Yesterday, I bemoaned the disaster that is this year’s presidential race. But big whup. As the LifeLock commercial rightly asks, “Why monitor a problem if you don’t fix it?”
Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will be the next president. That means we have our work cut out for us. And we can’t wait for the 2020 presidential race to fix the problem. We must immediately assert citizen power to create an effective check on government-gone-wild.
So, what to do?
First, let’s admit that fixing Washington isn’t easy. We must fight the Feds through national organizations, of course, but we actually gain greater leverage by working closer to home — at local and state levels.
We need to elect mayors, governors, legislators and councilmembers in 2017 and 2018, men and women who will fight for free markets and against cronyism. And stand up to the federal government.
And where we have the power of ballot initiatives and recall, let’s use it.
By Inauguration Day, we can be changing the conversation in most of the top 25 media markets. How? By petitioning the right issues onto the ballot. By April and May, voters in those cities and counties can directly enact those reforms. Next November, Ohio and Washington state voters can weigh in with ballot initiatives.
Sadly, tragically, it’s too late to stop campaign 2016’s tornado from doing damage. The next disaster of an administration is on its way. But we can create a competing agenda to the Hillary Clinton or the Donald Trump agenda.
A pro-liberty agenda. Starting now.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Original (cc) photo by Niklas Hellerstedt on Flickr