Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have in common that tens of millions of Americans are disgusted and angered with Washington DC, and the oligarchic political class that runs our country.
On the Republican side, this has fueled Donald Trump's incredible soaring in the race for the GOP Presidential nomination.
On the Democratic side, the growing candidacy of Bernie Sanders is speaking "political revolution" and taking "on the enormous economic and political power of the billionaire class."
The campaign finance reform movement has for years been beating the drum that Congress is broken and not working properly for the American people, and that this is due to the corrupting influence of money in politics.
A top issue for Bernie Sanders is "getting money out of politics."
As to Donald Trump, he publicly talks about how both the Democratic and Republican politicians love him, and treat him very nicely, and he Trump gives the politicians on both sides lots of money, because he is a businessman and that's what it takes to get the politicians to do what he needs.
The widespread anger and disgust with Washington DC, and the strong candidacies of Trump and Sanders that are being fueled, provides the finance reform movement excellent opportunity to make headway.
The attention getting paid at the level of the 2016 Presidential race, while beneficial to the CFR cause, should not distract the CFR movement from its understanding that the needed change will will not come from the top down, but only because the people at the grassroots are able to bring enough pressure to force it from the bottom up.
MoveToAmend, Represent.Us, Wolfpac, and StampStampede have been dedicating their efforts at local, grassroots levels for several years, and this must keep up. MAYDAY is working at the Congressional level, and it too must keep up.
While change will only be forced from the bottom up, what is happening at the national level in the 2016 Presidential race should be maximally availed of by the campaign finance reform movement in whatever effective ways can be found.
I have been pushing this for a couple of months since Bernie Sanders entered the Presidential race. @DefiningAmerica has been helping me recently.
With all political eyes focused on the first Republican Presidential debate to be held in Cleveland this evening, it seems a good occasion to renew our urging the campaign finance reform movement to get more public attention to its cause by finding ways of linking the same with aspects of the frenetic action going on at the national level in the 2016 Presidential race.
EDIT
It also seems appropriate to give a status report on the campaign finance reform organizations about this.
Except for MAYDAY, I haven't kept up with the specific activities of the organizations recently. I assume they continue to pursue their locally focused efforts of which I have been aware in the past. Represent.Us and StampStampede have been supportive of things put forth in this blog, by retweeting or favoriting some tweets of mine containing links to recent entries in this blog.
MAYDAY has been unresponsive. Possibly the explanation is that MAYDAY has not figured out what to do about Zephyr Teachout's conundrums.
If you are in the grassroots, there are things you can be doing right today. For information about these, see the below links:
1. We are ready for more districts to target
2, Politicking and strategizing re Sanders campaign
3, Will you tweet this to your Representative?
EDIT #2
See Are CFR'ers tweeting tonight?
EDIT #3
Bernie Sanders is going to Los Angeles on Monday (August 10th). Tell Southern California Representatives in Congress they need to #lead4reform, or they will #FeelTheBernHeat. See Bernie to LA on Monday.
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