Online Polling To Determine Elegibility For "The Debate Stage," Not Money And Media-Mediated Popularity

"To Get All That Money, You Must Be Dull Enough To Want It"  

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/09/chesterton-to-get-all-that-money-you.html  

Dear F and Jimbo,

Billionaires don't have much trouble crossing the polling threshold (like Castro does) because our culture worships "success" denominated-in-dollars and therefore heavyweight billionaires like Bloomberg have automatic name recognition.  ("To Get All That Money, You Must Be Dull Enough To Want It"  http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/09/chesterton-to-get-all-that-money-you.html)

Like Trump, billionaires are seen, reflexively, as the kind of "successful" people dimwits wannabe. (As an aside, I will mention that parochial schools always performed the important function of warning against "the sin/mistake of greed" whereas greed is foundationally taught to "citizens-being-converted-to-consumer-units" in public schools.) 

If we want to get money out of politics (and make the electoral process "reflective" rather than "reactive"), we could start with "online polling" to determine how many Americans approve which candidates' written positions.

Here, for example, is Cory Booker's "Issues" page, but before you look at this page, see if you can accurately write down 3 of Cory's political positions: https://corybooker.com/issues/  

20 years ago, a conservative physician friend challenged me to state three specific positions promoted by one of my preferred candidates, and I was surprised to learn how little I knew despite relentless "media froth" that makes us think we know it all. 

In reality, that "froth" sucks up all the oxygen so we have no remaining time or energy to learn what candidates actually advocate. 

It's STUNNING how much we think we know... and how little we actually know. 

In keeping with "identity politics," we almost always "like" our candidates because they seem to reflect who we are - and then, after the fact, we ice the cake with a smattering of factuality.

Use online polling to determine elegibility for "the debate state" - not money and media-mediated popularity.

Make people read! 

Make people think! 

Make them research. 

Make them fact-check.

Require citizens to summarize candidates' written positions before they are entitled to an online vote.

And in the case of billionaire elegibility, don't just give foks a dollar sign hard-on.

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Team Julián
Date: Fri, Dec 6, 2019 at 10:16 AM
Subject: Urgent: polls still needed to qualify
To: Alan Archibald

Alan, Now that we’ve made the DNC’s donor threshold for this month's debate, we still need to get 4 qualifying polls to secure Julián's spot on stage.  We need your help to fund this push to get our message out and raise our poll numbers before the deadline hits -- contribute now. >> We can’t tell you what it means to have you on our team. We’ve seen a big wave of new supporters hop on board in the last few days, and we’re excited to keep growing.  Time is running out. Help us fund our weekend ads before midnight. >> If you've saved your payment information with ActBlue Express, your donation will go through immediately: Chip in $5 now >> Chip in $25 now >> Chip in $50 now >> Chip in $100 now >> Chip in another amount now >> Thank you, Team Julián