Fixing our Democracies and Winning Elections in the Age of Junk Politics: A Guide to Transformational Campaigning

Introduction

Our current political era is perhaps one of the most horrific of recent memory – marked by the rise of spectacle-driven, authoritarian, and populist politicians who have exploited a deeply disillusioned electorate. In these dark times, it seems increasingly difficult for candidates with values to win.

This book argues that, rather than an aberration on the right, this phenomenon can be attributed in part to current campaign practices across the political spectrum. Dominated by overly transactional tactics and devoid of the meaningful participation and connection that once existed in our everyday civic lives, the resulting trust gap is now culturally endemic and, as a result, corroding our democracies.

In this book, Ned Howey proposes a renewed paradigm, strategic models and practical advice on how we can return to and innovate towards transformational campaigning in the age of junk politics.

The methods and tactics we employ in a campaign should not be just a transaction; they should be transformative. This means shaping the supporters themselves, their communities, and consequently, the political terrain.

Who is this Book for?

• Election campaign workers: campaign managers, digital and field directors, organizers, and staff.
• Candidates who want insights to a different way of running campaigns.
• Vendors and consultants working in campaigns.
• Political tech developers and the community
• Political Parties who struggle to win elections for the deeper values of constituents in these modern times.
• Foundations, PACs, and Political Organizations who want to be conscious of the impact of the tactics their money is put towards.
• Anyone interested in how we can create a better politics through our campaign practices.

Summary of Contents

• Transactional vs. Transformational Practice
  A deep dive into what distinguishes transactional practices from transformational ones, setting the stage for a discussion on why and how we need to shift our focus.
• The Transactional Paradigm of Electoral Campaigns
  We start by exploring the current state of electoral campaigns, dominated by mobilization and persuasion tactics, and how these contribute to a superficial approach to politics.
• The Power of Movements
  Understanding how transformational practice operates at all levels—individual, community, and societal—is crucial. We examine the anatomy of movements and how they derive their strength from transformational practices.
• Essential Components to Transformational Practice
  Contrary to the common wisdom that participation crystalized belief, this book proposes an alternative idea:
• People don’t just take part because of their beliefs. They form their beliefs by taking part.
  Key to transformation are certain types of experiences, among those which campaigns can provide as opportunities: participation and human contact, driven by our intrinsic needs for agency, as well as the power of connection, belonging, and conflict.
• Integrating Transformational Practice into Political Campaigns
  Practical guidance on how to infuse transformational practice into the fabric of political campaigning.
• Transformational Campaign Strategy
  The way to practice transformational strategy is a balanced interplay of conversations and engagement – core elements to relationship building, as well as, building leadership capacity and growth – across a broad spread of ideological and participation segments, focusing on connecting and transforming both individuals and the collective context.
• The Four Keys to Transformational Conversations
• A focused look at how all conversations with constituents in campaigns (including canvassing), when approached correctly, can provide a unique key to transformational practice in an electoral context.
• Transcending Systemic Forces
  Finally, we address the broader implications of strengthening transformational practice to disrupt a system that commercializes civics. This section aims to inspire a return to politics that we want to create, based in the best aspects of our human nature.

The Age of Junk Politics

Our politics have become saturated with superficiality and sensationalism, as literal reality star personalities rise to elected office. This is the price we are paying for decades of accelerating decay in meaningful participatory roles for constituents in democracy, as politics have become increasingly transactional.

Our campaigns are now akin to the fast food industry in which the products are incentivized to maximize profit through the most immediate consumer response and overly optimized for immediate and primal gratification. This unbalanced diet leads us to only unhealthy outcomes: quick, easy, and ultimately unsatisfying, leaving us hungrier and less healthy as a democratic society. (And in both cases the consumer is often blamed, rather than those profiting).

Democracy has been cheapened and robbed of its full value – serving us elections as if they were a quick mass produced meal on a plastic tray.

Our innovations in politics over the last half century have come at a cost to our political culture. And unless we practice with a different intention, the new generation of AI technologies will only further agitate this downward transactional spiral. Simultaneously, a trust gap has emerged: offering fertile ground for a class of cynical populists, embracing and benefiting from an “anti-politics” revolt as a shallow substitute for authenticity. Against this backdrop of a decaying everyday civics in our digital age, marked by social media algorithms, political technologies, and our own campaign industry, the tactical focus on reach, scale, resources and efficiencies, has only accelerated the detachment and disaffection of the populace.

In such a context, good candidates – those tied to the values of the constituents they seek to represent – cannot win. We cannot win our elections and we cannot steer ourselves into a healthy political grounding – one that works for the betterment of our societies.

Where we used to once think our campaigns could influence people’s beliefs – shape people’s hearts and minds – we’ve opted instead for a narrow focus on persuadable audiences or inspiration with radicalism that appeals to an oft forgotten, frustrated base, leaving the rest of the constituent body alienated.

While the forces ushering us into this current political culture are powerful, the book argues such a system is generally fragile when faced with the power of the human heart and will. Nothing looks so good as a home cooked meal, made with love, after a long trip of eating too much junk food.

This book offers strategic models to reconnect and innovate towards transformational practices in our campaigning. The need has peaked for an alternative to existing models – with a focus on the utility for winning elections, that also works to undo the detachment and cynicism of a population with few spaces for meaningful participation. This book is also a plea – a plea for us to center our politics in the best of our human nature: our capacity for connection, collaboration, and compassion.

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Fixing our Democracies and Winning Elections in the Age of Junk Politics: A Guide to Transformational Campaigning