User:Woozle/My Left Wing/Revolution 2.0 Outline RFC/strategy/retake the Dems

This is MSOC's original suggestion, as I understand it. It seems very workable, and something that would be a good idea regardless of other goals we might pursue, but it needs a lot of refinement. I posed some of these questions in a comment on MSOC's blog post:


 * Can this even happen with a Democrat already in office, or are we strictly looking ahead to 2016?
 * Are we sure that a popular vote truly determines who is nominated, or is the decision ultimately made by power-brokers? (If the latter, there are further decisions to make.)
 * How do we go about identifying suitable candidates, and then convincing a lot of people to back them?
 * Assuming we succeed in getting them nominated, how to we make sure they win?
 * Assuming they become President, how do we prevent them from being suborned (as Obama possibly has been)?
 * Assuming they are not suborned, what should their strategy be? (A good starting point would probably be (a) a list of positive acts a President could take without Congressional approval, and (b) a list of positive positions a President should take in order to slow down the tsunami of Bad Stuff we seem to be experiencing)
 * Should we perhaps be looking at state-level offices to begin with -- go for smaller fry while we're still learning, don't mess with the big fry until we've worked out all the kinks in our operation?
 * Are there any existing grassroots orgs who would be willing to work with us on this?

concerns

 * Will this be effective soon enough? There are a lot of worrying signs that serious wibbly-wobbly-collapsey things may be happening soon. Of course, that may be just political theatre to keep us scared and voting conservatively.
 * How are the oligarchs likely to respond, once they start to see that we're a threat? What is the point where our actions will start to become a threat to their interests?
 * How can we prevent "meet the new boss -- same as the old boss"? (See preventing re-corruption.)
 * Can we make serious change just by putting different people in the same corrupt framework? (preventing re-corruption argues that we can't -- but I'd be happy to be shown otherwise.)

advantages

 * Of the ideas I've come across that would actually be likely to change anything, this is probably the least radical and most legitimate. It works almost completely within the framework of the existing system, and doesn't require that framework to be stretched or bent in any significant way.