Working in Politics

Hey there TL, time for another Blog

, I hope this one doesn't get auto 1starred lol.

I worked as an intern (and am still working on it) in a political campaing. Now let me tell you guys, this is real politics, not some fakey bullshit school election. For the sake of timeline protection I'm going to use the past tense since the primary was yesterday,

The Beginning

The campaign trail began with the man I work for, Steve Cohen (9th distric hwaiting~~~) starting out his campaing in the beginning of the summer so that kids, like my 17 year old ass along with other college kids, can support his campaing and be his ground team. Now the big thing about Steve Cohen's campaign is that here in Memphis, politics is absolute bullshit. To explain this fact before I go into the actual campaign is pretty much mandatory. Memphis political history is dominated by machines and ~~election fraud~~ completely standard, legal stuff (dat revisionism). As an example, the Crump machine kept Mayor Crump in office for as long as my Grandmother could remember from her childhood, until he no longer wanted to be in office / was too old, and his machine in the democratic party here is still OP as fuck. More recently, Willie Herrenton, otherwise known as King Willie, stayed in office for my entire life, and literally only lost because he wanted to win the congressional seat (spoiler alert, he lost to my candidate cuz he isn't a fucktard).

+ Show Spoiler +

My candidates website

Steve Cohen is an interesting politician for a couple reasons

He introduced the lottery to Tennessee as a State Senator, which created the hope scholarship, basically stopping the brain drain in Tennessee. This was because the scholarship provided free rides to any smart kid who wanted to go to UT Knoxville, or any othe UT school, i.e. UT Chattanooga.
He can't speak for shit, but he has this kind of awkward niceness to him that makes people feel a kind of attachment to him, but he is not an eloquent man.
He makes very few flops, and in general tends to be good to his constituency
He runs the only successful campaign in the city

Now I'm gonna explain a couple of these factors and why, even though they seem standard, they really are not.
1. Lottery systems in the south are not rare, but they use to be. The reason for this is because protestants are usually against gambling, and the U.S. tends to reflect, most states make designated places for gambling in a state. I happen to live very close to one in Mississippi, called Tunica. The lottery changed the entire make up the UT schools and have made them generally not shit. The UT schools have brought a lot of smarts and invention along with lots of $$ to TN. This system is generally accredited to Steve and his team of Democrat senators who had to convince people god would not be angry at this lottery. BTW, the lottery has also turned into the big way of poor people sending their kids to school, ironically because other poor people want to win the lottery, the same people have the odds of getting hit by lightning in their car on the way to the lottery > actually winning the lotter (keeping poor people poor, like cheap cigs -_-';;

. Killing yourself is very popular

+ Show Spoiler +

2. Making few flops is important for any politician, but in Memphis, politicians can get away with a lot of things, like making racist comments and other less than respectable things. Bribery is pretty standard here, in fact the Ford family would require no less than 3k for a meeting when they were state senators and before. The Ford family actually made their money from extorting the families of dead people by having a burial service and stealing the bodies, you got that right, stealing the bodies of dead people to bury and then charge the families for this after the fact. While most places this would result in a :rc:, in Memphis this is standard fair.

+ Show Spoiler +

3. His campaign is what my next part of this beautiful blog is about.

The campaign trail is pretty much Steve Cohen's most successful style. His campaign does everything possible for him and then does everything for the other Democrat candidates that he supports. I personally canvassed more than 500 houses, probably more than that and I only worked for a month (7 hours a day though). The make up of the campaign is simple, there are 2 types of things that simple intern/volunteers like myself do, 1. we phone bank 2. we canvass votes. Canvassing entails walking to peoples houses and either doing a "lit drop" by dropping literature such as door-hangers and other items on the door or porch, and normal canvassing by knocking on doors and asking people about their political orientations and if they will vote for the candidate, in this case its Steve Cohen. Cohen's campaign canvassed for no less than 2 other candidates and phone banked for no less than 3 other candidates along with doing those things for him. We were the strongest, most wide spread ~~cult~~ army of poltical volunteers in the city. We fucking wrecked shit up, as shown by the close losses of the other candidates and the high vote differential of our candidate. We contacted so many people its not even funny, but the main thing I learned is that the reason our candidate won was actually because of our efforts to "get the vote out" (GOTV FTW) along with his past success. The opponents pretty much didn't do shit and rolled over and died in the polls. Our candidate won by an 80% margin pretty much it was 89%/90% to 11%/10%. We killed it

.

+ Show Spoiler +

The after party is probably the place I learned the most. After having elderly people scream at me for calling them, after leaving a seemingly unending stream of phone messages, after leaving a metric fuck ton of literature on peoples doors, almost getting mugged, almost getting attacked by dogs multiple times, and many other weird experiences, I got to party after working for 13 hours of the day. At the party, I was given a Ghost River Beer and I learned that A) I make good decisions, specifically by not drinking most of it or pretty much any at all, mainly because I don't weight much and therefore should drink very little if not nothing before driving, and B) that I actually enjoy a good beer now, but not as much as a sweet drink like a milkshake. I also learned that working with people is cool, but partying with people you enjoy even if its a lame ass political party, can be fucking rocking. I had an absolutely baller time being awkward with a guy named david, getting some underaged drinking in (despite the fact that I drank very little and in general am not a fan of getting drunk at all) at a political party full of people supposedly upholding the law without getting banned from the party

, and then felt kind of at home with the people there, meeting big time political people in my city, and having deep convos about what I should be doing with my life with drunk girls that I knew from the campaign that were smoking and taking zoloft all at the same time. I was invited to the after party at a popular bar, but like the integrity filled young, gentleman I am, I returned home before 12:00 am like my Father asked me to. Good stuff

.

+ Show Spoiler +

What did I learn exactly? Well being an impressionable 17 year old I learned actually a shit ton from my time as a volunteer/intern.

Life is short, its fun, live it up
Be competitive in life, being successful starts with having a shot, and that starts as young as you want it to
Politics is not about what you see, its about what you don't see

The first part of this may seem kind of simple, but I learned a lot on this campaign. I, a measly 17 year old shrimp was hanging out with mostly college age kids or grads. I ran around getting votes n shit with dudes and chicks I had no business even knowing

. They taught me a lot of things. I guy I worked with, His name is Pedro (not gonna mask his name with something like male felicity, because I am wayyyyy too not creative

), and he literally said I was like him when he was my age and that everything ends up fine, OH he also said start studying for the LSATs now l0l. I learned from him specifically not to worry so much, life is good, make friends, live it up, and most importantly that the costume room at my school is soundproof and has a lock on the door

BOWCHIKAWOWOW.
The second part seems a bit try-hard, but hey, I'm a try-hard cuz I like to feel the win and the fun of not saying, "if i tried harder I coulda, shoulda, woulda X, Y, and Z." I learned that you start small, you do well, you learn the tricks of the trade, and then you fucking win, you just go fucking kill it and whatever it is will roll over and die like a zerg on one base

. Seriously, life is what you make it, so if you try, even just a little more than 100% all the time, you will go far kid, very, very far

.
The third part is something my naivety didn't prevent me from learning. Most people complain that our political candidates suck, which can be true, what they don't realize is that most politics occurs behind closed doors by "operatives" and "guns for hire" who pretty much get people elected and help guide their actions to help their re-election, imagine lobbyists except more power. I met, unwittingly one of the heads of the school board and the screw up mistake of asking him if he was the mayor of my city because I thought that someone said, "Hey mayor..." SO I made a royal fool of myself, but in the process apparently caught the eye and the hearts of some fairly powerful peope. So this guy, Derek, pretty much explained to me that A) I can be successful at politics if I'm smart and B) start young, do cool things, and remember to take life slow so I don't have major set backs. I also learned from this guy that I think politics can be a great profession, one that isn't as based on chance and full of shitty people as it is a game of starcraft, just half the people are bronze age noobs and 1% of the people are smart, and the rest just have good campaign managers.

+ Show Spoiler +

This was really good for me to experience, I'm glad I'll be doing it again in 2 years or less :D.

Working in Politics

Completed

Ongoing

Upcoming