10 easy steps
Have you been selected to run for office against your will? Or maybe you were running but were betrayed by your party mates who forced you to give way to their handpicked candidate so you want to stick it up to the bosses? Fear no more, here are ten easy steps how you can ensure that you and your party will not win the election.
P.S.: This is a satirical piece, which means it humorously criticises people or ideas, often to make a political point. It aims to provoke thought, not offense. If you are easily offended, you might want to leave now or brace yourself for some strong reactions. If you’re open-minded, I appreciate you—welcome, friend! Read on!
Nowadays holding public office is so democratic you don’t even need to know what democracy is to be elected. You just need fame, a bit of “kaching-kaching”, some celebrity friends to endorse you (or maybe, you are the celebrity), something to “fight” for and voilà! You are now elected, thank you very much! However, this is a double edged sword. What if you don’t want to be an elected official? What if you really don’t want anything to do with politics and governance? Or, maybe you want to be one or you are already one but the powers-that-be of your party no longer trusts in you so they picked out “democratically” (that is, “voting” between themselves) someone to run in your place and so now you want to screw over those peanuts.
Worry no more, dear friend, for we have prepared for you these ten easy steps to ensure that either you will not win or that your party will see a historic flop without being too obvious.
1. Demosise the other party
What else is more fun than to paint the election as a battle of good and evil? After all, people love their drama, never mind the “grey” areas. But it is not only enough to frame your campaign as an existential fight against “them”, you have to emphasise how evil the other party is and make your campaign full of hate against the other, nevermind that it originally came from the other camp. Compare them to a historically evil personality or ideology (for example, call them “fascists” or “no-no Germans” even if you don’t understand what those mean, but remember never to compare them to the Russian moustache guy since we like him and his kind). Adopt the hate and amplify it. Nothing is more effective in division than hate.
2. While we’re at it, demonise their supporters too
Well, it’s only logical, right? If their candidate is the German moustache guy then his supporters are “Nazis”, right? They are no longer human, after all we should use the argument of the other party’s most loyal supporters and make it ours: “If they don’t think like us then they are subhuman, uneducated, misogynistic, racist, monkeys”. With this you are now sure that you will not be able to change the hearts of his supporters who have even an ounce of doubt on their candidate.
3. Gaslight the independents
The people that really decide an election are not really the die-hard loyalists nor the traditionally-of-this-party people, but the independents, those who do not identify with a particular party or ideology. What they care about is their everyday life. They may have a mix and match of ideologies that they agree with but never a whole corpus of talking points of any given ideology. These are people who care more on what may be called “bread and butter” issues than ideological ones.
To make sure that you lose, gaslight these people. They’re poor? Why do they vote for the other while we are “their” party? They’re from a minority group? Why do they vote for the other party while we are the party whose sole talking point is about them? All those are “traitors”. We are the good ones, they are the evil ones, therefore these “traitors” are also evil.
4. Don’t hide your disdain for religious groups, or at least, show over disgust towards them
Are you a fully committed secularist? Then good! Show your disgust to those religious bigots and ensure that you will alienate at least the most orthodox of them (sadly, you may still see the more liberal ones vote for you since their faith is a pick and choose one). Make your campaign focus only on a moral issue (setting aside the “bread and butter” issues), that will surely put you in the religious circles’ spotlight. What’s best is that most of them will be scratching their heads because they have to choose between your clearly antireligious stance (yet still you are the “good” one) and the “evil” one.
If someone shouts in one of your rallies that “Jesus is Lord!”, the sensible way is just to say, “Amen!”, or capitalise on it to present yourself as the moderate candidate, but to make sure they never vote for you you may want to laugh at them without explicitly saying your antireligious views. Were you invited to an honourable tradition of a non-partisan luncheon organised by a Church? Then you may consider not attending and just sending a video making fun not of the other candidate or everyone in general but of that very Church’s faithful and their teachings. With this you’re now officially a “bad ass” since you are a breaker of traditions and a true progressive laughing at those religious “fanatics”.
5. Move your party to the extreme, abandon the centre
In healthy democracy, most people vote for the centre, whether it be centre-right or centre-left. But, that’s not fun. You will win that way. Maybe move a bit, or better, too much, to the extreme, either to the extreme left or to the extreme right. Make your politics more identity-based and ideologically puritan. That will again alienate the centre. But make sure not to call yourself extreme while always reminding people that everything to your right or left are extreme. Everyone who is against you is a fascist, hammer that to people.
And to make sure your avid supporters stay on the extreme, encourage them to ditch their family members and friends who do not think the same. After all, what is more harming to the democratic process than people sacrificing themselves to the gods of political strife and forgetting their other shared values? With this, you can assure that your supporters will always be inside the echo chamber of your design and so will never have the ability to reform your party.
6. Economy? Foreign policy? Nah! Focus on a divisive “social issue” as your only political platform
As we’ve mentioned above, most people care about their daily lives. Don’t put an ounce of care about those. Just say vague things like “I’ll give you free things”. Again your focus must be a niche social and moral issue, making your campaign an existential one for this particular issue. With this, those who you are “trying to protect” and still vote for the other can justifiably be called “traitors”.
Foreign policy? Just be the same old same old, promising everything while promising nothing. There are many people who are already able to read between the lines so you may want to prove to them that you don’t have a plan at all.
7. Remember to degrade the voters (and would-be voters) of the other party
Again, their candidate is the German moustache man and their voters are Nazi sympathisers so you should insist more on this. People who vote for the other party, especially the “traitors”, are “uneducated”, “racist, “misogynist”. If you’re Filipino, call them “bobo”. Surely that will enamour you to them.
8. Signal your virtur, after all, they are the “bad ones”
You are the “messiah”, you are the force of good and your ideology is synonymous with goodness. The other is the Devil himself and everything he says is either nonsense or evil and as such his supporters too are evil. Always hammer home this messaging. This will ensure people extremely loyal to your party will be more extreme in their views while alienating most of the people with common sense that reads politics not with the optics of an eschatological warfare but with a pragmatic lens.
9. Why not ask your celebrity friends for endorsements?
While in the past celebrity endorsements were a sure-fire way to connect yourself to the man and woman of the street, nowadays it seems out of touch: a bunch of billionaires pontificating to the people what their political views should be. Since you are the “good” candidate, capitalise on it and call on your celebrity friends to endorse you (unless they are themselves running for public office even without a plan of their own but only their fame which in this case they SHOULD already be campaigning for you). But since you are friends, you have to give them the “friend price” for their appearances in your rallies. Why not overspend? Pay them hundreds or not millions that will surely reveal how unqualified you are in managing an entire populations’ economy.
10. And as a bonus to ensure your party never wins again: remember to find fault in everyone except you when you lose. Yup, it’s their fault not yours
And now finally, the results are in and as expected you did not win. Congratulations! Now, to make sure neither you nor your party never wins again (or at least not until your partymates wake up and reform) while maintaining your holier-than-thou attitude, remember to find fault in the loss to everyone but you. Tell your “public speakers” to say more than half of the population are evil, bigoted, misogynists and this is all their fault because not voting for you is equal to evil. Or say that the fault lies on your predecessor or on non-traditional media. Or maybe the “religious fanatics” you so hate. All the while making sure your party never wakes up to admit what they miss and how extreme you’ve gotten them to that you’ve already left the rest of the country behind.
And with this, you will surely fulfill your wish not to be elected. Cheers to you!
