Change.Now Please

Lets jump back to the discussion of Leadership, if you don't mind. While on my Holiday vacation to my familial home town, I was able to hang out with my of my friends that haven't moved away from that hell-hole for one reason or another. The topic veered off in to politics, as is too often the case with my friends (OK, maybe it's my fault, but still...). While the political discussion usually seems predictable (we have one Libertarian, one socially-liberal Republican, one hard Democrat, and my crazy ass left-leaning-Democrat-by-default self), this conversation seemed more topical to me owing to my recent thoughts on Leadership in general.Two of my friends, the Democrat and the Libertarian, were talking about the general malaise that seems to be affecting our population. Their case-in-point was the recent re-election of Douchebag Council Chairman Mitch McConnell. It was their contention that there simply weren't enough people that didn't like him to force him out of office, and because of this, he can afford to completely disregard us liberals because we were an insignificant voter base. My contention, however, was that there are indeed enough people within his district to get him booted, but those people have no clear leader and therefore no direction.

The thing about these political movements is that it truly only takes a few percentage points to change things. Let's say Senator McConnell receives 1000 letters a year saying they aren't going to vote for him because of policy A, B, C, or D. 1000 letters, mostly unrelated, mean nothing to a man that normally receives over 60% of the vote. However, if someone were to organize those voters, form a strong coalition with a voice and some direction, that person could easily move from 1000 people that write letters to several percentage points of the vote. Once that happens, you have the ability to say to McConnell "We are 5% of the vote that are organized and working against you. We will vote for your opponent. Good luck making up our votes elsewhere." Then you can get his attention and affect change.

It's clear to me that it's not just the LGBT community that is dieing for Leadership. There is such a hunger for change in our country, it's just up to us now to harness that hunger and make it work for us.