You know it when the main focus is to create a VILLAIN, and then to organize as many people and groups as possible to hate the villain.

The most effective way to get the sheeple to vote is out of hate and fear.
And that villain to hate and fear is:

• Republicans
• Americans
• Christians, and
• Straight White Men

The more of these that you are, the more inherently evil you are considered. If you are ONE of them, you are automatically "suspect" to many people, especially in struggling urban neighborhoods where the tactics of broken politics is gathering steam.

This has been building steadily since the 1960's with Saul Alinsky, who preached that social change necessarily involves conflict and social struggle in order to generate the collective power of the masses. That is the essential core of Socialism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_organizing

Oh, but isn’t this what Trump does? It's only very recently that the Far Right has begun to dabble in these tactics of hate and fear. I really wish they would lead by example, and keep it clean. I have no problem calling it out, and as a Christian I feel it is my responsibility.

The Far Left is so in tune to the tactic that they recognize it instantly. And then they really go bonkers. Older readers will remember the very first time the Republicans used this tactic, which was the infamous Willie Horton ad in the 1988 Presidential Election. It was like an open wound, and in direct conflict with the “compassionate conservative” positioning of many Republicans in that era https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compassionate_conservatism

The actual issues of the Far Left often have merit (including tenants rights) and should be pursued without the use of horrific and divisive political tactics. By going the negative route, the activists are instead alienating moderates and Christian conservatives who might be inclined to support them out of fairness. Fairness is a core Christian belief.

That doesn't matter to the Far Left, as the real goal is to organize all the protest groups in a bid for Socialism. They believe that without the struggle and without the divisiveness, there will be no improvements. This is why ANTIFA is inherently dangerous and violent. There is nothing they want more than the media reporting on their violent demonstrations and clashes with police.

That is how politics is broken. And it's never been more broken. I wonder how this country will survive the 2020 Election.

I dealt with this in Newark when I was a tenant leader. Yes, a conservative can be a tenant leader. I was poor, and simply annihilated by an excessive child support obligation. I lived in Newark and struggled to survive for over 10 years.

Many tenant leaders wanted to go the negative Socialist route, and they didn’t like my goal of portraying rent control as something for all races and ethnicities, all age groups, all income levels, and even all political affiliations. It didn’t matter that my position came straight from our parent organization, the New Jersey Tenant’s Organization (NJTO). The NJTO was left leaning, but had developed that realization over the course of 40 years of advocacy. They saw over time what tactics and positions worked, and what didn’t work.

After the shock of the 2016 Presidential election, it became impossible to contain the radicals in Newark. The tenant’s movement became divided. One-third supported me, and two-thirds supported my nemesis, who was a Socialist community organizer originally from the Ironbound Section of Newark. I ran the tenant movement website, and the radical tenant leaders hated my posts calling for more moderate tactics. And they were furious when I told them I was voting for Trump.

I was even in contact with the tenant leaders in Portland, OR, and they were simply dumbfounded that a tenant leader on the East Coast is going the moderate route. And then I had the nerve to tell THEM what to do. They couldn’t understand how we in Newark got the laws changed to our advantage, but their much larger and more vocal movement could get nothing done. This was before I knew that Portland was the very city that spawned ANTIFA and the Equality Federation. There’s a political culture over there that provides the context for everything that comes out of Portland. Republicans and moderates in Oregon are totally alienated, and resist every single position they take. There is no compromising or consensus building, only protest and rage.

In 2014, my leadership and my moderate tactics secured the passage of the strongest rent control ordinance in the United States. It covers market rate housing, and it is NOT a government subsidy of any sort. How has Newark fared since 2014? Homelessness is down, eviction proceedings are down, personal savings are up, and personal happiness is up. I don’t have statistics for crime, drug use, alcoholism, domestic violence, separations, and divorces, but I know in my heart that they are all down. What we didn’t expect from rent control was that tenants would have much more money for consumer spending, creating an economic boom in Newark. Rent control has tremendously helped capitalism, just not for the landlords. Newark is thriving and prospering, and the city nearly landed Amazon in the H2Q bidding war.

One of the main things Amazon wanted in a host city was reasonably affordable housing for their employees, which would save the corporation money on salaries. Amazon didn’t come, but other major corporations have come to Newark, including Audible, Mars, IDT, and Panasonic. Prudential has expanded their holdings in Newark with a new office tower. Once again, affordable housing and rent control is actually helping capitalism as a whole.

Taxpayers are saving money because rent control shifts the costs of social services from government (public sector) to the landlords (private sector). Is that right? Sure, why not. We are generally living in the golden age of the landlord in America, and the escalating rents in most cities and States takes away from consumer spending on all other industries. I find it striking and astounding that “all other industries” haven’t figured this out. Well, rich people own “all other industries”, and they don’t understand the basic economic situation of the average person.

My winning moderate track record didn’t matter to the radical tenant organizers of Newark. Trump Derangement Syndrome was in full play, and they wanted the tenant’s movement to help lead “the resistance”. I couldn’t take it, and I wound up moving out of Newark at the end of 2017. I’m far happier back in the small suburban town where I spent half of my childhood.

And now instead of running the tenant movement website, I run this website. Some of our readers might find this backstory to The Welcome Movement a bit surprising. And it most certainly sheds some perspective on my disdain for Socialist community organizing. I haven’t simply been watching like most other people, I was there in the inner city of Newark, and I dealt with them personally. I really know what they are about, and I understand the existential threat they pose to America. Politics is broken, and it’s only going to get worse.