by Chris Savage

There’s a certain sort of comfort one can get by being a political commentator who stands on the outside looking in on the political machinations of society. Removed from the fray, one can wax eloquent about what others are doing right or what others are doing wrong. You can build up those you agree with and deride and mock those you don’t. But at the end of the day, you walk away unscathed and with clean hands.

Not so for the activists who attempt to make change in the world around them.

Activists get their hands dirty—they often get their entire lives dirty. They take risks. They stretch and they try things that may or may not work. But, at the end of the day, after they’ve washed away the grime from the fight, they know they have tried to make the world a better place from their perspective.

This is how I view the difference between organizers working to recall Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and their detractors. Not Republicans who support Snyder, but liberals, who call the recall efforts foolhardy. On one side of the argument, you have activists who see themselves left with no other recourse than to recall the governor. On the other, you have political commentators such as Jack Lessenberry, a senior political analyst for Michigan Radio, and Eric Baerren, owner of the blog Michigan Liberal.

Baerren has written two blog entries recently (here and here) in which he assails the effort to recall Rick Snyder, and those who argue that the Michigan Democratic Party should be more involved:

The whole point a grassroots exists is to do things that it has no faith in a large organization in doing. Nobody thinks the Mark Brewers of the world, even if they threw their energy one million percent into it, could accomplish a gubernatorial recall or — better yet — the recall of a handful of lawmakers. That anyone would expect or even find desirable for the Michigan Democratic Party to do their work for them, or find reason to become outraged over Facebook page edits, just makes the entire enterprise look silly.

—No, I don’t care what is happening in Wisconsin … or anywhere else, for that matter.

—No, I’m not interested in recalling benevolent overlord Rick Michigan, so the problem here is not that I won’t man up and do the work myself.

and

As for me, well, I look down the road at a successful recall campaign; and even if your purpose is to keep people fired up, you still have to consider what happens if you actually — against all odds — succeed. To me, what happens is that Brian Calley becomes an instantly neutered governor (unelected, tainted, and probably an instant favorite to lose in the next gubernatorial primary to opponents some of whom will have strong allies in the current Legislature) with the power consolidated in the state Legislature, where the Republican Party will still have a hefty majority in the House and a supermajority in the Senate. There are a lot of words you could use to describe that outcome, although I don’t know that victory is one of them.

A lot of very defensive words there, words aimed at a strawman. Nobody has ever suggested that the Michigan Democratic Party run the recall effort. Some of us have, though, asked why they are sitting on the sidelines in one of the nation’s most epic battles of left versus right. But, as Baerren says, he’s not interested in participating; he stands above the fray in his own mind.

While it isn’t surprising that Baerren takes the stance he does, I do find Jack Lessenberry’s stance a bit more surprising. Lessenberry has written two pieces (here and here) and, in both, he suggests that recall advocates are tilting at windmills. Lessenberry writes:

With considerable fanfare, a group called Citizens United has announced a campaign to collect signatures to remove Rick Snyder from office.

They’ve got a Facebook page and a website. They have filed paperwork to get their petition language approved, which they hope will happen after a hearing April 29 in Ann Arbor.

Without any doubt, there are boatloads of people angry at the governor and his policies. So what are the chances of the recall being successful, at least in getting on the November ballot?

Essentially, zero. Under Michigan law, if its language is approved, Citizens United would have 90 days to collect the 806,522 valid signatures needed. Since some signatures are always disqualified, even the recall group acknowledges it needs more than a million. That would mean collecting more than 10,000 a day.

Even proposals to get amendments on the ballot usually fail unless they can pay handsomely to collect signatures — and an amendment only requires about a third as many as a recall.

The recall’s main organizer says he has raised “about $1,000.” This effort is unlikely to cost the governor a lot of sleep.

and

[The recall effort’s] motto is that of the famous 18th century philosopher Edmund Burke:

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” which is certainly true …

Yet not the whole truth. There is an equally big truth, which every band of successful guerrilla warriors in the world has learned: Pick your battles. Yes, glorious defeats have sometimes inspired men and women to fight another day.

But all too often, losing has exactly the opposite effect. Illusions crushed, the disillusioned and dispirited melt away, turn off and drop out. That’s what largely happened to the left wing in the 1960s and 1970s. The Kennedys were killed and Martin Luther King was killed and the cops smashed the protesters’ heads at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in the summer of 1968.

~SNIP~

Michigan Citizens United can’t legally start collecting signatures till July 1. Then, they have to collect 807,000 valid signatures by Oct. 1 — well more than twice the number needed for a constitutional amendment. Practically speaking, they’d need more.

Many, many more. Citizens United estimates they’d have to collect 1.1 million signatures. According to their website, as I write these lines on May 1, the group now has $5,695 in the bank.

They would need a $1.5 million, at a minimum, to have a prayer. By the way, even if they succeeded, a recall election couldn’t be called till next year. Legally, they now can hold a vote only at the next regularly scheduled election, and no sooner than 95 days after the recall petitions are filed. That means February 2012.

Plus, if they succeeded, Jesus would not become governor. Lt. Gov. Brian Calley would take over. You might want to read up on his voting record before you pull that ripcord, comrades.

I normally have a great deal of admiration for Jack Lessenberry. Few commentators know Michigan politics as well as he does, and he normally has his facts straight. However, in just the two snippets I’ve excerpted here, there are a number of fairly obvious inaccuracies.

First of all, Lessenberry writes that it’s impossible to run a successful recall petition drive without paying a dollar per signature, or spending around $1 million dollars. This is clearly absurd. A dedicated, grassroots effort, properly managed and skillfully executed can do this without having to pay for signature collectors. Speaking with organizers from FireRickSnyder.org, I was told they already have close to two thousand volunteers involved, and many more signing on each day.

Signature collectors literally have people coming to them to sign petitions.

What Lessenberry seems unable to appreciate is just how passionate Democrats are right now. And, it’s not just Democrats. Snyder has managed to piss off elderly people, as well as conservatives who detest the idea of taxing pensions and gutting of K-12 funding. His approval numbers are in the low 30s right now, tied for last place with Florida’s Rick Scott and Ohio’s John Kasich as the least popular governors in the country. Snyder’s approval ratings are even lower, in fact, than Scott Walker of Wisconsin—that’s saying something.

Lessenberry also makes the assumption that anything less than 100 percent success will demoralize Democrats, making them less likely to want to participate in the 2012 election battle ahead. This particular suggestion is comically ridiculous. All his rather odd references to the Kennedys and Dr. King and the Democratic Convention in Chicago say nothing about the political climate in Michigan right now. We have a Republican governor. We have a Republican House. We have a Republican Senate. We have a Republican Supreme Court. How much more demoralized does Lessenberry think Democrats can get?! And how much more demoralized will they be 18 months from now if they do nothing while the Republicans run roughshod over the working poor, the elderly, unions and hand over billions of tax dollars to business in the form of incentives and tax breaks?

In one of his essays, Lessenberry writes the recall effort cannot begin collecting signatures till July 1.

Bzzzt! Sorry, Jack.

The actual recall cannot happen before then, but the signature collection surely can (and has). He also assumes, like Baerren, that if the recall is successful, Lt. Gov. Brian Calley becomes governor.

The State Constitution reads:

“In case of the conviction of the governor on impeachment, his removal from office, his resignation or his death, the lieutenant governor, the elected secretary of state, the elected attorney general and such other persons designated by law shall in that order be governor for the remainder of the governor’s term.” However, the Michigan Compiled Laws, Sec. 168.970 say, “Upon the filing of the certificate of the canvassing board showing the recall of the officer as herein provided, the officer empowered by law to perform the duties of such recalled official, in the event of such officer’s absence, death, illness or inability to act, shall perform and discharge the duties of the office so vacated until the successor to fill such vacancy is duly elected and qualified as herein provided or until the vacancy is temporarily filled.“

This suggests that Calley would be governor only until a February 2012 special election.

If we get to the point where gubernatorial succession becomes an issue, Democrats will have already scored a monumental political victory. Besides, throwing roadblocks in front of Republicans is exactly what Democrats are trying to do, right?

One final thing: Lessenberry continues to mock the relatively small amount of money that has been raised by the recall organizers thus far. What he probably didn’t account for is the liberal political website Daily Kos getting in on the action. In the past week, Daily Kos has sent at least two emails to its members. This is in addition to their front page articles about it.

At Daily Kos, we are joining this recall effort. Our first step will be running Facebook and Google ads across the entire state of Michigan to quickly sign up 10,000 volunteers to gather recall petition signatures. Typically, using online ads costs about $2 per sign up, so we’re going to need $20,000 to pull this off. Can you contribute $6 to Daily Kos, to help us sign up three of the 10,000 volunteers needed to recall Rick Snyder?

So far they have actually raised over $22,000 for the effort and are lending their not-insubstantial organizing skills to the effort. What both Baerren and Lessenberry would have you believe is a Quixotic band of novices armed with puny lances is turning out to have some bigger players involved than first anticipated.

Will the recall effort succeed? It will be difficult, for sure. However, what the effort lacks in funding, the movement more than makes up for in heart and passion and a certain level of anger at what Snyder has done.

This week at the Mackinac Policy Conference on Mackinac Island, the governor said Michigan is “now going to be a role model for fiscal responsibility.” He also said, “It’s about people helping people.”

The reality is that upwards of 70 percent of Michiganders see something quite different. They see a man who is doing things he never campaigned on and who is paying for gigantic corporate tax cuts by shifting the economic burden onto kids, seniors and the poor. Far from being “fiscally responsible,” Michiganders, and not just Democrats, see Snyder as being corporately oriented. That’s not “people helping people.” That’s Republicans helping their business associates and benefactors. Much like Paul Ryan’s Medicare-killing budget plan is now an albatross around the necks of federal-level Republicans, Snyder’s budget is a similar stinking carcass hanging from the necks of Michigan Republicans.

Both Baerren and Lessenberry seem to believe that the recall shouldn’t be attempted because it’s a long shot that probably won’t succeed. I’d suggest that its chance for success is irrelevant. Democrats can stand by yelling “Stop!” while Republicans have their way with our laws and policies, or Democrats can stand up and fight back. If they succeed, they will have accomplished something impressive and important. If they do not succeed, they will have engaged people who were passionate and gotten them fired up about taking action. They will also have collected names and contact information for thousands and thousands of people, activists who have proven they are interested in politically active. And, when 2012 and then 2014 come along, they will have taken significant steps toward forming an organized network to take on the Republicans again and again until they prevail.

I understand how easy it is to sit back, stay clean, and cast opinions and judgements into the mediasphere. Both Eric Baerren and Jack Lessenberry do it daily and make a living from it. For others, though, it’s the passion of activism that motivates them. They care less about what Baerren and Lessenberry think with their “Can’t do” attitudes, and far more about what may be possible with their “Yes we can” attitude. They don’t mind getting a little dirty to accomplish their goals.

If you would like to help out with the Rick Snyder recall effort, click HERE to volunteer. Petitions are being circulated in all 83 counties of Michigan.

Read more of Chris Savage’s essays at Eclectablog.com.