This Isn’t The Only Race That Matters

Please vote. And not just in November.

This week, you have your choice of thinkpieces and analyses and recaps to read. Maybe you want to learn more about how Donald Trump’s nomination is actually a good thing. Maybe you’re interested in why Bernie Sanders is really running for the good of the country. Maybe you’re very invested in the numbers and you want to go deep on the digits.

Or maybe you’re just fucking exhausted with this whole goddamn thing and you want to burn it to the ground because the two-party system is fixed and we’re all just mortal creatures trapped in slowly-decaying meat sacks anyway. Maybe you’re already planning your move to Canada.

I get it.

Politics is exhausting and presidential cycles are especially hard. You want to see your candidate win, but more than that, you want them to get a fair shake. It’s a lot like watching football—whatever side you’re rooting for always seems to be the one that’s getting the most egregious fouls against them, and somehow the game seems to be designed to ensure that your team doesn’t win.

But of course, the rules have existed for a long time, they were not invented (most of the time) to destroy your guy, and they can be changed if something especially dramatic happens. But because rules—in politics and in sports and in basically everything—are written by people, enacted by people, and upheld (or not upheld!) by people.

People make these things, frustrating as they are, and, as a result, sometimes people can incite change to them.

The problem is, often, knowing where you can spur change and how. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s usually not in a presidential race, and it’s usually not by railing against the system, itself. It’s by showing up to the polls, year after year and maybe even several times each year, to vote for people and laws and ordinances and language changes that do real things.

Politics isn’t a monolith, but it can be a brick wall.

Make no mistake: there are systematic ways that politics and policies are actively detrimental, racist, sexist, ableist, transphobic, heteronormative, and basically perpetuate any other kind of exclusion you can think of. Disenfranchisement of all kinds (whether it’s the way caucuses make it difficult for working folks to participate or the way that mass incarceration of Black men has reduced the voting power of people of color in key states or the very-convincing but oh-so-incorrect rhetoric around voter ID laws or maybe you live in a state without a functioning Voting Rights Act) is rampant and it is on purpose. There are a great many systems of all sizes that are designed to retain wealth by those who have it, ensure inequality, and generally keep people out.

And I’m certainly not saying you should sit out the presidential race; you should not. Anyone who follows me on Twitter knows I find it infinitely fun to participate in this traditional circus of adults behaving like high schoolers (seriously, Rubio’s dick joke? Incredible). Beyond that, I think you should campaign and vote and caucus if you can because it’s your right and because participating in the system is an effective way to be part of it. And of course, the person in the Oval matters quite a bit (POTUS → SCOTUS and all), but expecting radical, top-down change from a president is misguided.

I’m also not trying to shame people who can’t participate due to the myriad existing constraints; there are a lot of reasons why you may not be able to cast a ballot or take the time to campaign. When I was working 6o hours per week and living paycheck-to-paycheck, I didn’t exactly have time to phonebank.

But if you can participate—whether by campaigning or voting—you should. Every year. Every election.

These existing systems didn’t spring forth like oil from the earth. They weren’t brought into the world by the invisible hand of The Government. They were drafted and designed by people, are carried out by people, and are upheld by people, whether those people are complicit in the end game or not.

More importantly, though, they weren’t built as an entire piece. They are assembled from little blocks which ladder up to a giant mechanism.

The war on women’s health, for example, isn’t the product of one huge law, signed by the President, that says Women Can’t Have Access to Abortions; it’s the product of dozens, if not hundreds, of little local, state, and federal ordinances and laws and hurdles and barriers. TRAP laws, the prevalence and permittal of “crisis pregnancy centers,” mandatory waiting periods, and, until recently, government funding for abstinence-only education are, by themselves, a problem—but together, they create a battle being fought on all fronts to retain access and rights.

This death by a thousand papercuts ensures that activists and advocates and even lawmakers who are trying to do the right thing are spread thin, and all but guarantees that voters feel too overwhelmed to even keep track.

Add in the fact that much of the electorate is already burdened with, you know, living a life in an era of unpredecented income inequality, and there are about a zillion ways that moneyed and powerful forces (read: people!) have made damn sure that you get all riled up about politics every four years (hello, have you met ALEC?) but remain largely checked out the rest of the time.

Look, I know you’re not going to listen to me, but will you at least listen to John Oliver?

“It’s hard to be mad at people whose names you don’t know.”

Regardless of the promises that presidential candidates make, the truth is that most legislation happens in cities and states, and it happens at the hands of the lawmakers in the video above—who go unchallenged for multiple reasons.

The first is partisanship; many potential candidates—community organizers, activists, etc—who might consider running won’t if they don’t think they have the support. However, once again, “support” is just code for “people.” So showing up and organizing and becoming involved is the first step toward changing that.

Second, in many areas, being an elected official actually pays dick. In Texas, legislators get paid literal poverty wages (because it’s technically “part time”), which basically ensures that only wealthy people or people with a spouse or people with a secondary income can even afford to take the job. Changing this requires a change in the law, which again, comes from political involvement. And while it may kill you to consider increasing the income of lawmakers you hate, consider it a downpayment on someday maybe getting lawmakers you hate less.

Again, don’t get confused: Putting completely terrible lawmakers into positions of power and then ensuring they stay there for fucking ever is 100% by design—but that design is contingent on you continuing to toss out your middterm and off-year ballots.

There are plenty of parties out there (i.e groups of people) who have a vested interest in retaining the status quo and/or furthering exclusionary agendas, and who absolutely pad the pockets of many lawmakers. But the base salary of a politician—however measly—is paid by taxes, i.e., by you.

They work. For. You. And, in some areas, they’re actually doing really good work.

This isn’t theoretical; very consequential laws on the local level are getting passed across the country, and it’s only happening because people give a shit about what’s happening during midterm elections, who’s in their State Senate, and what their City Council can do. A person needs only to look at Alabama right now, where one city’s decision to raise the minimum wage has been stamped out by a preemption bill at the state level to see the complexities of state and local battles.

Meanwhile, Oregon passed a minimum wage increase in their legislature, and numerous other states (Colorado and Maine and Washington, just to name a few) are looking to take it to the ballot. Cities, too, have increased their wages and put in place new protection for workers, thanks to their City Councils. The same goes with sick leave and health care and even fights between cities and states over fracking.

These are the kinds of local laws that have a huge impact on your personal finances and your daily life. They are the laws that most benefit working people, people of color, people of all genders, and people with disabilities. But unfortunately, they are the laws and positions and campaigns that people are most likely to sleep on.

There’s a lot of ways to take apart these systems, but all of them include you showing up. Yes, groups like ALEC have the ear of your elected officials—but you elect those officials. Or at least, you would if you campaigned and voted every year.

So if and when you become too exhausted, too disenchanted, or too upset by the ins and outs and seemingly unending onslaught of policies and politicians, remember this: If you choose not to be at the table, you are basically assuring that someone else will take your seat, and you may not like what they have to say.

Wonder how a guy like this ends up in charge of drafting abortion legislation? Easy—it’s because first, he got elected, then second, someone with money and energy and time and a desire to keep abortion away from women (in this case, AUL) bent his ear and slipped him some pre-written legal text and then, because it’s Texas and because people don’t vote in mid-term elections, there weren’t enough people around in the House of Representatives to stop the bill from passing.

And it’s not just State Senators and Representatives—it’s Congressional leaders who go to DC to legislate on behalf of your state (a lot of those seats are up for grabs this year, by the way!), it’s your Secretary of State (who determines how your state elections are run!), and Attorney General and Governor. It’s the judges and comptrollers and school board members and port commissioners and and any number of other weird little offices that you might skip past or not even bother to look at.

And literally every one of them matters in some way.

The systems that you hate the most are slowly built when you’re not paying attention, and they cannot be shaken apart by one candidate or one election or one elected official. If you loathe the control that Wall Street has over politics, if you are furious about low wages, if you are irate about student debt, your best chance to do something other than ball up your fists and grit through it is to bone up on politics outside of presidential race.

Even with all of the barriers to reform — even with the Koch brothers and Citizens United and Glass-Steagall and Trump’s self-funded campaign and dark money — there are many, many chances for regular folks to influence politics and yes, even slowly take apart systems. They don’t just happen in November every four years.