Solve for Variables, Revolution Style

“There will be an army of x voters who will massively overwhelm the system such that they will envelop establishment y creating a political revolution, so we can a, b and c.”

If x = liberal or progressive, y = Democrats, a = pass medicare-for-all, b = break-up the big banks, and c = repeal the Citizens United decision, then the answer is Bernie Sanders.

If x = evangelical or conservative, y = Republicans, a = defund Planned Parenthood, b = repeal Obamacare, and c = roll back same sex marriage rights, then the answer is Ted Cruz.

The policy objectives could not be more opposite, but the structure of the plan to succeed could not be more identical. Applied critical thinking to the underlying logic of candidate messaging is nearly impossible to find in February of 2016. And it makes complete sense that a true believer in either answer to this equation would never see the parallel universe.

The Bernie Sanders answer to this equation includes an assumption:

• The Feel the Bern movement will be so big that it will cause voters in masterfully gerrymandered districts to reverse multiple cycles of electing Tea Party Republicans and shock all the experts who consistently predict that there will be a Republican majority in the House, and no filibuster-proof majority in the Senate for either party in 2017.

In Jane Mayer’s new book Dark Money, she details a 40 year plan by the Koch brothers to re-shape American politics so that is adheres to their Libertarian ideology. Re-districting to lock-in control of the House and running arch conservative candidates for school boards, city council, county commissioners courts, judges, state legislatures and governorships are core elements of that plan. Is the plan working in your community? Do you have someone on your local school board or city council who fits this description? Can we really extrapolate the momentum evident at rallies, on social media, polling, etcetera into a win against this structural advantage? How strongly do you believe?

The Ted Cruz answer to this equation also has some assumptions:

• The conservative base of the Republican party is much larger and historically more motivated than the progressive base of the Democratic party.
• It is extremely likely that a Republican president can safely rely on a Republican majority in the House of Representatives because of near perfectly drawn districts.

Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy will be 80 years old and Ruth Bader Ginsburg will be 83 when the next president is sworn in. Where are you on a scale of zero to five, with zero being completely risk averse and five being 100% risk tolerant?

In this context, my friends could convince me that Hillary Clinton drinks the blood of poor infant children to wash down her chocolate chip pancakes every morning, and I would still be a full-on Hillary Ho.