I recently had a couple heated discussions with a close friend about which candidates people should support in the next federal elections in both Canada and the USA. In both cases he was upset about the idea that our electoral systems forces voters to choose the ‘lesser of two evils’. In Canada, he hates Trudeau because the Liberals have been asleep at the wheel for years about some truly catastrophic problems facing Canadians—such as the housing crisis and the shortage of family doctors. He also hates Joe Biden and the Democrats because he is supporting Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians.
I get his frustration. But I also believe that it is tremendously wrong-headed to insist that people should vote for candidates who have absolutely no chance of winning—especially when the alternatives are so grotesque. As I said to him, “in the US you don’t get to vote and get someone better than Joe Biden—all you can do is either help him get elected, or, Donald Trump. Similarly, in a Canadian riding where the winning choice is between one particular leading candidate (Liberal, NDP, Bloc or Green) and a Conservative, any vote for a third candidate will end up supporting Poilievre. Needless to say, he was far from happy with my argument—even though he had to admit that it makes sense.
His response is that it is profoundly unfair that the system forces people to settle for the ‘lessor of two evils’. While this appears to be the case, I’d argue that isn’t completely true.
This conversation, as I see it, came about because my friend simply doesn’t understand how politics really works.
Unfortunately, because people’s sense of self-identity is often wrapped up around the idea of democratic decision-making, they sometimes get extremely angry if anyone suggests that they don’t really understand what’s going on. If you are one of these people, you might want to go somewhere else on the web and look at cat pictures to prevent the onset of high blood pressure. But if you think this arrogant so-and-so just might have some insight from the decades he spent as both an activist and participating in electoral politics—read on.
My experience is that most of the people who get really upset about the current leadership of our nations tend to be folks who haven’t spent much time either as an activist or as someone working for a candidate. What happens instead is they immerse themselves in on-line news and commentary. In times past, these folks read newspapers, magazines, and, watched newscasts. Now they watch YouTube influencers and engage with social media like Reddit and Substack.
Obviously I don’t think that this is always a bad idea. (After all, you are reading my blog.) But unless someone has really worked within a local community organization, union local, or, Electoral District Association, it’s easy to come away with the idea that politics consists of a very small number of charismatic individuals and paid staff calling all the shots and doing all the work. But nothing could be further from the truth.
To understand this point, I think it’s useful to consider a term that I first heard on an Ezra Klein podcast: “political hobbyist”. This term was coined by Eitan Hersh who illustrates the difference between real political engagement and just reading lots of news and bitching from the sidelines.
people think they are deeply engaged in politics. They follow the news—reading articles like this one—and debate the latest developments on social media. They might sign an online petition or throw a $5 online donation at a presidential candidate. Mostly, they consume political information as a way of satisfying their own emotional and intellectual needs. These people are political hobbyists. What they are doing is no closer to engaging in politics than watching SportsCenter is to playing football.
Eitan Hersh, College-Educated Voters Are Ruining American Politics.
Political hobbyists—to apply the quote from Proverbs—are people who “curse the darkness” instead of “lighting a candle”.
Why do people become political hobbyists, and why do we have so many now?
I suspect that a large part of the reason is the decline of geography as a key part of what it means to be a human being. In days of yore (my childhood) people lived in communities almost totally defined by geography. The people we knew lived nearby, we read local newspapers, listened to local radio stations, etc. Indeed, the life of people was so geographically-constrained that governments often worried about citizens identifying themselves primarily by their local city, or, province/state, instead of country. That’s why the Canadian government started national institutions like the Canadian National Railway and the CBC—as unifying mechanisms that knit the country together.
Things are very different today for many people. Instead of living in geographic communities, nowadays many of us live in virtual communities of interest. We don’t all read the local newspaper, instead we pick and choose where our information comes from. The local daily has gone under—first savaged by press barons like Conrad Black, then the carcass was picked clean by techlords like Mark Zuckerberg. Instead people congregate with fellows of like mind in ‘filter bubbles’ where they can trade the same lies (and sometimes truths) with each other—egging each other on until their chosen leaders assume the level of sainthood and the opposition become demons straight from the fiery pit.
This has all come about because of modern technology. Before the Web, every newspaper, book, and, newscast we ever saw was controlled by gatekeepers who excluded points of view that weren’t promoted by important people or reflected the existing attitudes of the majority.
(There was a ‘community of interest’ among the very small class of engaged intellectuals based on letters and books. This was known as ‘the Republic of Letters’. While it did have significant influence on both progressive politics and science—it was absolutely microscopic compared to what people now experience through the Web. In addition, every single member of the this group was also firmly embedded in a much, much stronger geographic community.)
People also joined face-to-face organizations—churches, service clubs, amateur sports leagues, unions, political parties, etc—where they rubbed-up against people who might come from somewhat different backgrounds, live somewhat different lives, and, wanted somewhat different things from life. (Unfortunately, people who were really different tended to be excluded from these groups—which is why I’m not one of those folks who hearkens back to the ‘good old days’.)
We no longer live in that world. This blog has so few subscribers that it could never have justified being published in print. The operating system (Linux Debian) for the computer that I use to write it was created by volunteers spread all over the world—most of whom will never meet one another physically. I’ve published several books that sell as either Ebooks or on-demand published paperbacks. I’ve had tremendously positive feedback from some readers—but my texts only appeal to a limited market and no old-fashioned publisher in his right mind would spend the money on a print-run for any of them.
Much of this is a good thing. It has a lot to do with why a lot of people are no longer kept in closets, ghettos, kitchens, and, institutions. But it also means that the political institutions and regulations that were designed to knit-together isolated geographic communities into nations no longer work the way they were supposed to. And that gets me back to political hobbyists.
The political systems that govern both the Canada and the United States were designed for people to gradually amass influence by learning how to interact with other people in a geographic area. To get that influence people were expected to talk to hordes of different types of people, listen to their concerns and how they speak, and, convince those people that you were worth following towards a specific goal.
This required tact and the ability to find compromises between people with very different life experiences. These are two things that are practically nonexistent on line. Indeed, the algorithms that decide who to promote and who to sentence to the oblivion known as ‘shadow banning’ specifically select against tact and compromise. For them, the great virtue is to create outrage because that gets people into the sort of angry back-and-forth that creates maximum clicks. This is what attracts the political hobbyist—as opposed to people who have learned the lessons of old-fashioned politics.
A key point that political hobbyists miss is that there are a great many ways that someone can be involved in politics—it's not just voting. Being an active member of a trade Union—that's a very political thing to do. Being a member of a local environmental group that lobbies local government, organizes demonstrations, who directly works to restore damaged ecosystems, or encourages people to ride bicycles instead of driving cars—those are political acts too. Being a computer programmer who volunteers to create open source software is a political act. Even as simple a thing as showing up at City Council to support new housing in your neighborhood also counts. In addition, joining and volunteering (ie: knocking on doors, making phone calls, putting up signs, driving people to vote, etc) for a candidate that you actually do like are also political acts. And there’s no reason at all that you cannot do any or all of these things while voting strategically in any given election.
A lot of folks might find the above idea weird beyond belief. Why should I go door-to-door or fundraise for a candidate that I’m not going to vote for? People need to do this because voting is less than the absolute bare minimum that citizenship in a functioning democracy demands. And winning an election only happens after years and years of hard work developing an electoral machine and educating the public about policy issues.
(This is an example of the ‘background’ that I am trying to share with people in this blog—which is why I call it the “Backgrounder”.)
I was involved with so-called ‘fringe’ electoral parties for a decades. I’ve run as a candidate several times federally, provincially, and, once even municipally. I also worked ‘behind the scenes’ as a volunteer for other people doing the same thing. In each and every case, I was fully aware that we didn’t have a hope in Hell of winning. So why did I bother?
to educate the public about issues that were beyond the “Overton Window” and as such were not being discussed by any of the other parties or the mainstream media
to teach people who were concerned about these issues, but who mostly knew nothing at all about how politics really works or how to organize an electoral machine
to raise the profile of specific progressive individuals in the community to the point where they might actually stand a chance of getting elected some time in the future
Let me illustrate how this sort of thing works with an actual example. In the 1990s a publisher by the name of Mel Hurtig became so upset about the free trade deal between Canada and the USA that he bankrolled the creation of something called the National Party of Canada. When 1993 rolled around, there was a federal election and a friend of mine announced that she was seeking local nomination for the party. I thought that this would be an excellent opportunity to raise the profile of this woman, who I thought had a lot of insight and enthusiasm that would really benefit the community if she could get elected to some office. And, as I saw it, having her run for the National Party would be an excellent opportunity to start the ball rolling.
I got some flack from people for saying this out loud, but I suggested at planning meetings that while she didn’t have a hope in Hell of winning a seat in the national election, running for the National Party federally could be an excellent way to help her eventually get elected to City Hall. People worked really hard to get her sent to Ottawa, but she lost. But in the next municipal election she got elected to the School Board (her husband was a school teacher so she was interested in the issues). After at least one term on the Board, she decided to run for Council. She got elected, sat for many years on it, and, was IMHO a tremendously progressive force in the city up until she retired.
Her example illustrates two extremely important points:
politics is a marathon, not a sprint
real change grows from the bottom up, not the top down
This woman’s career got off the ground because she was in it for the long haul. She understood that most folks only get elected because they are willing to run again and again until they win. Mel Hurtig and the people behind the National Party didn’t realize this, which is why they put dump trucks of money into one or two campaigns and then gave up when they failed to win even one seat.
She also realized that it is far, far easier to first get elected to local office than provincial/state or national. Moreover, it is a lot easier to have an effect on the local level than others. That’s because if you want to get elected above that, you have to get involved in party politics—which means that you have to amass influence on two other levels of governance first before you can even begin to have any say in governance. You don’t just run, you first have to win an internal party election to get onto the ballot for that party. And, if you get elected you then have to work tirelessly to build enough influence in the party caucus to be able get put into a cabinet seat where you will actually be able to do something (if the party leader lets you).
Again, she gives a good example of the issues involved. After several years as a prominent member of city council, she decided to seek the Federal Liberal Party nomination. To this end, she bought a membership in the Liberals, and pulled on the goodwill and name recognition she’d built over the years to get other people in the city to also buy memberships so they could vote for her nomination. She ended up losing, but only by a very slim margin. If she had been a member of the Liberal EDA for a few years before this nomination race, she probably would have won.
So she had done the bit where she had built a community profile—but she didn’t do the bit where she built a profile within the local Liberal Electoral District Association (EDA). And she paid the price for it.
But if she had won the nomination and then got elected in the general election, then she would have faced the difficult step of having to amass enough credibility with the other Liberal MPs—and with the party leader—to gain some influence in the party. And that would only have resulted in any influence over the government if the Liberals had actually won the election—which is never guaranteed.
My feeling was that if she had gotten the nomination, and had won the seat, and the Liberals had formed the government, she would have been profoundly frustrated by how little change she would be able to make.
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
For tryin' to change the system from within
Leonard Cohen, from the song “First We Take Manhattan”
There are another two points about politics that people need to understand.
It’s plug simple to organize and run for a party that represents ‘more of the same’. But if you genuinely think that the our society needs fundamental change—that’s a lot harder to sell. Let me illustrate with a practical example.
Guelph had pretty much the strongest Green Party Electoral District Association (EDA) in the country for many years and Mike Schreiner (the leader of the Green Party of Ontario) is currently our MPP. Most people I meet seem to think “it just happened” or “Guelph is just different”. But I know it was as a result of many years of work a very small number of people put into running ‘forlorn hope’ candidates (eg: me) in campaigns that progressively recruited more and more supporters, and, trained more and more people in the mechanics of running campaigns. And, the local EDA worked hard between elections to not only raise the profile of the party, but also to help citizen’s groups in their work to build a better society. (Mike was especially prominent in helping the Wellington Water Watchers.) All this effort started in 1988, and Mike was elected in 2018. IN OTHER WORDS, IT TOOK 30 YEARS OF ORGANIZING AND PUBLIC EDUCATION TO GET HIM INTO QUEEN’S PARK.
What all this work between elections did for Mike Schreiner was build strong connections in the community. This meant that when the incumbent, Liberal Party Minister of Education Liz Sandals, decided to retire from politics many voters decided that he was a ‘known quantity’ and ‘it was his time’.
This raises yet another point that most politically naive people don’t understand—getting elected involves a great deal of luck. If Sandals hadn’t retired, no matter how much work Schreiner and his team put into the campaign, he probably wouldn’t have won. But to paraphrase Louis Pasteur, ‘chance favours those who are prepared for it to happen’. All those years of work building the profile of both the EDA and the candidate meant that Schreiner was the right person in the right place at the right time.
Readers might be asking at this time why it is that the electoral system is so darn resistant to change. I get the frustration, but it’s important to realize that for most of human history the inertia I’ve been cataloging above has been considered a feature, not a bug. PEOPLE ARE TERRIFIED OF CHANGE AND GENERALLY FIGHT TOOTH AND NAIL AGAINST REFORMS OF ALL SORTS. This is understandable. After all, not all changes are for the better. History is littered with examples where ‘innovations’ were brought forwards by horrible people (or misguided good people) and calamities resulted.
So why bother?
I have two responses to this question. First, because it is tremendously empowering to work with a group of like-minded people who are all pulling together to make the world a better place. That’s a personal, psychological reward. That’s what the saying about it being better to light a candle than to curse the darkness is all about—and it’s true.
As for the huge amount of inertia we have to overcome to make substantive changes in our world. Yes, it is generally ‘baked into’ the way our democratic decision-making works. But the systems that we use were designed in the middle ages and the 18th century. So they aren’t nimble enough to deal with the avalanche of quickly changing problems that modern technology has sent roaring down upon us.
I get how appallingly frustrating it can be to attempt to engage in the “20 years of boredom” that Cohen is referencing in his song. Moreover, I’m not saying that the path I tried to follow is something that other people should try to follow. In fact, I’d say that in many ways my work with the Green Party was a profound failure. Indeed, I tried to help create a political party that would redefine citizen engagement beyond the parliamentary process and also bring a new understanding about economics, social organization, and, the environment to the table. What resulted was just another political party and politicians who are only slightly less conventional than the status quo. So for heaven’s sake, don’t think I’m saying that people should follow my lead.
But I do want to suggest that citizenship should be much, much, more than just reading a lot of news on line, getting angry, and, voting every four years for someone who can’t win. Yes, educate yourself, but don’t wallow in feeling bad about the state of the world. Look around and try to find venues where there is hope for real change—and get involved. And I don’t just mean cutting a cheque. There are a lot of interesting things people can do both in geographic communities and communities of interest. Get involved with them and learn what it’s like to work together.
I’m not just an activist, I’m also a Daoist. And two key points in that spiritual path are the idea the people have to put disciplined thoughtful work into something in order to become better, more aware human beings. That’s what ‘kung fu’ means—it’s not just martial arts. I put decades of my life into the kung fu of electoral politics and learned a lot from it. Another key point is the idea that ‘the dao that can be described in words is not the real Dao’. Another way of saying this is ‘you have to figure it out for yourself’. I cannot tell readers what particular path they should follow to become citizens in a world that is becoming better—you have to figure that out for yourself.
So go out there and do something. Bitching about how bad things are is pointless.