A Scale of Equality – Maximizing Turnout for 2020 Election

What’s required to activate and unify voters on the left?

Kochkash Increases Inequality:

America’s political and economic policies have moved from greater equality after WWII and through the 70s to massive inequality in the decades since. This has happened surreptitiously without the backing of a majority of America’s citizens. Fear mongering, mass misinformation, and voter suppression funded by billions of Kochkash dollars have foisted this shift upon America.

The laws passed under FDR and LBJ, and improvements for people of color and women since, helped advance our political and economic equality. Since then, neoliberal economists, corporate boards, and SCOTUS have reduced equality by empowering and protecting the oligarchy.

Scale of Equality/Inequality:

Imagine an economic/political equality scale of +10 for maximized equality to -10 for maximized inequality. The +10 end of the scale is not absolute equality and still has some inequality – limited mostly to the oligarchs. The zero point is where instances of inequality and equality are equal – they exist in equal portions but not necessarily equally distributed. The -10 end of the spectrum, maximum inequality, includes some equality – limited mostly to the right-wing authoritarians.

The +10 end of the scale also correlates to left-wing communalism and the -10 correlates to right-wing authoritarianism. This communal/authoritarian nature of this equality scale takes us from maximized democracy and individual freedom in both our economic and political systems to minimized democracy and individual freedoms in both systems.

For reference, Scandinavian countries like Denmark might rate a +5 and Nazi Germany would rate a -10.

Democracy at Work:

To maximize democracy and individual freedom for the +10 POLITICAL system, one requirement would be a law that makes voting a right, registration automatic at birth, and voting without arbitrary, fear/hate-based, restrictions like voter IDs. To maximize democracy and individual freedom in the +10 ECONOMIC system would require employee owned/run corporations as has been done in Mondragon, Spain, since the end of WWII. This is in contrast to -10 society where both economic and political systems favor a minority, purist, group of oligarchs that have enslaved all others.

History Against The Scale:

Assume that in 2019, under the current right-wing authoritarian Administration, that America is approaching a -7. Maybe after WWII, we were at +2 and after LBJ’s civil and voting rights acts, and Nixon’s clean air and water acts, we made it to +3. Then Bush II took the scale to -3 and gutting the VRA by SCOTUS took it to -4 under Obama while the Republican Congress kept Obama from pushing back.

2020 Goal:

Relative to this equality/inequalityscale and where America stands in it, what should our goals be for the 2020 election? How hard should voters push back in order to lay a certain foundation that moves our democracy and individual freedom back to at least a +3? What kind of voter turnout could help move us higher on the equality side of the scale? What message will inspire that kind of voter turnout? What will bring back the base that dropped out of the 2016 election? What will bring back those who, in even larger numbers than the disinterested base, went to a third party in 2016? The losses from our base that either stayed home or voted third parties was seen nationally.

Reaching The Goal:

Based on the detailed analyses of the election and re-election of President Obama, and subsequent post analyses of the 2016 and 2018 elections, part of the answers to the questions above for maximizing our political and economic success in 2020 is to:

• invest significantly in the ground (GOTV) game,
• select a candidate who will:
  • hasten a return to more equality, democracy and individual freedom,
  • ignore the never ending distractions which hide growing inequality, and
  • address and propose solutions to America’s inequalities caused by excessive economic, social, racial, and environmental injustices driven by right-wing authoritarians.

What Say You?

Based on the equality/inequality scale above, what should our goal be to politically and economically maximize equality, democracy, and individual freedom?

I think our goal should be +7.