Over the years I’ve been involved in politics, every election has been preceded by the same debate.
Some politicians say challenging the current government is worth a shot and can eventually lead
to a desired outcome, while others dismiss it as a futile exercise, and there’s no point in trying.
Over the past 12 years, my creed has been: buy the ticket, take the ride.
Anyone who calls themselves an opposition politician should jump
at every opportunity to effect political change.
Cast your ballot and urge people to do the same. Then you wait and see what happens.
But first, you need to vote.
Sometimes the opposition decides to take action, as was the case in the 2019 Moscow City Duma election
or in the 2011 general election (before I became involved in politics).
Whenever they choose to do it, there’s always a non-negligent result.
Other times, mine is a minority voice or I’m on my own altogether,
while the rest are convincing everyone we can’t make it and Putin will win anyway. So, Putin cruises to a victory.
With 11 years of experience under my belt, I started this pre-election discussion last September,
and abstaining seemed out of the question.
Things seemed to begin coming our way.
The campaigns mounted by Duntsova and Nadezhdin showed that Russians craved for some changes
and were poised to take on Putin.
Lines of people waiting to sign up for Nadezhdin against the absence of Putin endorsers
showed that the pro-peace hopeful was backed by real people,
whereas they could only coerce people into voting for the pro-war contender.
The candidates were kept off the ballot.
Then the public’s momentum targeted Davankov, an openly pro-peace candidate.
A skyrocketed number of online search inquiries, a soaring rating, and Davankov blazing
into the runner-up spot one week out as the Russians have a chance to decide whether
they turn their backs on the aging autocrat who stands for war
and vote for the young bureaucrat who stands for peace.
Being a politically active liberal minority, we have a simple action plan for the upcoming week.
We urge people to convince their friends and family to vote for Davankov.
It’s not a protest rally or any other sophisticated event.
Just offer your mom, grandma, aunt, or colleague to tick the box on the ballot.
There’s no risk involved. The candidate has been approved. He’s not throwing down the gauntlet.
He just advocates for peace. You won’t be busted by riot police or anything.
Moreover, Davankov serves as the Deputy Speaker of the State Duma.
He’s an establishment politician and a big asset to our cause because no one perceives him as a threat.
Besides, unlike the rest of them, he’s young. And again, he’s droning on about peace and the return to normalcy.
Importantly, his vote count will represent those who want peace.
That’s how it’s going to be approached by the citizens, the elites, and the global community.
If he lays an egg, it won’t be a disaster. Everybody knows that Putin will rig the election anyway.
It’s a win-win scenario. We lose nothing, but we can win big at the lowest of costs.
Now, what’s the old opposition up to?
At best, they either keep mum or call on people to join the rallies at the polling locations.
It’s a good idea, and I support it. Except it does nothing to convince the uncommitted folks.
Worse still, some of our ostensible allies are challenging my strategy and trying to make me think it’s all pointless.
They are even surprised that I could think there were a lot of us and we could make a difference.
Yesterday, Mikhail Fishman, a TV Rain host, summarized it all in his talk show.
It matters because TV Rain has a larger viewership than my channel.
After listening to Fishman’s take, a lot of people won’t be voting against Putin and, crucially,
convincing others to do it. After all, if it’s pointless, why bother?
Today, I suggest watching and unpacking his TV Rain monologue.
Let’s start with the following clip.
But let’s get back to the candidate that’s closest to Nadezhdin, namely, to Davankov,
the one Maxim Katz is already rooting for.
Like, let’s vote for him as the least unsavory candidate, thus lowering Putin’s vote count.
According to Katz, that’ll shatter the illusion of people having no alternative to Putin.
This is the logic behind Navalny’s Smart Voting system.
The candidate may be a puppet contender, an absolute underdog, or whatever.
The key is, it’ll pose a challenge to the system’s favorite, and if they garner a lot of votes…
Just imagine, if the wild card Davankov gets 30% or even 20%, it’ll evidently be the triumph of the anti-Putin
and anti-war protest that’ll come through the legal Putin-backed election.
I have no problem with what Mikhail is saying here. True, Davankov is the most obvious protest candidate.
First, he’s already a runner-up in the polls.
The whole point of the Smart Voting system devised by the late Navalny is to see
which of the puppet opposition figures boasts the highest rating and endorse them regardless
of what the candidate thinks about it and whether he wants us to root for him.
Second, Davankov’s role is that of a young anti-war candidate.
He won't be able to turn it around one week out.
He’ll still be young, and that’s an important factory for many Russian voters.
We may underestimate its importance for those who are outside of our liberal bubble.
Now, there’s always a chance Davankov may back down and start rooting for the war.
But that’s highly unlikely, and it won’t matter anyway.
We’ve already assigned him a role as a magnet for anti-war votes.
The TV Rain host is right saying the number of votes for Davankov will matter.
20% of anti-war votes will be good, 30% will be great, and forcing a runoff will be tantamount to a win.
Whenever a runoff is brought up, most opposition figures flinch and start telling you
why it’s out of the realm of possibility.
True, the odds are slim. But we can boost these odds with every ballot cast in Davankov’s favor.
The rule of the thumb is: don’t worry about something we can’t change, the number of rigged votes.
What we can change, though, is ramp up the anti-war candidate’s numbers.
At best, we can offset the possible electoral fraud.
Back to Fishman. Had the latest episode of his show ended at 4:54,
it would’ve been a great motivational video. Except it didn’t.
After saying the right thing, Mikhail proceeded with a “but.”
The problem is, unfortunately, with Davankov, you aren’t getting anywhere near these figures.
The Smart Voting system doesn’t always work. It’s only efficient when there’s a clear trend that can be joined
and boosted. It was the case in the 2011 general election when United Russia’s number were dropping
and Navalny’s urge to vote against the party of crooks and thieves did click with the voters.
Similarly, it recently happened to Nadezhdin because he was widely embraced
by the audience as a legal opportunity to vote against the war.
Davankov, on the other hand, hasn’t been embraced.
There’s no consensus, and it can’t be reached however hard you may call on people to vote for him.
His numbers will be determined by the Kremlin. It’s a lost cause.
There we go again. “It’s impossible! The game is lost before it even starts.”
Mikhail, it’s only lost before the kickoff if you’ve given up.
Let’s look at his talking points.
Mikhail says that back in 2011, there was a wave the opposition managed to ride.
Now there’s no such wave.
In reality, though, in 2011, no opposition figure talked about “United Russia’s fall.”
No one expected the well-off Moscow middle-class to vote against the ruling party
and then take to the streets in droves to rail against the general election vote count.
The truth is, the largest protest rallies on Putin’s watch came
as a shocker both to the government and to the opposition.
Any mass protest is easy to explain in retrospect.
You can look back and clearly see the ingredients for it brewing.
Imagine a large-scale protest will erupt these days.
In hindsight, we’ll be able to read the tea leaves and say it was coming.
But being in the moment, it’s impossible to say for certainty what makes people tick
and what makes them sit tight.
Nobody knew that the egregious fraud at the 2011 election would make people mad.
But before that election, the opposition was routinely discussing
if they needed to get involved in the procedure.
In 2011, Navalny who urged people to vote against United Russia debated Boris Nemtsov
who advocated invalidating the ballots.
Moreover, the latter broached the emergence of a public movement against the establishment parties
that would notch a symbolic win following the election.
For the general election, the campaign will seek to have people vote against all of the parties.
The organization activists will be calling on voters to turn out and strike off the boxes on the ballot.
According to the organizers, the goal is to have 7% of such ballots
(an electoral threshold for the protest vote).
This initiative will be adopted by the supporters of the unregistered parties,
those who ignore the elections or consider them to be farcical.
Navalny, by contrast, came up with a strategy that proved popular
and spilled way beyond his blog’s readership.
He simply called on people to vote against the party of crooks and thieves.
In 2011, a myriad of voters sought to torpedo United Russia’s election plans.
Everyone knew how they’d voted and took to the streets to stick to their picks.
Although the protest wasn’t entirely triumphant, it did quite some damage to the United Russia MPs.
Fishman goes on to say something he believes should be taken for granted.
Ostensibly, Nadezhdin was popularly perceived as an anti-war candidate, while Davankov isn’t.
If you’re an attentive viewer of our channel, you may remember that several weeks ago,
there was no consensus around Boris Nadezhdin’s bid.
100s of thousands of Russians hitting the lines to sign up for Nadezhdin were preceded by a heated debate.
Some said he was far from perfect and not even the real opposition figure.
He danced around the anti-war agenda.
He was allowed onto the ballot as an establishment liberal who had once been friends with Sergei Kiriyenko.
They said he was a no-name who stood no chance of gathering 100,000 signatures over the course of a week.
Like, get out of here! A month wouldn’t be enough.
But then I spoke out, endorsing his about. And everyone followed suit.
Later, saying stuff like I’ve just mentioned no longer made much sense.
Fast-forward one week, and he got 250,000 signatures.
Mind you, an endorsement signature for Nadezhdin wasn’t quite the same thing
as ticking the Davankov box on the anonymous ballot.
The latter is totally safe for anyone, including government-funded workers and law enforcement.
Signing up for Nadezhdin involved sharing your personal details, which might be too much for some.
Despite all that, we braved the challenge and racked up 250% of the required number of signatures.
Ramping up the votes for the official contender will be much easier unless people are unmotivated to do so.
There are indications that Putin’s system agrees.
Yesterday, a pro-Kremlin Telegram channel posted this, “Unnamed people are urging Vladislav Davankov
to publicly disown foreign agent Maxim Katz.”
These inside scoops can’t be verified.
But if it’s true, it means the president’s office is already sensing trouble.
But we’ve got a whole week of campaigning ahead of us.
That’s the time when most Russians will be deciding whether to vote
and making their picks, probably against Putin.
MAKE A MOVE
Here’s a thought experiment for you.
Suppose the inside scoop is accurate, and the president’s office is indeed worried
about the damage we can do using the system’s own toolset.
If that’s the case, what are the Putin campaigners supposed to do? Step up their campaign?
There are no new avenues they can explore.
Their best strategy would be demotivating the opponents by making them think their initiatives are senseless
and their efforts are fruitless.
They want to talk us out of trying to take on Putin and then accept the election commission’s figures.
This isn’t to say the president’s office has bribed Mikhail Fishman.
That’s not true. It’s just that the game is complicated, and it’s easy for one
to mistakenly do the opponent’s bidding.
One can easily miss a good move, misjudge, make a wrong move,
and give up an important chess piece, thus aiding Putin’s cause.
What I’m proposing is to aim for the win.
True, some may then start gloating and saying, “I told you!” But let’s try and enjoy the game, all of us.
The Russian opposition is already past the point where it debated the very participation in this electoral procedure.
And that’s a major success.
Almost all of the leading opposition personalities have agreed that participation is worth it.
Now there are two camps. They don’t exactly contradict each other.
It’s the details that matter. Camp #1 says people should turn out and do as they see fit, except voting for Putin.
Camp #2 says people should turn out and vote for Vladislav Davankov, an anti-war candidate.
I’m arguing for the latter strategy as the simpler one to promote among dozens of millions
of Russians who want the war to end.
These people want to save themselves and their loved ones from the new conscription drive.
They want the troops withdrawn. They want to be able to plan for the future.
These are dozens of millions of Russians. These aren’t the audiences of liberal YouTube channels.
They don’t follow the opposition debates.
Nonetheless, they can all ask their families to vote for the younger guy debating on TV as he opposes the war.
I’ve run multiple election campaigns.
Many of them were successful in spite of the crazy system we had to deal with.
I viewed it all as a weighing scale that could be tipped either way.
The campaign manager always keeps this in mind when planning
the campaign trail, especially toward the finish line.
Our campaign wants Putin to lose or take a hit, having to engage in egregious fraud
as the vote count doesn’t land him a victory.
What do we need to do? We want fewer ballots cast in
Putin’s favor and more ballots favoring another candidate
It’s far easier to have an uncommitted person vote for a specific candidate rather than invalidate their ballot.
Those who stay out of politics can’t see much of a difference between a boycott, a no-show,
and an invalid ballot. That’s why we need to pick a candidate that’s easier to campaign for.
Apparently, his name is Davankov. He’s young. He’s not scary. He’s not a warmonger or a buffoon.
The views he’s airing run contrary to Putin’s.
The polls show that the Russians with an anti-war stance are going to vote for him.
Davankov is Putin’s major rival because he’s pro-peace, whereas the rest of them are pro-war.
Therefore, any criticism of Davankov that’ll result in fewer people voting for him plays into Putin’s hands.
Anything that discourages people from rooting for Davankov plays into Putin’s hands.
On the other hand, if you convince a Putin supporter that he’s locked in for the win and they can,
therefore, travel to the countryside for the weekend, it’ll help tip the scale in our favor.
Clearly, if you’ve convinced someone who didn’t want to vote or, worse,
wanted to vote for Putin to vote for Davankov, that’s a huge rock for our plate of the scale.
Our opponent’s plate is massive, but we shouldn’t give up.
Should we lose, we’ll keep trying in the future until one day we prevail. But it’s our duty to keep trying.
We should act smart, avoid playing into Putin’s hands, and help others avoid the trap.
If we manage to propel the anti-war candidate into double digits and some pollsters report a soaring rating,
the following promotion will come easier.
Reaching the psychologically meaningful 10% mark will make millions of Russians think
this guy is capable of scrapping it out with Putin.
I don’t know if we will end up kicking him out of office. But we must take a shot. Not at a later point. Right now.
[A message for the Russian voters that seek to vote at a polling location that’s outside of their area
of residence or avoid e-voting they were forced into by their employers]
See you tomorrow!