Perhaps you have heard about or received a fundraising message from Senator Obama's campaign encouraging you to donate funds to him by midnight October 23 so that he can pour more resources into Ohio, Missouri, Indiana, Florida, North Carolina, and Nevada? If you donate at least 15 dollars, the campaign promises to send you a special edition Obama-Biden car magnet. If, like me, you regard the idea of a limited edition car magnet as simultaneously a silly ploy aimed to attract donations from the sixteen year olds from whom Senator Obama accepts contributions and as another in a string of insults to thoughtful voters, you might consider this suggestion. It adopts the strategy of answering the absurd with a simple action - about which, more below. Let us return Senator Obama's generous offer of a magnet by mailing him one of our own. (Surely you have a magnet of some kind in your junk drawer or lingering on your refrigerator - perhaps a magnetized business card or an alphabet magnet of the sort sold to children.) If you have a magnet, why not send it to Senator Obama? His campaign donation mailing address is Obama for America, P.O. Box 802798, Chicago, IL 60680. Help Senator Obama understand the true power of magnetism On a more serious note: Democrats and former Democrats who have been and are appalled by the tactics and methods used by the DNC, the Democratic Party apparatus, and the Obama campaign in this presidential election can take specific actions to force change both within the Democratic Party and within American politics more generally. I believe we will need a Salt March of our own. The original Salt March was organized by M.K. Gandhi after he issued India's Declaration of Independence in 1930. In contrast to the events that followed the American Declaration of Independence, Gandhi wanted to fulfill the demands of India's declaration nonviolently. Toward that end he organized the Salt March to Dandi. Gandhi used the Salt March to illustrate the senselessness of British rule over Indians. At the time, it was illegal for Indians to make salt; indeed the sale or production of salt by anyone but the British government was a criminal offense punishable by law. Gandhi, at age 61, led a procession of marchers, who walked over 200 miles, to the coast, where Gandhi made salt from seawater, an act for which he was arrested. While the Salt March took place in 1930, Indian Independence was not achieved for another seventeen years, in 1947. But the Salt March forced the British to negotiate directly with Gandhi (the first time they did so with an Indian) and gained Gandhi respect from other Indian leaders, such as Nehru, who understood the symbolic emancipation the Salt march represented. (source) Contrary to the attitude of the Democratic leadership, they do not literally rule rank and file Democrats, so in this respect there is no parallel between India's struggle for independence from British rule and the present political moment in the United States. But precisely because this year the official Democratic leadership has repeatedly acted as if they rule rank and file voters, we need to make it clear that this is a serious misunderstanding of the relationship between voters and politicians. The demand of many rank-and-file Democrats and freshly-minted-former-Democrats: freedom from political hubris and highhandedness, particularly from the Party we thought we had reason to expect better from. It may take 17 years, or 27, but the American people can, and I believe will, gain this freedom.