I get Spam Fundraising from the Democratic Party and Trump. Guess Who Wins?

Whining is not a fundraising strategy.

Above 96th Street is Ours.

This statement from a leftist 70s New York City collective leader prompted my shift to the center. I thought it was both ridiculous and frightening, and quit attending the collective. I had no desire to die in a Weatherman-like bombing or Symbionese Liberation Army-style holdup.

I have since become a centrist, a fan of the incrementalism practiced by the likes of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I wonder if abortion would be so fiercely contested if we had edged to that decision over years, gathering more cultural support, instead of a sudden change. Abortion was defined by conservatives as a wedge issue; at the beginning, it wasn’t seen as a concern of evangelical protestant voters.

I voted for both reasonable Democrats and Republicans and managed an organization with a bi-partisan board for fifteen years. I made a couple of mistakes politically and learned who had a special interest in an issue and whose ox might be gored.

I contributed to Democratic candidates this last cycle and signed up for Trump’s newsletter to see what the other side was spouting.

My email has been shared with multiple Democratic fundraising organizations. They hound, plead, play victim, and spin fear.

• The GOP plan is to completely rewrite the Constitution.
• These Supreme Court Justices are sounding the alarm.
• Stop the Insurrectionists.
• If we lose our Senate majority, the Democratic Agenda is Over!

My email box has had fewer emails from the Trump shills, but each email is like a prize envelope from Publisher’s Clearinghouse. Get a chance to win a trip to Mar-a-Lago! Get a Trump-signed cap! I’m not asked to give, I’m asked to buy. It’s offensive but less offensive than the Democrats.

This is a sample size of one. I support the democratic process, believe in its founding principles, recognize it needs constant vigilance and reform with the times. But I hear sentences that start “When the revolution comes” frequently, a phrase I hadn’t heard spouted for fifty years. I’m not sure whose revolution it is, only it isn’t mine. The revolutionaries fifty years ago could be criticized for their youth, naivete, idealism that could be warped into violence to gain an end. The revolutionaries now are cynical, hiding behind labels and virtues they co-opt, threatening and enacting violence.

Look, I watched the last five years with fear and loathing, and understand we have been through collective trauma. But I don’t like playing the victim, and I don’t like being the chump. Few of us want to choose between those two options. I’d like to ask our political leadership, and those who craft every message which goes out, to treat us like adults with serious concerns and intelligence.

There is a local candidate to whom I emailed a donation and note of support, stating my willingness to volunteer. I am sure he has a marketing program for online solicitations or has signed on with some political consultant who automates answers. I get bi-weekly invitations to donate and zero responses to my email about personal involvement.

My message to any candidates or party officials or political consultants out there: PLEASE STOP. Take responsibility for the messages that go out in your name. One of our human objections is feeling dehumanized, one of the data points in some algorithms. I certainly feel that way in the war for dollars and the war for votes.

I realize the normal we are heading towards is a new normal, there is no going back to comfortable assumptions of the way life rolls forward. I would be open to a centrist party, but our country has never done well with third parties.

I support ranked-choice voting as one method that forces candidates away from the fringe if they want to be viable. Ranked-choice voting may require us as citizens to spend more time becoming educated about multiple choices.

(Ranked-choice voting requires each voter to rank candidates as first choice, second choice, third choice, etc. The candidate with the highest ranking, not the number of first-choice votes, wins the election. This method can mitigate the hate/love reaction to the only two candidates who survive primary true-believer votes.)

Another reform that would help is requiring bi-partisan task forces to establish new districts after census updates. Gerrymandering keeps Us vs. Them alive.

Now that I have written this mild-mannered rant, I intend to unsubscribe from all political e-mails and let my attention follow the issues.