I have many, non-political, political thoughts, having spent the last decade with a front row seat to it at the local level. What follows is a bit of a rant, so stick with me...if you care to.
A few things that make a big difference, in my humble opinion.
First, I think there are two types of people who get started in politics: (1) People who look around their area and legitimately want to be a part of change for the better. My guess is that this makes up about 75-80% of the people who start out. (2) People who really want to be important. These people are awful.
Second, to be any good at politics, you have to have a healthy sense of ego. By that I don't mean egotistical, but I do mean you beleive in yourself. It is too isolating, and involves too much negativity to be able to survive it if you don't really beleive in yourself.
Third, although most voters, if presented a neutral choice, are pretty good at chosing between those options, but they very rarely get a neutral choice--even at the lowest, most local level. Very few voters spend the time to really learn the differences between candidates, for the same reason that very few football fans take the time to work out which teams to follow. Instead, you follow those that are naturally yours to follow. Whether that's your friend, your neighbor, or the person that your friend recommends because they are your neighbor (or for a dozen other reasons). Word of mouth is a very powerful tool in politics because so few people set out with a blank slate when they are choosing who to support.
Which brings me to a very important point: Fourth, loyalty. Because word of mouth is so important--and another way to conceive of that is endorsements--it is essential to build a team that is on your side. That team needs to include influencers. The biggest influencers are the people who are already in power, whether that's the powerful special interest groups in your area, the powerful businesspeople in your area, or the powerful politicians in your area (and the latter are particularly important for a politician starting out). For the average voter, knowing who else supports a candidate is one of the more powerful tools for choosing a candidate. Because of that, being on the right team, and having the right team makes a big difference.
We see that on the state and national level where voters will vote for a candidate largely based on their party affiliation. Put another way, my team elevated this person, so I'm voting for this person. It's the Dennis Rodman, Draymond Green, Claude Lemiuex effect: they may be despicable, but if they are on my team, I'm all in--or at least willing to overlook their obvious problems.
So how does that come back to loyalty? Because, as Winston Churchill said (probably, and more or less): there are no friends in politics, only common interests. To make and keep teammates, you have to be willing to help your teammates out. Especially in a profession with a very strict heirarchy, and very narrow promotion opportunities. As a result, most politicians are loyal to a fault. A big fault.
That's a big part of how we end up with mediocre candidates for state-level and national-level politics, including political family dynasties: there is so much loyalty built into the system that when the guy or gal has paid their dues, a lot of people will fall in line with their support--for them, and then for their family.
Honestly, those are my main points, but I'm on a roll, so I'm going to go on...
Ok, the one everyone is waiting for: fifth, MONEY. Getting back to those low-engagement voters (the overwhelming majority of us), every politician has to reach their consituents, and the most effective way to do that is by spending money on advertising. Whether that's mailers, door hangers, lawn signs, billboards, radio, internet, TV, or even paying people to "walk and knock" for you, it all takes money. Even coordinating your volunteers for local elections often involves hiring people to help out. Reaching even 1000 local voters that live within a few blocks of you takes a lot of people-hours of work. That often takes coordination at a professional level. Add in the mailers, reaching the right voters (you don't want to knock on every door, when 30-40% of those doors are for people who don't vote for one reason or another, or who are very unlikely to vote for you). The bigger the office, the bigger the campaign, the more money you need.
So how do you raise money? First, you ask people to write checks. To do that, you have to make a pretty good case for why you are the right person. Again, this is where having the right team helps. If you want to raise tens of thousands of dollars (which local races often demand), you probably need people to ask on your behalf. Also, money talks. Being able to raise money is a way to show to people that you are important. So being a good salesperson becomes very important--often more important than knowing how to solve a difficult problem like generational poverty or crime.
And if you are on the right team, people will spend money on your behalf, outside of your campaign. A lot of attack pieces (mailers, etc.) come from those non-campaign groups who are on the same team as a candidate. The more money you have, the less you rely on those other teammates, which is why you see wealthy and famous people jumping into to federal, or state-level races (because they don't need the help from the local team to cut through the chaff). Famous, if not wealthy, people get additional help from "earned media," which is to say they are part of a story worth reporting. In the modern world, if you go viral, you've got some of that earned media. So you say the right thing at the right time when someone is recording (see Mallory McMorrow or Mark Robinson), and you can be a star in a hurry.
Sixth: who are your friends? So all of this is going on, and in the meantime, the people who have been elected want to keep their jobs--they want to get re-elected--and they want to move up the ladder, because almost everyone wants a promotion from time to time. While they are elected, most of the time when they hear from constituents it is complaints. Why is there a traffic problem you haven't solved, why aren't you protecting the trees, why did you let a teacher say that thing, why does my gas cost so much, why does crime exist, why are my taxes so high, why aren't you fixing x, y, or z? That's 98% (that's not a scientific number, but it's a damn good guess) of what you hear from consituents. So you need people who build you back up, who tell you how great you are, who tell you you are doing great work. So politians find themselves surrounded by people who tell them how great they are. Remember, they all started with a healthy sense of ego, so...
And you have "friends" in politics, as long as you want the same thing they want. So if you can help Representative X, then he/she will like you, and will try to help you as well. There is soooo much of that. All of these folks interact on a lot of local, regional, and even state and national levels, and if you are helping them, they will help you. Some of that comes from the person who is best at imagining new and different solutions, some of that is who has the power of the purse, and lots of that is who can make a call on your behalf to the loyal group of teammates they have who can help advance your interests. So more loyalty. BUT--as much as that peer, or near peer, of yours likes you when you can help them, the person who helps them the most is the most important to them.
So if you want the support of the local sheriff, but your opponent's close confidant works in the process of allocating the budget for the local sheriff, how much does the local sheriff want to support you? But it's not just the local sheriff, it the people in the industries that you regulate, and the people who make money from the roads you build, and the people whose businesses will boom if their part of town gets a facelift--there are lots of people who want their politicians to deliver for them, and will support people they think will do that. And they aren't bad people, they are just self-interested...like all of us.
Seventh: There's another piece of who your voters are--who are the people who will fight for you? Voter participation is famously low, which means that it's often not the majority that gets their way, it's the people that show up. They say Democracy is a team sport, and it's the ones who play the game that win the game. Infamously, most Americans favor more restrictions on gun ownership, but the people who favor fewer restrictions on gun ownership care much more deeply about the issue, so they show up and not only vote, but work (and spend) to get the people they want elected. That's an example that's sure to trigger people on a board like this, but here's a local example: the people in the neighborhood who want a stop sign installed are generally much more motivated than the people who just want smooth traffic.
So who shows up at the city council and argues the issue during public comment, and who sends emails and letters to their councilmember? The people who want the stop sign. So the stop sign gets installed. After that happens, lots of people are outraged that their communte has been impacted, but because they didn't care enough (as much) to show up at the council meetings where it was considred, they've lost, and unless that stop sign really pisses people off (enough to get them going to the council meetings), it's going to stay.
I'll give you my California example. I think Gavin Newsom is a classicly sleazy politician--he'll do what he needs to further his own career (which, ordinarily, means he wants many of the things that I favor politically; that's the nature of my politics and the state he is elected in). But when I talk to my gay friends, in their minds, he can do no wrong. Why? Because he went to bat for them on gay marriage. My view is that back in 2004 it was a political stunt for his own benefit, but it benefitted them, so they love him. People are loyal to those people who have helped them. And speaking as a person whose profession involves conflict, lots of people who feel they have been wronged just want someone to listen to them. So people like Bill Clinton "feeling your pain" can build pretty loyal followings, even if all they really do is listen. That's part of the reason there are so few actual policy discussions in federal elections (like the one going on right now): the issue isn't "will this policy work," the issue for many voters is "does this policy recognize and validate my worry?" Which is also why populism--remember, good sales people are good campaigners--is such a big thing.
Eighth: shock and awe. Sometimes you get someone who is so charasmatic, that people can't help but like them. Whether that's Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama, or--for bad or good--Donald Trump (who also has money and lots of earned media), that can go a long way to cutting through the fog and reaching voters. Again, it's all about building teams, so if you can bring a big team with you because you're good at rallying folks, that can help a lot. Because the most powerful thing in politics is voters. If you can deliver voters, you have power, and power is what every politician wants: even if its just the power to fix the things they set out to fix.
And power is intoxicating. And the more power you have in politics, the more "friends" you have--but these aren't the friends who sit you down and tell you it's time to cut back on your drinking; these are the kinds of friends who love you as long as you can give them things.
Nine: little things make big differences. This is true at the national and local level. We see polls that show a politican has a 55-45 lead, and we call that insurmountable. If you knock on 100 doors trying to drum up support for a candidate, believe, me, that 45% is a huge number of people. Elections are decided on very narrow margins. In local races, it can be 5-10 voters (not percent, actual ballots). In our national election, because of the way the electoral college is designed (good, bad, or indifferent), ten thousand voters in Pennsylvania (or Arizona, or Wisconsin, or Georgia) may swing the election--that's something like a few of ten-thousanths (.00003 if my lawyer math isn't failing me) of our population size. Because voters are so uninformed (and I'm not casting that as a judgment--our representative system is premised on selecting other people to make the government's decisions for us, so that we don't have to), curious things matter, like name recognition. There is all kinds of research that shows name recognition helps. So if you have the same name as somone else people are used to voting for, that gets you more votes. If you have been on the ballot a lot (for different positions), that helps. The position on the ballot (first, second, third, etc.) matters. And because it's such small margins, tons of work goes into targeting people we know will vote, and we think are predisposed to vote our way. Most campaigns aren't trying to reach everyone, they are trying to reach very specific people--the people who will swing the vote.
Ten: Let's get back to who gets involved? People who are cranking away on successful careers have little reason to ditch that and go for politics. The pay sucks, the hours are long, and the people you interact with all want something from you. Now, if you don't need the money? And most people have to be pretty wealthy to not need the money, go for it. Sometimes those are people who worked government jobs, which helped them get into private sector jobs, which helped them get wealthy, which gave them the opportunity to get back into political jobs.
And then you get people who start early: the people who were running your democratic or repulican clubs in college. They work in Washington, they run for mayor or city council, they make it to a position that pays enough to pay their bills, and they go from there. That's where a lot of your 40-year old federal representatives probably came from. They have been in politics a long time for someone their age. Which also means they haven't been living the average person's experience. They've been in the bubble. And you get people who are so dedicated to one issue that they are willing to give it all up for that issue. Honestly, there aren't that many of them. Oh, and more and more, you get a person whose family doesn't rely on their income--that was my situation. My wife could afford politics because I was largely paying the bills. It's another angle on the first group that I mentioned.
To succeed, to get promoted and move up the ladder, most of these people aren't stupid. But they are self-interested. They are effective at motivating their team, which wins themselves votes, because self-interest is our strongest instinct. Which also means that winning votes is more important than funding the perfect drainage system, or tax incentive structure, or...
This is why "profiles in courage" is a thing. It takes a lot for someone to do something knowing that it will hurt them, personally. And bucking your team is rarely a thing that will rally your team to your side. So if you're going to swin against the tide on something, you'd better be real sure before you dive in.
Yikes, this rant is getting time consuming and probably boring...
So back to where I started: who gets involved, and who stays involved. Most people start out genuinely wanting to help. And those people think they are helping as they move through the system. They are using the power they accumulate for the public good--at least as they see it. As they grow their team and accumulate more power, they get more and more detached from "the voter," and get more and more addicted to their team--the people who help keep them in power, and help them advance. The more that happens, the more important it is to keep the team happy, so the farther you go, the more important loyalty is. And you keep using that power to do the things that you think are for the public good--although the more insulated you are from the public.
I don't judge all politicians negatively. I know a lot of them in my area personally. I think many at the highest levels are in it for the right reasons. But there is a bubble, and everyone involved at a high level is in their own bubble. Is a really rich person's bubble different from a person who has worked their way through the political system? Yes, but it's still a bubble.
I should add to this, because it feels pretty negative. My wife was successful in local politics. She hit a couple of roadblocks that I could talk about another time that were really, really frustrating, and reflect some pretty bad luck, but the path is still there for her, and there are still lots of people urging her to stay in the game. I'm somewhat bitter, a bit disillusioned, but also still have a great amount of respect for the work politicians do. It is a hard job, and people who do serve well deserve a ton of credit.
