In which Senator Malcolm King, Celia Lopez, Lydia Luxemburg, and Bert Dellinger discuss electoral participation and purpose and RPS’s major victory.

Elections: Avoiding the Pitfalls

Malcolm, [from an interview years before running for President] what have your various campaigns and holding office as a Senator in Massachusetts taught you about the pitfalls and benefits of elections and even electoral office?

Personal desires aside, someone seeking to renovate society runs for office for one or more of three reasons:

1. To win and use the power of the office for change,
2. To educate in order to improve prospects for winning change,
3. To pressure other candidates in positive ways.

I think all those motives are fine and I think the benefits from the first two can be quite large. Running for office can provide massive public access for communications and also open many paths for instituting changes. My Senate campaigns in Massachusetts, for example, did quite a lot to help RPS gain visibility and to help its ideas gain acceptance and my time in office there has been similar. In the case of a Senator, unlike an executive position, you can’t enact changes yourself, but you can sponsor bills, fight for them, and use your visibility to support and aid movement pressures, all of which can be highly valuable.

But what about the debits?

These are more subtle, but also very important and there are many. It is all too easy to get caught up in the tallying aspect of elections and to then lose track of larger educational and organizing issues and possibilities. This can even happen to excellent left candidates who start with an overarching agenda they initially see the election as just a part of—but then under the pressure of campaigning they may start to see winning votes as the only virtue. Pressures are so strong that that can even happen to people who are literally, while it is happening, decrying the same tendency as it has affected other people.

A second damaging dynamic is for a candidate to become too enamored with him or herself and, again, to lose track of larger forces at play. This typically causes a candidate to start feeling his or her will needs to be followed without dissent. You there, say whatever might assist that. Do whatever might assist that.

Next, because of the dynamic between a candidate and all those supporting the candidate, you often get a situation where advisors and campaign workers bend their words to suit what the candidate wants to hear rather than to convey accurate assessments. Just as the candidate starts to feel him or herself to be more important and brilliant than is true, the people around the candidate start to feel a kind of junior version of the same thing, and want to preserve their access and sense of importance. They then often function more to do that than to pursue broader agendas. Or sometimes the dynamic beyond the candidate is just as bad in its effects, but more benign in its causes, as when people around a candidate try to maintain access only to be able to have a good effect—yet the possible good effects wind up sacrificed, in practice, to maintain access.

So, suppose you are in a group of ten who have the ear of a candidate. He is personally reeling a bit, morally and politically, under all the pressures. And he is getting very pushy in the group of ten, chairing every session, scowling at news he doesn’t like, praising news he does like, and finally, kicking someone out of the inner circle for bearing bad news or being critical. You are in the circle. You feel he is moving backward from worthy political priorities toward unworthy self aggrandizement and elite habits of one sort of another. You feel you should try to reverse that trend. But you know that you will lose your seat in the inner circle if you go too far. So you curb your inclinations out of the perfectly sensible desire to have any positive effect at all not out of some junior elitist or self serving pursuit. Your motivations are sincere, but the result is the same as if they weren’t. The candidate drifts toward elitist self exaltation and the inner circle slides into abetting the pattern.

Of course, the fixation at fault in such trends need not be on vote tallying per se, or on expanding the candidate’s authority, it can also be on money. Elections in the U.S. are expensive affairs and an incredible percentage of the effort expended in any election, and even in any term of office, turns out to be nothing but pursuit of dollars. You can imagine what that can lead to when those delivering the bigger dollars have their own agendas. Candidates or officials wind up bought off. But even when the fund raising is from a base of supporters making small donations, the perpetual need to get money, the kinds of pressure one feels to write letters and make appeals geared to succeed by saying whatever getting money requires and not by whatever is the full truth, is again overwhelming and can lead to devolution of the benefits of running.

All in all I think RPS has approached the whole thing wisely. Probably not the only good way, but one good way. We have welcomed excellent candidates running, educating, winning, and using office. But as an organization we have taken no direct organizational part in the electoral process, focusing, instead, always on grassroots organizing, movement building, and pressuring elites of all kinds, including elected politicians, to make desired changes.

Often many in RPS will work hard on a campaign. Certainly my own campaigns were staffed overwhelmingly by RPS members. But the organization never collectively and officially gets involved and thus never gets caught up in the dynamics. It doesn’t give or raise money for candidates, etc. Perhaps before too long we will be in position to have an RPS member run for and become President. If so, hopefully everyone will know just exactly what that means, and what they are getting into. But even in that case, while I would imagine virtually every RPS member would to some degree aid the campaign, often with incredible outlays of time and effort, I think the organization as a collective entity will steer clear.

But what about the problem of focusing on electing one person, and missing that a single person alone is effectively powerless?

I think we should certainly be aware of the fact that an electoral approach, like any other approach, requires numbers to be most effective, but that is different from saying that a lone victory is worthless. It just says that the more truly desirable candidates we have in office and the more those candidates have mass grass roots activist connection and support, the better.

Suppose we go back to the time when Bernie Sanders’ attempted to become President. What if he had gotten the Democratic Party nomination and then beaten Trump? Some would suggest, and did suggest at the time, that it would make no difference. They weren’t denying that Sanders was honest and sincere or even arguing his agenda wasn’t maximal and nothing short of maximal matters. Oh some were doing both, I suppose, but most not. Most with this view were saying something more subtle, and to some degree echoing Sanders who himself said pretty much the same thing.

That is, if Sanders had won, he would have been President, yes, but nearly all the governors, Senators, Congress people, police chiefs and officers, military command, and on and on, would still have been wedded to existing social relations. So, said these analysts, Sanders could have done nothing fundamental. Now, if like Sanders, they had said that to accomplish much he would need massive popular support, that would have been true. With such support, even if he built lots of it while in office, of course he could have improved the life conditions of diverse constituencies in the present while also warding off continuing slides toward hell by combatting global warming. He could work to create more support, awareness, and commitment at the grassroots and to galvanize that into campaigns for critical reforms to help people and also pave the way for further actions. He could have very significantly sped up RPS.

Consider Chavez years earlier winning the Presidency in Venezuela. It is not an exact analogy, but not too far off for the point we are discussing. He had Miraflores, Venezuela’s White House, but he had no governors, a few mayors out of hundreds and very few legislators, as well as nearly no local police. And yet he did a ton, which could have gone much further, but for various mistakes, I believe, as well as very substantial outside factors, but that is for another time.

The point is, a sensible approach to electoral work should focus on a wide array of offices, many local, fewer statewide, and still fewer national—just as we have been doing for the past twenty years, but if you manage to win the more encompassing positions, or even just one of them, and you don’t succumb to the various pitfalls of the process, then holding that office can be very helpful indeed.

Elections: Harvesting the Benefits

Celia, [from an interview years before running for Vice President] tell us a bit about running for and becoming Governor of California. What did you take from the electoral experience?

We had to traverse the state over and over to get out our message. We talked directly to huge numbers of people, and then our public gatherings, speeches, TV addresses, and the debates reached still more. Throughout the process we extolled the RPS program and urged RPS involvement by our supporters. We constantly indicated not only the programs and policies we would try to rapidly institute, but also where we hoped the changes would lead.

The truth is, when we started, I, at least, didn’t anticipate winning. We ran as a way to organize very widely, to perhaps put pressure on whoever would win, and to develop organization for future runs and policy campaigns, as well as for grassroots organizing. We thought that we could use the process to broaden understanding of and support for RPS ideas and aims and to literally build new organization and membership, advancing movements at every step along the path. We literally swore to one another that we wouldn’t compromise any of that to win office. Winning office was only relevant, we told ourselves over and over, if it happened in the flow of our overall effort, not by way of compromising our overall effort. Our definition of winning the election was to do all that we intended without compromise, and then, if by some chance we actually got most votes, terrific.

Even with that overt commitment, it wasn’t easy to keep in mind and not forget our main agenda. The pressure grew enormous as support came from all kinds of directions. And the pressure to compromise and play games to win came not just from the media or various pundits and potential donors or endorsers, but from inside the campaign as well. The prospect of victory was like a drug. It often diverted minds from the prospect of actual success. I mean, you are about to give a speech to some large crowd or perhaps members of some constituency or organization. What do you do?

Approach one: You describe your actual intentions, beliefs, values, and agenda, making your strongest case for them.

Approach two: You examine polling results to determine what your audience is thinking, and then you tailor your words to try to win your audience over.

These two approaches typically diverge, and it isn’t the case that someone who is pursuing the second is necessarily doing it for self-serving reasons, though, in time, you do tend to become what you are doing.

I think what kept us overwhelmingly on the first approach wasn’t just good people having my ear and delivering criticism without fearing that I would dismiss them, but also the mindset we developed from the outset which was that an election would be hollow or even counter productive if seeking victory caught us up in traveling an elitist path. 

And we stuck to our priorities. I was in office only a week when we had begun implementing without the slightest hesitation, our full program. We didn’t at any point think, okay, let’s get that important gain, short of our full aim, by way of this or that compromise. No. We said let’s get everything we laid out, and more, by way of popular power, not back room compromise. If we did have to compromise at times, and we did, we did it openly, said it was what we were doing and why we had to.

I should say, though, I think this was far less hard than it might have been due to the scale and commitment of public support we had for the full program, and due to the obvious upward trajectory of that support. Without so much support and its tendency to steadily increase, we would have always been afraid that not compromising would win nothing, rather than always feeling that minimizing and being open about compromising was the way to win everything.

Lydia, you were RPS Shadow Government President. Did it give you a feeling for the benefits of holding office? Do you look forward to RPS actually fielding a President in the near future?

In office, you learn quickly that the main determinants of the biggest policies and directions are institutional features, even in a shadow government. Indeed, even with a dictator that is largely the case. But with anything even remotely like a democratic system it is certainly true. The structure of the governing bodies is critical, but so too, of course, are the concentrations of power in various other places—mainly corporations, military, churchs, unions, and so on. So you learn that short of transforming all institutions—which is of course the ultimate goal—you have to have sources of power, pressure, and creative innovation, beyond your office, or what you win will be nothing remotely like what you desire to win.

So even in the Shadow case, right off we could either abide existing relations in our mirror of the U.S. Government, just proposing policies and agitating for them, or we could also seek institutional changes in our own version of the government, partly as a model for things to seek in the broader world and partly so we could do more good in our own work.

If I was younger, much younger, and for some unfathomable reason it made sense for me to run for actual President in a campaign aimed to win, I would certainly do it. There are many on the left who understand that existing institutions, including the government are bent into shapes structurally accommodating the rich and powerful and also incorporating strong aspects of other oppressive relations like racism, sexism, classism, etc. They take from that insight one correct conclusion and sometimes one incorrect conclusion, at least in my view.

The correct one is that we need new institutions. This explains the on-going and by now overwhelming growth of support for RPS vision. The incorrect conclusion, which is now largely overcome but was perhaps predominant at the outset of RPS, is that we should have nothing to do with flawed institutions. That was wrong but back then, substantial.

It was a little like saying we want a new society for the whole population, but we don’t want to relate to the population. We want a new society spanning all the defining institutions, but we don’t want to battle within those institutions. We want to criticize existing institutions and rail at them from without, or replace them by building from scratch, but we don’t want to engage them from within, ever.

Railing at them from without is certainly essential. And so is creating alternatives from scratch that can serve as models to raise consciousness and even as seeds of the future. But suppose someone said to radical working people, we want a new economy, so stop operating in this one. You can see, I hope, that that is utterly absurd. First, it means ceding that terrain to those who are not radical. Second, it means giving up one’s job. And third, it loses access to all the lessons that can be gleaned by operating within existing institutions, not only lessons about what is wrong with them, but lessons about what is needed in their place. And finally, most important, it also foregoes victories inside those institutions that would make people’s lives better now. It often even acts as though such victories wouldn’t matter, which can become a very callous stance.

It may be harder to see, but the government is similar to the economy in all those regards, and there are added aspects. Corporations are entirely places where nothing non profit-seeking can be done other than by applying pressure. Government is at least somewhat different. The deck is certainly heavily stacked, and the structural pressures to compromise and become what you don’t want to be are enormous. But it is also true that there is some real room to maneuver, and that there are many gains we can win simply by changing minds much less winning elections or using levers of power to influence outcomes.

At any rate, my feeling is that there are very serious and dangerous pitfalls, not at all easy to avoid. But, to not try is to forgo still larger gains, able to be won. And, yes, I think we have gotten to the point where our support is so broad, and even more important, so deep, that we can now win at the highest level.

Bert, you too were an RPS shadow President, after serving as Vice President with Lydia. Do you see the situation similarly?

Yes, very much so. If I had to suggest a difference I think I may be just a hair more sympathetic to those who are so caught up in rejecting reformism that they go overboard and think it requires literally avoiding reforms and steering clear of working within mainstream institutions. I get the sentiment. Hell, in my bones, as a feeling, but only a feeling, I even share it. The levels of hypocrisy rooted in conforming to injustice are so intrinsic to existing structures that it is hard—though not impossible—to avoid getting sucked in, chewed up, and spit back out, different, once you try to navigate the shoals of government.

A trick, however, can help. We don’t think it is inevitable or even a very strong prospect that if you as an activist get a job on an assembly line you will become an advocate of wage slavery. But why not? If you work there, you have to navigate the idiocies and injustices, and so why won’t you be bent in accord? Aspects of such a job certainly push people toward becoming accommodating and resigned. But since your role in the corporation is that of victim of its ills, you may retain integrity and operate in its bounds but without becoming its advocate.

Suppose, in contrast, you win an elected office in national or local government. Or, for that matter, suppose you take a job as a manager in a workplace. This situation is different. You are, or at least can be, recipient of some significant benefits and purveyor of some hurtful ills. So the trick is this. Even as you take office, you must define yourself to be an opponent of your position and your role. You have to literally see yourself as a fifth column from without, beholden to those outside and only operating inside to pursue interests defined outside. Or at least that is how I see it.

I should say, as well, that even in the Shadow Government the effects of greater support and more clarity mattered greatly. In the years I was VP serving in Lydia’s administration, we made great headway but it was quite hard. Instead of mainly working on change, much and sometimes even most of our energy had to go simply to developing our methods and procedures and filling our posts. By the time I became Shadow Potus (I love that ridiculous phrase), our structures and procedures were quite stable and effective. As a result, we could give more creative energy and time to elaborating our own positions and battling for them in society.

And while much of our program was about economic and social issues, we also addressed matters of polity. Building campaigns to transform from the elitist electoral college approach to direct voting with multi party preferential balloting was obviously a massive victory that we were quite elated about. And yes, I think that and other gains, and mainly massive advances in popular awareness and desire have gotten us to a place where an RPS identified candidate can now not just become president, but take office with a huge mandate and with fellow RPS advocates occupying positions all over the country.

Malcolm, [interviewed a few years before running for President] do you anticipate an RPS candidate winning the 2048 election?

Well, it is still nearly four years off, so we are on thin ground predicting anything. But, with that caveat, yes, I think we will win outright, and with out full politics on display, with over 60% support, and perhaps even more than that. We have had a number of progressive administrations that negotiated with us in good faith, that sided with many of our reform efforts and that had to give in on much of the rest of what we sought, as well, due to the scale of popular pressure. I think the population is now ready and eager for the start of more complete fundamental transformation.

Some time back, when New York, California, Minnesota, and surprisingly Texas elected not only progressive but RPS governors, and did so by large margins, and when those governors proceeded to aggressively aid RPS efforts at the state and local level, the result was incredibly positive for nearly everyone and the die was cast. The momentum became undeniable, and at least to my eyes, irreversible.

I think the biggest consciousness shift was perhaps back in 2024 when working class votes for right wing reaction fell off dramatically. Fear of immigrants and minorities plus warranted skepticism of Democrats and hope for upheaval to yield good had earlier polarized millions into conservative votes, but that significantly collapsed. People had come to understand that the real source of pain and suffering for working people was profit-seeking and other oppressive structures as well, and people were enjoying steadily growing racial and gender solidarity. So it was confusion that had started to melt away, not the anger and desire that had already existed.

By 2028 and then especially by 2032, the class antagonism toward coordinator elitism and their material advantages had also largely transformed. It didn’t disappear, of course, but it became highly informed and it switched from opposing liberalism or progressivism to opposing coordinator obscurantism and elitism aimed at maintaining coordinator dominance. It had grown to understand the division of labor and the need for allocation of resources to education for all. In 2040 and 2044, those trends continued, but I think the tipping point change was the growing popular belief in a viable alternative system. We moved from people siding with RPS views and values in their hearts but not believing that RPS could actually deliver, and thus not being willing to seriously support RPS program for the country as a whole, to steadily more people having informed faith that a new society is possible and worth winning, so that supporting a candidate offering RPS program would be a step forward.

So I think in 2048 the campaign and debates won’t have to spend much time arguing the ills of mainstream approaches, or the virtues of our preferred candidate as dignified, capable, inspiring people or, for example, as a potential President. There will be, instead, pretty much one pivotal issue. If I vote for a revolutionary, am I voting for an idea I like but unlimited chaos and civil strife that ultimately won’t usher in a new society because opposition to a new society will be too strong to overcome—or am I voting for a careful but unrelenting struggle that despite repressive opposition will culminate in implementing a new society at every level? And I think the answer will now finally come down as the latter for an overwhelming majority of our population, so we will win the election handily.

And I think that winning the presidency even if we don’t get Congress and the Senate too—though I think we will—will greatly speed up our long march through the institutions, both changing them from within and replacing them with complete alternatives. It will be far easier and quicker to finish that process with the government actively abetting every step, rather than with the government as a receptive but very cautious listener, as has been true for recent administrations, or, as earlier, as a very powerful opponent.

Just think of a new president using executive orders to support workers taking over companies even beyond what we have already accomplished. Or think of a new President transitioning military production and bases to social uses, not just in grudging response to mass movements, case by case, then always trying to revert, but as a matter of positive desire and principle across the world. Or think of a new president aiding creating the infrastructure of a new society, not simply from above, but responding to pressure from movements while welcoming that pressure and aiding its development.

We still have to be alert to the kinds of disruptive issues that arise, not least to the dangers of a new administration losing touch with the self managing desires of the population and thinking its own views must dominate—but, honestly, given the emergence of RPS insight and commitment throughout society, I think that such danger will be quite possible to curtail.

Running for President

Malcolm, [from a 2049 interview] do you remember first considering and then finally deciding to run for President?

I first thought about it when I won for Senator and every so often thereafter. I saw being Senator as a way to aid movements and help generate new policies sought from below and I thought of the presidency that way too, only more so.

But running for President became more than day dreaming one night while I was talking with some good friends. Celia, Bill, Lydia, and Bert were all over and we got to talking about 2948. I can see it, and reproduce it pretty much word for word for you, like it was yesterday and I had your recorder to help me.

Please do.

We were just chatting, enjoying being together which was rare, and Lydia said something like, “it is wonderful to be together, and I hope you won’t mind that Bert and I see it as an opportunity to consider something we have all heard circulating around RPS.”

And then it got serious. Bertie, that’s what I call him, said, “The three of you are the highest elected officials in the organization, Senator of Massachusetts, Governor of California, and Mayor of New York. What Lydia and I want to ask is, Should one of you run for President in 2048?”

Bill replied, “I hear people talking about that too, but is the topic really worth any of out time here together?”

Bert said, “come on, of course it is.”

Bill replied: “I am not so sure. RPS is making incredible strides all over society. At the base. So, why not keep building and when needed pressure the ever-more progressive but non-RPS Presidents who take office, without our entering the corrupting arena ourselves? The complications of running for Mayor, much less winning, have been daunting in New York. Imagine how entangling and corrupting the complications after winning the White House would be. Why not just keep winning more grass roots institutions, more grass roots support? Why change our policy now?”

Lydia entered: “But you use Gracie Mansion brilliantly. You build movement and you help win movement gains that we all celebrate. You aren’t entangled. You aren’t corrupted…”

Bill said: “I am not coopted, perhaps, but I am exhausted. And more important, I am not sure what overall gain our winning office has achieved. Imagine that every RPS person in New York government who is now partly just keeping the current system from unraveling was instead working in grassroots organizing to build our new system. Imagine in their place in government receptive though less RPS-ish folks were in the positions we hold. Would that be a net loss? Avoiding the corrupting pressures of holding power, and also tallying allies and especially keeping the old aspects of New York running has been incredibly consuming. For the White House and federal government, the number of people side-tracked from grassroots work would be vastly greater.”

Celia wasn’t put off: “But imagine the extra outreach, the burst of energy which, if done right, can persist, and, in the event of winning, the consciousness-raising and major changes able to be far more quickly and easily promoted around still unaltered parts of society with an allied rather than a neutral or hostile President, and national government. Not to mention the restraints on police. With all that possible, I think maybe we have gotten to a point where it would make sense to run for the Presidency, where the debits are outweighed by the benefits.”

Bill had more doubts: “But would running undercut popular participation in building and federating councils? Could we focus as much on a candidate as an election would require, and then on governing as winning would require, without sacrificing more basic efforts?”

Bert got back into it: “If we field a good candidate I think we could attract ten million super motivated volunteers. While campaigning, I think we would all work harder and with greater outreach, not less hard and more narrowly. We know we could have massive grass roots funding with no need for big donors. I think we could win, which would tremendously help every campaign and struggle that’s now underway and so many more to follow. Once in office, I think we could all work full time, with incredible resources. Why couldn’t we then emphasize and enlarge participation? Why shouldn’t we try?”

Bill: “Honestly, I wouldn’t want to run. New York was very nearly too much for me.”

Celia said as Bill turned toward her: “Don’t look at me. I would feel a fool trying. I am an actress turned Governor for my home state. If I won it would be like Reagan or Trump—a media personality taking office. I don’t want that. RPS doesn’t need that.”

And finally Malcolm got into it too: “Well, I think the country would benefit greatly if it got you. Your governorship has been exemplary. I think a campaign, done with an unswerving focus on our full participatory vision, could advance our views enough to be worth the time, effort, and resources it would require. And in office, far from draining already overflowing grassroots energy, I think we could enlarge and aid it.”

Bill: “What about the reaction if we win the presidency. I worry about violent coup attempts.”

Malcolm: “If our victory came twenty or even ten years back, I would agree. But we have built so much support, so many workplaces are RPS, so many neighborhoods, churches, local and even state governments, so many military and even police rank and file—we could handle what violence might be tried. After winning the presidency, resistance to progress would get nowhere, because of how we won, our decades of grass roots organizing, our widespread, informed, organized support. I think our hands-off policy has been right, but things are different now.

Okay, “look, we alone can’t decide this, of course, but how about we think about telling RPS as a whole that we think we should run, in whatever order finally makes sense, and we table this discussion for now before it gets even more tortured? And then Celia surprised us all: Okay, and I will think about VP if you will think about P.

So that small gathering was when running became more than pipe dream gossip. It was something to decide on and, perhaps, plan and do.

Winning

Okay, Malcolm when did you first think you might actually run?

I came to believe we might elect a full on uncompromising RPS President, and keep the office, whoever it might be, in 2043 during the general strike. Like everyone I saw cities shut down, plants empty. Stores and malls empty. Streets full of marching workers. I watched police join the marches ending at Huge State House rallies.

We couldn’t experience the incredible power of workers stopping the country and showing such an incredible depth of commitment to revolutionizing society and not feel that one part of what was to come would be taking over the government and putting it in service of the fundamental change that was blooming all over the country, in homes, neighborhoods, churches, schools, and workplaces. I was amazed, inspired, but also humbled. The crowds were enormous.

It felt like victory… I even thought we could take over government right then.

I believe you were right. We could have surged into government offices all over the country, including in Washington. That much was possible, already, in 2043. But then what? We weren’t ready to staff much less fundamentally redefine all the agencies and handle much less redefine all the tasks, and in any case we didn’t want to usurp government with a unilateral act. And finally, while we could have done it, could we have held it against violent efforts to oust us? We didn’t have a full program developed from our base and that we had all together discussed and refined at anything like the scale we would need if we were to use the government to effectively help and promote on-going activism to transform all of society. We realized that if we were going to protect, maintain, and grow participation in rebuilding society we had to win office and change government in an accountable, participatory way, not by charging into office with no plan. We didn’t have time to do that by 2044, so it would be 2048, earliest. Until then, and thereafter as well, we had to keep creating new institutions and winning changes in old ones. We had to build popular support and clarity not only for taking over workplaces, schools, hospitals, local agencies, and also the national government, but to then ward off elite attempts at reversing the steps taken while we retooled and renovated the government to become the desired participatory polity based on federated assemblies. And yes, I realized, we had to run.

Closing statements

So you ran to win?

Yes, we ran to win, but with an absolute commitment that we would not compromise RPS views to seek votes.

When did you begin to think you really would win?

You know, we just worked, day after day, trying not to think ahead to winning or not, until, for me at least, at the debate in early October, when lies failed and reasoned passion prevailed.

Your closing statement was like a lightening bolt of truth for the country. You took the gloves off. Do you remember it all?

Of course, but first I had to hear my opponent attack me. Would I have gotten as aggressive as I did without that? I don’t know. So I guess maybe we have him to thank for the lightening I threw back. Here were his remarks: “Senator King, how can you possibly have the audacity to stand before the American people and say they should elect you President? You a man who anarchistically aims to overthrow our government, a man who socialistically wants to obliterate our property rights, a man who feminazilike threatens to topple society’s family fabric, a man who would cravenly reduce our armaments, armed forces, and police to passivity, a man who would make our country pitifully weak, a man who denies religion, attacks individual creativity, promotes soul-destroying collectivism and denigrates our foundational white roots? You are a traitor, disguised as a candidate.

It will be a pleasure to ship you and your movement’s pathetic power-envy and psychotic animalistic anger back to the fringe communities that spawned it. I happily cede to you my remaining time. Take as long as you like to reply. Your words will only deepen the horror our audience already feels at your vile intentions.”

He left me no choice and so, as you say, I took the gloves off. “You have no more to say? No more vague, wild assertions? Nothing positive to offer? Okay, I will gladly use your remaining time. You wonder at my wanting to anarchistically overthrow our government. I plead guilty. Unlike you, I don’t want to preserve elitist, centralizing, mind-numbingly anti-democratic bureaucratic structures against participation by the American people just to preserve the power of centralizing sycophants like yourself who unaccountably hunger to control the destiny of millions. I prefer popular self-management.

“You decry my socialistically opposing few hands holding productive property, and I again plead guilty. Unlike you, I am not enamored of enriching property holders beyond the wildest dreams of past kings. I do not think being born with a deed in your hand is the highest form of human achievement, or that it is any achievement at all. I reject that people like yourself should own society’s rivers, lakes, resources, machinery, and places of production, much less rule over them like tin-pot dictators. You ought to be aware, however, that you missed a further target to ridicule. I also oppose a relatively small sector of the population, about a fifth,  monopolizing empowering work. I want to share work more equally so everyone is prepared by their work to participate in economic and social decisions. Unlike you, I want equitable incomes for all. I want empowering dignified work for all. I want people able to decide their own working lives. I would say it is a wonder that you don’t want these gains for all humanity, but your attitude isn’t a wonder. It is unmitigated, self-seeking, anti-social greed.

You say I want to feminazi-like topple the familial fabric of civilization. Why? Because I want young and old people to have a say over their own lives? Because I want families and all living units to freely nurture the next generation without imposing on them preordained definitions of what boys and girls have to become? Because I want parents and children and extended families to have optimal health care, empowering work, and shared responsibility for their own and for all social life? Because I want women respected and empowered, because I want sexual preference to be whatever free people prefer, because I reject turning back the gender clock a century in your misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, harassing mode? The human, nurturing family fabric of society is already at risk. People like you don’t see its deep scars despite your own broken homes and the bedlam so visibly endured by so many all around you. You can’t see the truth of our times because your heart is a cash register and your paranoid eyes perceive only profit potentials and threats.

I want to restore and enrich society’s fabric. You want to rape and plunder society. I see all families as repositories of love and sources of wise, confident participation. You see most families as sources of cheap, obedient labor. I see society’s countless communities as allied and equal centers of creative diversity. You see all but your own community as fringe targets to ridicule, restrain, and repress.

You say I would disarm the country, neuter the police, and leave us helpless because I reject siphoning society’s wealth into useless and pointless weapons that, were they used, would destroy all humanity. You say I would neuter the police because I want properly paid and empowered justice workers that serve the public not power, and I want our children’s and our children’s children’s human potentials to develop free from war, pestilence, coercion and restriction in a world of shared peace and plenty. I am guilty again. You are absolutely right I want all that. You call it making our country weak and defenseless. I call it making our country worth defending.

You say I deny religion and sublimate the individual to the collective. Why Because I want all religions, races, ethnicities, and nationalities to be free of fear of imposition and negation from without and because I want individuals and collectives prepared and in position to self-manage their destinies without having to submit to the whims of the rich and domineering elites you serve? You are right again. I do reject your racism, your sexism, your homophobia. I am guilty as charged.

You say that it was a pleasure to have run against me, and that it will be a pleasure to ship me and Revolutionary Participatory Society’s pathetic envy and psychotic animalistic anger back to the fringe dwellings that spawned it. Well, I have some news for you. Those fringe dwellings are the soup kitchens, apartment buildings, private homes, schools, hospitals, ball fields, churches, and workplaces of America. Fringe to your gilded billionaire lifestyle, yes, I suppose so. But we will see soon enough what goes away, and what goes forward. Will the American people vote against RPS and their own futures—and less relevantly against Celia and I—or will they not only elect the two of us, but continue their steadily escalating popular participation in revolutionizing all sides of all of our lives?

After your display here tonight, I too feel ready to predict the outcome. I predict that some folks will vote for you due to fearing make-believe demons that you and your media moguls have manufactured. And I predict some will vote for you to defend their elite interests with no concern for society. But I predict most people will see past the confusions and prejudices that have historically allowed the likes of you to win office.

You are about as venal as was, say, Donald Trump, twenty five years ago. Your ignorant posturing, your bullying, your pathetically hypocritical life and your self-serving views, all admittedly more eloquently expressed than Trump could ever manage, have lost too much of their deceiving power for you to push anything aside, much less to push aside RPS, the most grassroots, democratic participatory, multi-focused movement this country has ever seen. Good luck with that.

I wish I could be a gentleman and say it was a pleasure to run against you. But I can’t. It has been a bore because you are an empty vessel of hate. It has been depressing, because even in one lonely body, such an amalgamation of narcissistic evil as you embrace is seriously depressing to behold. We will soon see what the country decides. Will it opt for you and your hate and fear, and the billionaires who pray that you will prevail to help them keep and even amass still more millions and billions? Or will it opt for me, Celia, and RPS program, for our hopes and thoughts, and for the women and men, boys and girls, movements and activists, who work for our campaign to prevail so we can in turn aid their efforts to build a vastly better future? Time is on our side. Your day is slip-sliding away. Good riddance.

All through that the place was on fire, and so was my living room, watching it, and millions more all over the country and I bet the world too. Pandemonium broke out. Okay, so really, when did you absolutely know it was over, that you and Celia would win?

I suppose it would show appropriate modesty to say only when the ballots were counted, but it would be a lie. I knew for certain we would win at the Houston Rally just a week after the debate. I mean, I thought it was over after the debate, but I was nervous that maybe I had gotten too aggressive. I didn’t know for sure. But then to have a million people and even more greet us in Texas on the streets of Houston, clearly aware of and supporting our program and not just us, was incredible. I looked at Celia, she looked at me, and we both knew the vote would be the landslide it was. And then we did some interviews in the Oval Office with you. and then we appointed you Press Secretary, and then you gave your first briefing about the UN session. Do you remember that?

Yes, of course, it was my first press briefing as Press Secretary, and what a jolt being appointed was. I remember the briefing word for word: Good morning. As Press Secretary, I have a lot of ground to cover so let’s settle down and begin. If you will bear with me a minute, I would like to offer a few words before taking your questions. As you know, yesterday President Malcolm King spoke to the UN General Assembly and the world. His speech was simple, emotional, and blunt. It reflected unfolding events and aspirations here in America. For any of you who may have missed it, in the first part he apologized. In the second part he promised. In the third part he celebrated. In the conclusion he embraced. Okay, it was just a little bit ago, what, early January 2049—do you remember it, I want to hear it, if you would.

Of course I remember. I felt a little odd, at the podium in the UN wearing my RPS hat, but I said: “Fellow citizens of the world, in the name of my country I apologize for our military and fiscal role in international mayhem and injustice from Latin America to Asia and from Europe to Africa. I apologize to Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia, Guyana, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, the Congo/Zaire, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba.

I apologize to Chile, Greece, East Timor, Nicaragua, Grenada, El Salvador, Libya, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, Yugoslavia, Iran, Venezuela, Somalia, Syria and Palestine.

I apologize for our support of dictators, for our exploitative extractions, for our arms shipments and our arms use. I apologize for threats, boycotts, and destruction, for massacring Native Americans, for slavery and racism, for sexism and sexual predation, for Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and more…”

Okay, and I remember that I continued to address the assembled press: “Echoing his voters and RPS King promised we would together reverse our history of exploitation and violence toward others and in its place enact a new agenda of sharing and respect. He promised we would study war no more and instead foster solidarity and mutual aid with the same energy and effort that we previously put to war-making and profit-seeking. He promised and evidenced an entirely new and compassionate, internationalist mindset.

He celebrated transforming our domestic defining institutions of polity, economy, culture, and kinship, and our relation to the natural environment to remove hierarchies of wealth and power and to attain a sustainable new historical beginning. He promised to aid and learn from all those who have already or who will now take up similar aims, as they deem suitable, worldwide.

And he continued at the UN: Amidst our tremendous, sustaining, and enriching diversity, we need to embrace our shared universal humanity. We need to celebrate and apply our shared values of human liberation—solidarity, diversity, equity, self-management, international peace, and environmental balance—to all our own countries, each in mutual aid with the rest. We must reject greed and profit-seeking. We must reject self-aggrandizement and power-wielding. We must embrace our natural home, our planet, to replenish it not despoil it. We must usher in a new era of empathy, a new time of joyous exploration of our collective capacities. As an emissary and servant of the Revolutionary people of the United States and in accord with their wishes and learning from their incredible grassroots endeavors in our workplaces and neighborhoods, I embrace all around the world who will do so, and the UN itself as a valuable tool for the task.

And Miguel continued his press conference:

Now, if you have questions… Yes, Leslie, why don’t you begin.

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