(There’s an Act Blue page soliciting funds to take a poll on the Lakoff Initiative)
You may have seen me live-tweeting the events last night at SEIU Local 721 in LA, where Professor George Lakoff and the folks behind CA Majority Rule met with around 200 activists, union members, elected officials, legislative candidates, representatives from Speaker Bass’ office, and more, to talk about the just-released proposed November 2010 initiative on majority rule. If you read through both the live tweets and Dante Atkins’ notes on the meeting, I think you get a picture of a potential split inside the California Democratic Party, one that could have major implications for all elections next year.
It should be noted that CDP Vice-Chair Eric Bauman was there to offer support. He gave a typical stump speech and said very plainly that “the reason you’re here tonight is the solution” to the problems that grip the state, problems he laid out very carefully and completely. He was honest in saying that any Democrat who opposes this kind of measure will be told that “vertebra are available for installation… I think the chiropractor’s lobby can help us with that.” He made clear that we don’t have a spending problem, “we have a common sense problem,” and he pushed everyone in the room to work toward a real solution.
But Professor Lakoff’s speech seemed to capture the dynamic between the grassroots and the establishment much better. Lakoff opened by talking about the origins of the initiative that he filed yesterday:
I got into this last spring when Lonnie Hancock invited me to speak to a group of State Senators. And I said, what’s the problem, you’re the majority! And they said they don’t have any power. And they explained the whole 2/3rds rule, and how the leadership has to work with them because we want to lose as little as possible.
And I asked, why aren’t you in every assembly district explaining this problem? It’s about schools, healthcare, everything, and there’s no answer. I went back and said that there’s something really wrong. Its name is democracy […] Which is more Democratic? Majority rule, or minority rule? You knew the answer from the 3rd grade on. Even Republicans know the answer but they don’t like to. We know there will be a blowback if we try to change things, but the hardest blowback is coming from our side. The reason that Loni Hancock invited me was that there was a poll done by a progressive organization, and it asked the wrong question.
This is my business. Studying language and the framing behind language. If someone presented you with the poll question: would you rather have more taxes and higher services, or fewer taxes and less services. Obviously, it went with the latter. And the legislature concluded that they shouldn’t put anything about taxes on the 2010 ballot. Why do they think that? Because they think that polls are objective, and that language just floats out there. They’re wrong. Language is not neutral. There’s a truth here that that language hides. It’s the truth that we don’t have Democracy in this state. We have minority rule.
In response, because nobody else would do so, Lakoff’s initiative reads: “All Legislative actions on revenue and budget must be determined by majority vote.” It’s tweetable and it’s fairly simple to understand. It’s framed as a democratic action to return the state to democratic rule. And it appeals very much to those interested in preserving democracy.
Which is the consensus opinion inside the Democratic Party. We know this because, back in July, the state party passed a resolution calling for majority rule for budget and revenue. And it didn’t pass with contentious debate – it passed unanimously. One of the very few people to speak out against it was the Party Chair, John Burton. But the rank and file supported it utterly.
It was something of a reversal for Burton, who when he was trying to get the votes of those rank and file supported a majority vote position. Now he’s seen some polls and decided to take half a bite out of the apple. Lakoff described his exceedingly short meeting with Burton last night.
Burton wouldn’t talk to me for more than a minute. He just said that he saw the polls, and it said 55% on budget and nothing on taxes. How many of you were at the state convention? You voted on a resolution about this. How did that resolution come before you? The resolutions committee. And that was the point. We got the resolutions committee to do it and got a standing ovation. The rank and file Democrats know it’s the right thing to do and they have to tell their leaders. So how do you change this? You have to have a poll, but you have to have pressure. The major donors have to call Burton and say, if you want any money from me, you get behind this. And he has to hear that from donor after donor and organization after organization. We have to win in our own party first. I think John Burton is a good person, same with Bass and Steinberg. It’s the good people that we have to win over first.
Later, a woman from AFSCME asserted that Willie Pelote was willing to give $1 million dollars to a majority vote campaign until Burton called him and told him to forget it.
You can argue about what the most effective approach is to deal with California’s budget dysfunction. We’ve been doing that all week. You could say that leaders must prepare the ground by tying things Californians want to revenue, and tell the story of Republicans thwarting the popular will. You can say that we need to throw out the Constitution and move straight to a convention. But what becomes incredibly clear is that there is a groundswell of support inside the party for a simple move to restore democracy to the state, and if the establishment in Sacramento rejects that, in particular John Burton, the subsequent outrage will have a major impact on grassroots support for all Democratic candidates next year. There’s just no question about this. The grassroots already feels disrespected and abused by the leadership. They got Hillary Crosby into a statewide officer position based on just this kind of frustration. They feel that one of the richest economies in the world is run like a third-world country, and they know that they will never change that when procedural rules force Democrats into a defensive crouch, where they see their role as losing as little as possible. This split will grow and branch out into statewide officer races, legislative races, etc. The grassroots workhorses won’t be very inclined to work so hard for a Party that disrespects them and fails to act in their stated interests. Not to mention the fact that everyone knows that, while we wait another Friedman Unit until the electorate figures out the problem on their own, people will suffer from budget cuts, people will go bankrupt, and people will die.
The CA Majority Rule team has a multi-pronged strategy. One, they are raising money for this poll, to try and prove that a properly framed set of questions will elicit the desired results. Two, they will put Speaker’s Bureaus together in every district in California with people who can talk about majority rule and restoring democracy, complete with real-world examples of the fruit of the state’s dysfunction. Three, they will seek to pass endorsements of the one-line majority rule initiative in every Democratic club and county committee in California. There’s an executive board meeting coming up in November where this will probably come to a crescendo, too.
The real story of the Lakoff initiative is a story about rank and file Democrats wanting their leaders to follow their will. You can argue about tactics or strategy or approach, but that’s what it boils down to. And the party leadership had better take heed.
Of course he’e worried not so much about the measure itself but about its fallout elsewhere on the ballot. If it draws out extra yahoos that won’t be good for Babs etc. On the plus side the marijuana initative will draw out a bunch of the other sort of yahoo, but I doubt JB would see that in itself as an argument in favor of putting majority rule on the ballot. In any case, the concern needs to be addressed head-on. IMHO armoring the majority rule measure along the lines I’ve suggested would help, but I suspect Burton would want to see a poll showing voter support in the mid-60s before reconsidering his position.
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welp, in my county, the Burton slate steamrolled everyone (including me) for CDP delegate. My appeal was all about restoring majority rule. No one cared.
Too many of the higher-ups are interested in moving around the wheel of state sinecures and this might actually make the Legislative elections seriously contested in new places, so they don’t want that.
No candidate for 2010 that doesn’t actively support this gets a dime from me.
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One can be sure that Burton’s new position didn’t arise out of the blue, but came from key 2010 candidates and their consultants. Since Burton said previously that reelecting Boxer was the reason he wanted to be chair, one has to ask: is it Boxer and her team who are afraid of having this on the ballot? If not, they need to speak out, and right now. If they are silent while the party walks away from challenging the 2/3 rules, one can draw the appropriate inference of their views.
Similarly, where are Brown and Newsom? Where are Steinberg and Bass? When state and legislative candidates are interviewed for endorsements, they need to be asked not only whether they theoretically favor eliminating the 2/3 rules (they all do), but what they specifically have done to make it happen. They could also be asked, point blank, whether they are telling Burton something different from what they are saying to the rank and file.
Lakoff is carried away by the purity of concept of a one-sentence paradigm-shifting initiative. This way of thinking is also very appealing to me, but experience tells me that it’s awfully hard to plan for the success of such things.
I’ve done exactly the kind of thing I suspect Lakoff of (in part unintentionally) doing, i.e. being willing to go down in flames to make a principled point, with the Alameda County Nuclear Free Zone initiative in 1990 (recalling that Livermore lab is here), stumbled into a successful initiative that really was paradigm-shifting (the first local South Africa divestment law, Berkeley 1979), and various experiences in between (including much more recent ones).
What bothers me about Lakoff is that his principled point is at least partly academic, and now he’s in a completely non-academic arena. Of course the pure version is also very appealing to activists, but they (you) at least need to be aware that they make for a very poor focus group on an issue like this.
I’m not suggesting that going through an exercise of armor-plating this initiative against opposition argumnents is necessarily going to persuade the Burtons, Boxers and Browns of the world that it’s something they should provide leadership on, but maybe there’s a chance of getting them to not actively resist it.
Or maybe Lakoff’s poll will show that it’s a winner without any changes, but does anybody really expect hat outcome given the recent PPIC results (and if you haven’t read them, please do so before responding)?
First let me say that I do not believe it is up to the state party chair to set the direction on issues and to “refuse” to support anything. Though I am pleased with many of the changes Senator Burton has made in the CDP, I campaigned against this behavior when I ran against him, and I still disagree with it. At the convention in April, a board member for the Native American caucus asked me where I stood on an issue of interest to the caucus. I replied that, as chair, I did not see it as my place to take a position on that or any issue. I saw it as my job to build an organization that supported the goals of the body. It was up to them to get majority support for their issue. At that point, the state party would support it. As you point out, that has already happened for majority rule.
As for the PPIC report and other polls, professor Lakoff continues to insist that the wording of the polls themselves, and the order in which the questions are asked can affect the outcome. I know I’ve been asked polling questions where none of the answers presented accurately reflect what I would have answered if given free choice in the matter. So his contention that polling methods can affect the outcome seems reasonable to me. The results of the PPIC poll tell me that California voters are conflicted. They like prop 13, but want more state services. They want to continue popular legislation, but don’t seem to recognize the need to pay for the things they vote for–except maybe they do because they would vote for a split roll. In short, these results either reflect a badly constructed poll, or a badly informed electorate–maybe both.
Personally, I believe leaders use polls to see where they need to educate and persuade voters–not as an excuse to quit. Leaders who do that gain the respect of citizens. Legislators who do not, gain the disdain you see reflected in the PPIC report and other polls.
Senator Boxer is a strong candidate. I hope other candidates the Democratic Party fields will be as well. But it is up to them to run on their merits. We cannot, and should not, defer important changes in state government to protect any candidate–no matter how valuable. Nor do I believe we need to.
whether the CA dem electeds and leadership actually has any interest in governing without asking permission from republicans first. whether they are scared of losing, or whether they are actually scared of winning and having to actually do something and be held accountable for it.
this is getting tiresome, this caving before even trying.
“Your request to join the CAMajorityRule group was not approved.”
Unsurprising, I suppose, since they seem to have committed at the outset to that loser one-sentence model at the outset and would rather not hear other views. It’s far from sure that anything winnable could be salvaged from the concept, though, so perhaps no great loss. Still, to blow someone off like that without even a short note is poor organizing practice in addition to being rude.
I get tired of the constant “this doesn’t poll well among the public, so we won’t even try” mentality. Elections are not mere affirmations of pre-existing positions, they are the culmination of campaigns aimed at education and persuasion. Developing the necessary support for the majority rule amendment won’t happen spontaneously; it will take a lot of hard work. It may well take two or three election campaigns before we pass it, but backing down before the fight begins GUARANTEES DEFEAT.
Making the Democratic Party solely responsible for the state budget and its implications sounds all right for me. Not needing any Republican votes to pass the budget or taxes would make Republicans want to run social moderates in Burbank and Pasadena just to get the majority again.