I don’t know a lot about the rules for Super PACs. But I do seem to remember that you can do just about anything you want with them. If that’s true, I have a proposal, either for a few million small donors or a few millionaires (or one billionaire, I’m not picky about the numerator : denominator ratio). The proposal is thus (and this thing doesn’t necessarily have to be a Super PAC, just seems like the right way to think about what one is trying to get done here): let’s say you are a bigger fan of the policies of a certain party that has not deliberately moved voting boundaries to ensure population-bound state legislative electoral certainties. And let’s say you’ve looked at some of these maps and the election results and realized that gerrymandering requires relatively thin margins in some of the voting areas. And let’s say you’ve realized that there’s more than one way to skin the electoral victory cat (without relying on 18-26 year old turnout, a clearly nonsensical strategy until the US takes a page out of the Australian book). Let’s not call it an invasion, but maybe let’s call it deurbanization with political characteristics. All those readers of The Atlantic and even The Jacobin who live in New York City or Oakland and complain about the laws that get on the books in the states they do not live in (or the state they do live in that actually does exist outside of their urban agglomeration) can now do something about it. For the price of one Instagrammable coffee shop and 100,000 non-urban home deposits, you, my plucky billionaire friend, can swing at least two state legislatures to that party you prefer. All we’re doing is adding a few new neighbors who vote, a few of which maybe run for state legislature after spending enough time attending town council meetings and making friends in their new towns. The “upshot” here (scare quotes so very deliberate, who’s idea was it to use that word for anything?) is that the supposed political polarization people talk about in more scare quotes than it deserves is often related to people not being neighbors with each other. It’s hard to be polarized with someone who helps coach your child’s soccer team with you, who cuts orange slices just the way all the kids like them. How could one not appreciate someone as a whole human who does that?
And of course, the political outcomes. The states that have benefited from the “Great” Compromise and remained powerful in spite of their smallness can remain so, as long as politically active Portlandians bring their chickens and activities and votes to that county in Iowa that will swing the legislative seat that other direction (and eventually run for county commissioner). “Reform” doesn’t come from federal dictates or the “strong will of the majority” (it does in part, but not in whole). Better comes from showing up to the municipal committee meeting about the way laws are enforced and getting the highway patrol to replace themselves with speed cameras, so that speeding is only and every single time punishable with a small, mailed-to-you ticket, rather than the possibility of a bullet in a body. The systematic improvement of the United States is not going to happen in the Big Congress; the expectation of that outcome is the reason why people are so disenchanted with the House and Senate in Washington. If people want to be more proud of their passports, it’s time to move to places where the United States needs them. This is an enormous country. It’s extremely difficult to govern a lot of people in a way that people feel good about even when they are on Manhattan Island. So help support the internal migration of a million people to smaller places, right in the middle of the districts that were moved to ensure certain seats went to certain people. And if it’s illegal to do it with a Super PAC, we’ll do it with an LLC. And if it’s illegal to do it with an LLC, we’ll use a 501c3. And if the state legislators legislate against it, we’ll use marketing (a speech act that is pretty much impregnable in the United States of Advertising). The key is to make the map that shows where it’s most effective to move your vote (and get out the vote). And then help people move there in a way that feels right. Homeownership, if it’s still at all the American Dream, will suddenly become available to everyone who was paying $1700/month in downtown Seattle. And remote work will be much more beautiful without all that traffic between you and rurality.
Roman Ryan 