[Peace-discuss] running a serious opposition candidate in IL-15...

[Jenifer Cartwright]

Great idea -- I like it.
 --Jenifer

--- On Thu, 8/14/08, Robert Naiman <naiman.uiuc at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Robert Naiman <naiman.uiuc at gmail.com>
Subject: [Peace-discuss] running a serious opposition candidate in IL-15...
To: "Peace-discuss" <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
Date: Thursday, August 14, 2008, 12:47 PM

I partially agree with Carl. It is a sad state of affairs that there
is not a serious opposition candidate running against TJ on the
Democratic line.

The key question here is "who'll bell the cat." It's not a
trivial
undertaking to be a "serious candidate," as Carl knows all too well,
even in this context, where "serious candidate" doesn't mean, I
would
submit, "seriously expecting to have any reasonable prospect of
winning," since that is virtually impossible, but "putting up a
serious fight in the battle of ideas."

One could "put up a serious fight" without matching TJ's money.
But a
group of folks would have to commit themselves to that as a project,
including, most importantly, the candidate.

A lot of folks who are focused on winning elections, which is a
reasonable thing to focus on, will understandably prioritize putting
resources elsewhere.

But there is a lot to be said for not passing up such an opportunity
to contest the debate.

A group of activists who were interesting in pursuing this opportunity
could campaign in a different way than is usually done when the focus
is on winning. The focus of the campaign wouldn't be "vote for
jones."
It would be on putting an agreed set of progressive ideas and policies
into public debate. The candidate would agree to focus on promoting
that agreed set of progressive ideas and policies.

If one did a campaign this way, I think the calculation about time and
money would change for some people. If you ask people to give time and
money to "vote for smith," and you know smith has no chance of
winning, people think - why should I give time and money to this.
There is no hope of victory. I could give time and money to something
else that would have more effect.

But if one did it as an activist campaign, then what one is giving
time and money for is to promote the set of agreed ideas, and that
expenditure of time and money could be very efficient, when you
compare it to other ways that time and money could be spent promoting
those ideas, because when one does it as part of a political campaign
there is a lot of free media and free attention.

If a group of folks in C-U decided to take this on as a project -
trying to run an articulate peace candidate on the Democratic ballot
in IL-15 in 2010 - I would vigorously support it.
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