Back in 2004 the Guardian identified Clark County Ohio as a swing district in th4e swing state of Ohio. History shows if you win Ohio you win the White House and Clark was an uber-marginal district. So the Guardian got its readers back in the UK to call up folks in Clark. You can guess what happened next.
"Hello my good man this is Jasper from Islington and that Bush fellow is a racist who does not understand why LGBT issues and global warming are the big issues in Ohio today please vote for John Kerry. There's a good chap. Power to the workers."
Sound of silence as American from flyover state wonders who this posh British tosser is and why he is talking total rubbish.
There was a 1600 vote swing to Bush in Clark giving him a landslide win in the district and helping him to land Ohio comfortably.
It is not too late for The Guardian to get its readers on the phone before November 8. Ohio looks safe for the Donald so how about the Grauniad readers work their magic in Florida or Pennsylvania? But in this new media era there is already an effort underway from Avaaz, the online grouping fighting for every duff cause on this planet. Remember Brexit?
On June 22nd Avaaz emailed its database of dim millennials urging everyone to vote Remain. It warned that if we voted leave it would mean this for the country:
It can turn away from Great Britain to become little England: small, weak, and white. But that has never been the dream of the English, or the British. It is not now the dream of any of Britain's major political parties or leaders. It is only the dream of a few populist xenophobes, buoyed by a few small minded newspaper editors and owners of the Mail and the Sun, especially Trump-loving American Rupert Murdoch, who have whipped up anti-government and anti-immigrant hysteria with lies and propaganda."
Well that was balanced and fact based. With an Avaaz campaign in overdrive in the final days of the campaign the polls did indeed move. Much to everyone's shock, Britain voted to leave.
And so to Trump, okay most Avaaz folks are in Europe but we can still help the great cause. So Avaaz warns it millenial readers of what a Trump win means. It starts with the BIG ISSUE
Trump wants to tear up the Paris climate deal, and that's just the start of his horrifying plans! But now there's a way we can all help stop him, just by texting.
Then onto the other Trump issues...
Trump and the racist, sexist, anti-climate, isolationist message he peddles is a threat to the entire world, to everything we fight for as a community. And connecting with young Americans who also care about saving our planet, and ensuring they have all the information they need to vote, can be enough to secure a vote against Trump.
So what to do: starting texting! Over to Avaaz
Tests show that one of us can make a voting plan with 30 people who share our values in just an hour -- there's no get out the vote program anywhere that has that kind of success rate!
You’ll get everything you need to jump right in through progressive group NextGen Climate -- a thorough training, a community, a support team in a chat room, and a contact list when you’re ready to get started. And because the tool doesn't use any text messages on your plan -- you send them through a web page -- you can recruit tons and tons of people at no extra cost (make sure you're super comfortable writing in fluent English though!).
Ends
Well good luck folks. Make sure you text all those unemployed young folks across the Rust Belt to tell them why you are fighting carbon emissions. Make sure to text the black community where Trump is the most popular GOP candidate for 56 years to say that all Trump supporters including 1 in 5 Afro Americans and almost 40% of hispanics are racists.
Please explain to the poor kids in the inner cities and the south who will be the next lot in the front line for the army why isolationism is so much worse than sending young folks overseas to die in numerous pointless wars, the Clinton doctrine.
Go for it...Clark County goes national with the proven vote winners of Avaaz.