Are you 25 or older?
Are you an American citizen?
Have you been an American citizen for 7 years or longer?
Do you have a college degree?
Are you unemployed or massively underemployed?
Have you been screwed over by the system? Have student loan debts kicked your ass and stolen your future?
Do you know how to post to Facebook?
Do you have a smart phone with a video camera or a computer with a webcam?
Do you have a few thousand friends on social media?
Do you have a few hundred friends on social media?
Do you know how to read, write, and speak clear and effective English?
Do you know how to upload a video to YouTube?
Do you know how to use Twitter and Instagram?
Do you have friends who love posting memes?
Do you love posting memes?
Do you have political opinions?
Do you have an idea as to why this country isn't working and what might fix it?
Have you got nothing left to lose?
Are you impossible to embarrass?
Have you ever had the Peter Finch as Howard Beale moment and yelled, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore?"
Do you like screwing with the man?
Have I got a deal for you. The pay is great, but the interview process is a nightmare.
If you would like to earn $174,000 a year, all you need to do is use your skills online and the fact that you have no money, and don't really need a whole lot of it to gum up the works and make the system work for you instead of against you and run for Congress.
You can start building an email list for free with mailchimp. You can get a website domain name for your campaign for under $20. You can host your campaign website for free on Wordpress dot com you can use Facebook groups and Facebook pages for free to begin to organize your constituency. You can host audio files of a podcast for free on archive dot org you can set up the xml and self-host a wordpress site for 18 months for under $200 on a shared server and as a Congressional candidate you aren't likely to need a killer server, but Wordpress dot com is free and hard to take down and you can pay to have your domain pointed there too. You can use YouTube to post videos for free.
You have the potential in this day and age to run an effective Congressional guerrilla campaign for LESS than the minimum threshold reporting requirements with the FEC and if you position yourself correctly on the issue of money in politics and the buying of elections you could gain A LOT of free press with this issue and working cheaply.
If you get a campaign treasurer on board to handle FEC reporting requirements, you can use ActBlue as a Democrat to raise money online for your campaign.
You can steal your platform from your favorite Presidential candidate and bring some local issues into the campaign too.
You could for very little money host a live call in streaming audio show or for free have call in Google Hangouts if you have a few inexpensive addons for your computer. There are plenty of free resources to learn Internet marketing, campaign laws, and how to get on the ballot.
If you live in one of those districts that never have a challenger to a Republican incumbent you really have nothing to lose.
iTunes, a ton of liberal news organizations online will eventually take interest in the plucky underdog campaign you are running and that potentially will bring in enough money to even do things like robocalls, and expand your email list.
Of course the other thing that is free is knocking on doors and talking to people.
You don't need a suit and tie, but you might get one, then again maybe you don't.
Remind people America is supposed to be an open democracy and anyone with a good idea can run. Hell idiots with no clue get elected ALL THE TIME.
See Louie Goehmert, Michelle Bachmann. Rand Paul, Sarah Palin, and countless other empty suits in the back benches of Congress
This country sucks beyond the telling of it right now. If you are unemployed, educated, or underemployed and educated, what the fuck have you got to lose?
Fix this fucking country, the top of the ticket alone cannot do it.
Run, get off your ass and run.
You have a major advantage in that YOU CAN ACTUALLY POINT OUT HOW MUCH YOUR LIFE IS LIKE THE average citizen. No incumbent can make that claim.
Go forth and kick ass, you have nothing left to lose and a country with a better future to gain.