Let’s Start the Revolution – Get This Election Time Book and Here’s Why?
By Ralph Nader
September 13, 2024
My new book is hot off the press. It is full of hundreds of practical ways to help candidates to motivate voters and do good for America. Incumbents and challengers, cocooned by their corporate-conflicted political advisors, could benefit from this unique guide to political victory. Giving voice to two dozen seasoned civic leaders on many different subjects and adding some of my own ways to expand the GOTV turnout, my new book “Let’s Start the Revolution: Tools for Displacing the Corporate State and Building a Country that Works for the People” should be invigorating reading for voters and the people wanting to be elected in that spirit.
Am I surprised by the managers of the Democratic Party who so often reject the truism that none of us are as smart as all of us? Of course not. Not when they spend so much of their time dialing for the same corporate dollars as the GOP (aka Grand Old Plutocracy).
Don’t they want to win and do so by a comfortable margin so they can govern? Yes, so long as they do not alienate the military-industrial complex, Wall Street, the lobbies for the Israeli government’s genocide, the fossil fuel giants, and, of course, demanding big billionaire donors.
Kamala Harris confirmed the smug conformity that closes out important initiatives during her exchange with Dangerous Donald on September 10, 2024.
This exclusion of civic group input has been deep and longstanding by the Party of the Donkey. In July 2022, we invited any candidates wanting to break through the corporate-infested cocoon to a Zoom conference on winning campaign messages and tactics. Many of the lessons from this event are contained in my new book. The vast majority of political leaders, including Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, were not interested. So, against the worst GOP in history, the blundering Democrats lost the House of Representatives and barely kept the Senate under a Senator Joe Manchin veto.
Did they learn any lessons? Of course not. How could they if they kept operating behind closed doors, directed by avaricious consultants shoveling massive commercial money into insipid TV/video ads from which they take a 15% cut? An intense, effective ground game would produce better results for far less money.
The Democratic playbook also involves co-opting many labor union leaders and ignoring the messages of proven motivators of minority voters, like African-American Rev. William Barber. He is just out with his compelling, usable book “White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy,” emphasizing class bonding against impoverishment and powerlessness.
See what multi-millionaire James Carville, described as “the blunt-talking Democratic strategist,” told a New York Times reporter in January 2024:
“The D.N.C., [Democratic National Committee], the state party chairs, the labor people, the progressive advocacy groups, they all want a seat at the table.” “You can have a seat at the table as long as you keep your mouth shut…”
I hear you, James, just shut up and follow the Party’s orders that again and again have deep-sixed the Party at the state and national levels in languid contests. So few proposals to excite the cynical or bored electorate and give them tangible and aspirational reasons to go and vote. Go along with the Democratic Party’s serious missteps, scapegoating cowardliness, and withdrawal from half the country. (Red States).
The Party scarcely knows how to learn from its failures, hold political operatives accountable for disastrous results, and replace hacks with fresh energetic talent.
Let’s get this book’s message to the voters. You do not vote for a Party. You only vote for candidates on the ballot. At the federal level, you vote for three candidates – a president, a Senator, and a Representative. First, poll yourselves about what you want these candidates to stand and fight for. Then see whether their actual record matches their rhetoric. If they do not have any record on some of your mandates, summon them with like-minded voters to take a specific stand on issues such as cracking down on corporate crooks, or increasing long-frozen social security benefits, or cleaning up campaign corruption.
“Let’s Start the Revolution” STARTS with you, a demanding voter who refuses to be fooled, flummoxed, or flattered. Like a trimtab on a large ship, it only takes a small percentage of voters to become visible, active and break through the cocoons to change the climate of these campaigns.
Consider it a citizen lobby every couple of years. If you like any of the candidates, you can use the practical advisories in this book to secure many more votes on his/her behalf.
I’m talking about experience-driven, very usable policies, strategies, tactics, rebuttals, messaging, slogans, and startling ways to get out the vote, including having voters meet one another for stronger post-election citizen action. The powerful voters are those who vote for the issues furthering justice, peace, and freedom to safely fulfill life’s possibilities.
So, if someone asks you who you’re voting for – list the changes and reforms you are voting for and pull the candidates toward those objectives if they want your vote. That changes the dynamics away from the usual fundraising letters, the handshaking, and BS campaigns all around you.
Loaded with the on-the-ground civic actions by many fighters for justice, Let’s Start the Revolution’s tools are made for self-respecting voters who take their sovereign powers seriously. In the swarm of corporate power, never think the people’s well-being can advance without a critical mass of the people taking charge.
That, by the way, is the crucial lesson of the best chapters in American history. When the people decisively say YES only to a government that works for them.
Visit nader.org to find out how to get your copy of “Let’s Start the Revolution.”