Circular Firing Squad: Cease Fire!

Ian Kerr, November 20, 2016

A dozen days following an election that stunned the 48% of America (at last count) that voted for Hillary Clinton and many of the 5.3% who voted for someone else. Social media remains fertile ground for the blame game.

Instead of wasting keystrokes and LIKE buttons on blaming each other, can we come to agreement on the following things?

1. The Democratic National Committee needs to be led by a new chairman who 
• will be able to work the job full-time
• has not held high public office in the last two years
• will not endorse or oppose any candidate vying to be the party's Presidential nominee in 2020 until the conclusion of the primaries and caucuses.
• will work for the Party to be more of a reflection of the aspirations of its voters rather than the wants of its donors or other highly-influential individuals.
2. The DNC should scrap the concept of Superdelegates.
3. The concerns of working-class and middle-class whites hold much in common with those working-class and middle-class minorities. The Democratic Party has not stressed that enough.
4. When turnout is high in-general, it favors Democrats. The advantages Democrats have with respect to the voting tendencies of diverse voters do not accrue to Democrats if diverse voters do not turn out.
5. If it would be hard very soon to abolish the Electoral College, we should work in the various states to pass state laws that would require the Electoral Votes of that state to accrue to the winner of the national popular vote.
6. Polling. Trump won states despite the polls saying he was behind in those states by more than a normal polling error. Clinton made campaign decisions based on those poll numbers. Either get better polling or treat "5 points ahead" as "tied."

And can we consider the following:

7. Democrats should select their nominees for public office via Range Voting.
   For a technical explanation, see http://rangevoting.org/
   I'll offer a strategic explanation in a later blog post.