. Seriously. CODE RED. Please help!

Yes, I will contribute $5 to help us deploy our new voter turnout method in every close race this year!

I don't want to look back on Nov. 7—the day after the election—and think, "If only we had a bit more money in late September, we could've won those two crucial Senate races! Or (God forbid) we could've run up the margin enough to keep Republicans from stealing the election!" And I KNOW you don't want to be thinking, "If only I and a few other people had chipped in the price of a pizza, we'd be celebrating right now!"

So I'm trying to make this as clear as I can. This is the most promising set of test results we've EVER seen at MoveOn. 

I can't give all the details of what we figured out, because we don't want the other side to know. So this has to be somewhat vague. But basically, we took groundbreaking research from social psychology, and for the first time, applied it to voting. And, wow, it really worked!

The question is whether we can raise enough money in the next few days to roll it out nationally. If just 30,000 of us chip in, we can change the outcome of this election. Can you chip in?

Yes, I want to make a donation.

Thanks for all you do.

–Anna, Ilya, Laura, Wes, and the rest of the team

Want to support our work? MoveOn Civic Action is entirely funded by our 7 million members—no corporate contributions, no big checks from CEOs. And our tiny staff ensures that small contributions go a long way. Chip in here.

Dismal allies

Ordinarily, I have a lot of time for Rebecca Solinit. The stuff I've read about people organising in the context of disaster is inspiring. E.g.

Personal gain is the last thing most people are thinking about in the aftermath of a disaster. In that phase, the survivors are almost invariably more altruistic and less attached to their own property, less concerned with the long-term questions of acquisition, status, wealth, and security, than just about anyone not in such situations imagines possible.

In this piece, she excoriates what is, I think, fundamentally a straw man - those who presume 'the job at hand is to figure out what’s wrong, even when dealing with an actual victory, or a constructive development'. She probably has a point when it comes to the kind of rhetoric most usefully deployed in discussion with liberals and other reformists. She is probably right if what she's saying is that these are among those we need to break from their lethargy and involve in actual movements. If all we have to say to the liberals is how wrong they are, as I confess I'm inclined to do, it may not help to mobilise them.

But she points to an advance or two in American society and conflates the actual movements that brought them about with electoral politics. She trots out the old saw about the perfect being the enemy of the good, but what she's really talking about, as is usually the case, is that slight, contingent improvement is actually the enemy of fundamental change, or even significant improvement. Her metaphor - 'every four years we are asked if we want to have our foot trod upon or sawed off at the ankle without anesthetic' - is not only grotesque, but a gross exaggeration. I'll refrain from trying to come up with a more accurate metaphor.

Ultimately, the issue is not which of the two principal candidates will do the least harm, much less which will do the most good. It is which will open the greatest opportunities to organise. Howard Zinn was right when he typed the oft-quoted (but unsourced) aphorism, 'What matters most is not who is sitting in the White House, but "who is sitting in" -- and who is marching outside the White House, pushing for change.' Or, in much the same vein, 'Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens.' And Rebecca Solnit knows that as well as anybody.

There is a traditional conceit on the left that it is only when Labor is in office that their supporters can observe and experience their sellouts and attacks, which can lead them to break to the left. If that applies to the Democrats, you'd expect those who supported Obama so enthusiastically in 2008 to have moved left by now. In fact, many of those who anticipated hope and change have somehow not noticed what Obama has done to them, or made excuses for his 'failure to achieve his objectives', as if his objectives were theirs. Most have been demoralised.

Another view is that a marginally more right wing government is likely to attack workers more vigorously and arouse a more determined fightback, particularly as the Tories, the Liberals, the Republicans don't bother trying to don the camouflage of a workers' party. This raises the ultimately unanswerable question, 'What is the last straw?' How much will we tolerate before we pull our fingers out and organise a fightback?

Yet another factor is which government will leave the most space for organisation by tolerating dissent and so forth. I don't think anybody anticipated that Obama would be the one to set new records for victimising whistleblowers or to organise the nationwide crackdown on Occupy. But there you go. We can only speculate about how draconian a Romney regime would be. Much less how people would respond.

The received wisdom is that in the primitive and undemocratic US first past the post electoral system, a vote for a candidate to the left of the Democrats is a gift to the Republicans. There are still people going around blaming Nader for the election Bush stole with the connivance of the Supreme Court in 2000. Gore, of course, would never have invaded Iraq, they allege, as if 'would never have' is some kind of evidence. Perhaps he wouldn't have invaded Afghanistan? Perhaps 9/11 would never have happened? Or perhaps 9/11 was just a convenient pretext for adventures long in the planning that had more to do with control of petroleum supplies and pipeline routes than with Islamist terrorism? Perhaps there were more powerful forces at work than Al Gore could or would have been able to resist, even if he had been that way inclined?

At the end of the day, then, we don't really know whether a Romney administration is more or less likely to propel Americans onto the streets than another four years of Obama. I couldn't entirely rule out the possibility that the Occupy Wall Street movement, the fightback in Wisconsin, or the Chicago teachers' strike might not have happened under a Republican president. But in terms of November's election, I think a respectable showing for a third party candidate would be the best outcome. If four or five percent of American voters were prepared to abjure the received wisdom and endure their liberal mates' censure to vote for the Greens candidates, it would be a clear sign of a break from the two party lesser evil orthodoxy and perhaps even from electoralism itself. Beyond that, it might even enhance our confidence to get out there and fight on the streets, on the campuses and in the workplaces.