New chair of the DNC Ken Martin, you should read this

Or- What Americans really wanted a party to say in the 2024 election

In the NY Times editorial “The Democrats Are in Trouble. This Man Can Save Them” ^[1]  Daniel Chandler quotes “a survey conducted in 2021 that found that 66 percent thought America’s economic system needed to be completely reformed or needed major changes, while 85 percent said the same about its political system.”

The vote wasn’t for Trump, it was anti-establishment. Americans don’t think they have been getting their money’s worth out of their government. And while Trump promised disruption, he doesn’t have a legitimate plan to do anything other than blow things up. Harris presented us with “I believe in an opportunity economy” whatever that is.

I’ve certainly been ignored through multiple runs for congress and local office. I may have lost more elections than any single American in history, but that’s not a stat I want to fact check. Part of it can be attributed to I’m in advertising, not a lawyer, and despite my beliefs that creativity can solve almost any problem, Americans seem to prefer to elect lawyers and politicians to office more than any other career.

Personally, I think that the legal profession is the only one that rewards plagiarism (everything’s a citation) and almost guarantees that one of the two parties in a case is always a loser. Advertising on the other hand, is where when it’s done well, everybody wins.

In advertising, we typically start with a creative brief. A good one does the following:

1. Here’s what we know about your brand
2. Here’s what we’re going to do about it
3. Here’s how people will feel about your brand after they’ve seen our work.

Einstein should have been in advertising.  He said “If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about the solution.” If Einstein got the problem right, the solution would come easily, but if he got the problem wrong there would be no solution.

I cheated, and started out with what we know is the problem, our political system is broken. We’ve lost confidence in it. Of course it didn’t help that Trump spent the last 4 years telling everyone that our system of voting was rigged and inaccurate.

I’m relieved by the election outcome for 3 reasons:

1. The TV ads have stopped.
2. We now know the voting isn’t rigged.
3. We didn’t have a civil war (Jan 6 on a larger scale)

I take umbrage at number one. These weren’t ads. Ads that those in my profession create have to be true. The ads I saw were nothing close to true. And even if we did have truth in political ads, 30 second ads shouldn’t be the key to political decision making, ever.

They spent over $16B to give us a choice between Coke and Pepsi, when the whole country is pre-diabetic and doesn’t want to drink either. Reality, we could have done a lot more with the money, like feed starving children.

As someone who buys programmatic advertising (advertising targeted toward you, based on data collected by spying on you), I say the first thing we need to do is make any targeted advertising pay you 30% (the same amount Apple and Google charge to put an app in their software stores) of the revenue collected to target you. You should also have the choice to opt out, and never see the ad again, unless they pay you 5% more, and give you another chance to opt out. So, instead of political ad campaigns making Zuckerberg, Bezos, and the Alphabet bunch rich, you get paid to watch ads. That way you can still make money as they replace your job with AI and robots.

The first reform we need is a true “political information system” to inform and educate voters. I started a 501c3 years ago to try to bring this system to existence ^[2]. If you’ve ever been on the dating site OKCupid ^[3] (popularly known as OKStupid) it provides a “match percentage” for your prospective life partner/candidate. It asks questions that you choose between 3 or 4 responses, and respond with your answer, what you want your candidate to answer, and how important this is to you.

Example:

Do you believe recreational pot should be legal? The choices are yes or no, and is this important for you, your mate, and how important.

Imagine if there was a question bank for politicians and voters that would match beliefs of candidates and voters? What happens if there’s also a system that provides a scoring system on how elected officials voted on each issue- to see if their votes aligned with their answers?

And this needs to be at every level. Currently, there is a website called I stand with ^[4], which does this for presidential candidates, however the questions aren’t directly answered by the candidates, and the rest of the information available is minimal at best- not in a standardized format.

If we’re ever going to break the stranglehold of a 2-party system, where there can never be a challenger brand (oops, that’s ad speak for someone who dares to come along and break the norms) that has a real chance.

If you need an example of a challenger brand devised by an ad guy, look at “Liquid Death ^[5]” a guy selling water that’s not from a mountain spring, but in a can, with a name that’s the exact opposite of what it is- it’s the healthiest drink around, and it even comes in a can that’s recyclable instead of in a plastic bottle which isn’t. Someone cracked the code, and is going to laugh all the way to the bank. Read a case study about it- and why this brand broke through. ^[6]

Speaking of the bank, advertising always comes with a constraint of a budget. We’re no longer running elections in this country, they are more like auctions. If you want to know who bought the last election, good luck, because billionaires were dropping 2 comma money bombs on their side or the other in total secrecy.

While there was a ton of noise about how every voter had to be registered and present a real ID, there is no such restriction on donors. It’s time for registered donors with real time reporting. I’m still waiting for the FEC to sue me for reporting all my donations came from “electionsnotauctions.com ^[7]” instead of named donors. I claim that donors have the same rights of privacy as the corrupt politicians in my hometown, Dayton Ohio, where my FOIA requests are coming back using the “GloMar ^[8]” exception- and that disclosure of the grand jury testimony in a “Culture of Corruption” investigation would somehow violate their right to privacy. When other candidates stop filing reports saying the money came from “ActBlue” or “WinRed” I may feel so inclined to reveal my donors, but, there’s still a question of if self-reporting by politicians is ever a good idea.

This way, a candidates backers would show up in their dating/candidate profile as well, so you can always tell who bought whom.

I also wonder why background checks aren’t required for anyone running for office. I can’t tell you how many criminal records have been hidden in the post journalism apocalypse that has killed off investigative reporting. We’ve got candidates with name changes, expunged records, and then just straight-out criminals- George Santos anybody?

The third part of this political revolution is to build an open-source software platform for all levels of government to conduct their meetings in a universally searchable and transparent way. Right now, many local school boards and local governments pay for a subscription to a private company to provide meeting minutes software. This makes it incredibly difficult for the public to tell what the people they elected are doing with the power bestowed upon them.  And worse, when the jurisdiction stops paying for the service- the data disappears.

These are the minimum requirements for implementation of nationwide ranked choice voting. Ranked choice was invented in the United States ^[9], but cast aside long before the tech stack necessary to make it work was available. As a perennial candidate, I can tell you that the League of Women’s Voters guides were far from indicative of a candidate’s suitability.

It’s OK to continue with party primaries for national elections to narrow the fields somewhat, but, it would be on a single day, not stretched out over months. (And for the sake of small business- stop electioneering before the fourth quarter where most businesses must buy ads to drive sales). By the time we got to vote in Ohio, I only had one choice, for most of my life as voter. That’s not a primary, that’s an ordination.

All of what I’ve described so far is the changing of the system that’s broken, but not the actual changes to our government. We’ve got a strategy for going to the market- but not the benefits the people want/need/win.

I did an ad in 2022 that told the story of the game Monopoly. That it was originally developed as a teaching aid, to show what happens when one person has all the money- the game stops. That’s effectively where we are right now. The game ended around 1980, we just didn’t realize it.

We need to restore the power to the people. The role of government is to serve all of us, and here are just a few ad campaigns that would win folks over.

“Health care is National Security”- Americans are the only industrialized nation where a major illness causes bankruptcy. You are entitled to the same health care your congressman or random government employee has. We are going to put a 10-year plan in place to move people from health care rationers to providers- eliminating the middleman of “health insurance” to become health care for all. A healthy workforce costs less and generates more taxable income. Our current system failed.

Our banking system failed in 2009, and the people bailed them out. We’ve already capped credit card interest rate for Credit Unions at 15% ^[10], starting tomorrow, all banks will be limited to this rate. We know that when the rate is 20% or more, it’s impossible to pay it off. This is an easy fix, that can be implemented immediately. In fact the political odd couple of Bernie Sanders and Josh Hawley just introduced a bill yesterday to cap it at 10%! ^[11]

The US Government is the largest purchaser of goods and services. Starting immediately, no purchases will be made from any company that pays their CEO more than 20x their lowest paid employee ^[12]. If we have no-choice but to buy goods and services provided by these companies, we will require stock grants in the company according to a formula based on the factor of the pay differential. We’re also banning all stock buy backs, stock grants, and requiring a return to investors through dividends. There will be a 95% tax on any stock transaction where the “investor” held the stock less than a year. We need to get back to sound, long term financial markets. The value of a company should never be established by random market forces but on the long-term valuation of their business model.

Harder sell but needed is a return to patriotic service. As a veteran, I can tell you there is a difference in the way I view our country than civilians. I believe every American, upon turning 18, should be required to perform 18 months of paid government service. We can put them to work doing childcare, elder care, conservation, public works, or the military. In exchange for their service, a 4-year higher education bond is earned to be spent at public or private institutions. A well-educated America is one that’s better qualified to choose our leaders and keep us the world leader in wealth creation.

While one party made a big deal about immigration, being born in this country shouldn’t grant you automatic rights to vote or be an American- real public service should. And while I believe the voting age should be matched with the age to drive (that’s a lot more dangerous responsibility) I also believe that suffrage should be taken away if you don’t give back and demonstrate your love and respect of what this country is.

The crazy thing is, everything I just proposed is neither D or R, it’s something everyone can buy into. Michael Jordan once said he wouldn’t take political sides because “Republicans buy shoes too.”

I could list 100 other changes that need to be made that aren’t about “Government Efficiency” but about restoring the brand called our government, but I won’t.

None of this will happen unless we take the money out of politics and break the two-party system. The one that picked one of the candidates in a back room and didn’t even have the courtesy to ask if this is who the party wanted.

If Ken Martin is serious about winning- or reforming the Democratic party, he needs to study how the Obama Campaign built an entire tech and data stack to effectively run an election.Then implement a complete system- from local party websites all using a standardized platform, to a really good canvas tool (not that crap that NGP VAN whores out) and teach people how to use it. I will write a whole follow up post eventually on how to set this up properly in the near future.

While I planted seeds to come along the way, I never came out and said the most important thing about our divided country- a majority of voters doesn’t agree with either major party, a clear indication that we’re full circle back to Einstein who said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

I hope that I’ve made my case for electing more creative thinkers. Because, there’s another old adage about going to court, which should also apply to getting elected in this country, “only the attorneys are guaranteed to win.”

Song “More than words” by David Esrati