Last night I finally got in the swing of door knocking. Every election it takes a few doors to get comfortable and last night I thought of the perfect phrase to introduce myself to college students who were’nt particulary interested in seeing a man of three score and ten at their door. I’ve been leading with “I’m Harry Welty and I’m not your usual Republican.”
Last night I thought of a quick addition that took some of the sting out of the word Republican. “I like Democrats and I love planet Earth.” (to which I often add “that makes me a very unusual Republican”) And if I see a smile I add “I’d like to take that message to Congress.”
So far its only one in six rooms that have students in them. I mostly just slide my column about the Enviornment and my Jabba the Hutt card under their doors and continue on my merry way. Last night I got more efficient and did not take enough of the cards with me. I quit half an hour early. I won’t make that mistake again.
In a few cases when I introduce myself as a Republican I’ll get a relieved look from students who are perhaps even more traumatized to be Republicans on a campus today than I was in the Nixon years. But I don’t want them to get the wrong idea. If I see their relief I often tell them I am a heretic.
I don’t think I am a Republican heretic. My inclination is to think the Republican party is now in the hands of heretics who have no use for Abraham Lincoln. They are the apostates not me…….That’s my working premise anyway. And last night when my line about liking Democrats got a snide response from a young woman it gave me pause.
She didn’t take my flyer. She had two other young ladies in her room and they all enjoyed her dismissing me perhaps as a secret cell of republicanism in a hellish Democratic College environment. I needed to hear that and I need to address it because on both sides of our political divide it is what is poisoning our Democracy.
She tossed her beliefs off as though our divisions was a rivalry between supporters of rival professional sports teams like the Minnesota Wisconsin support of the Green Bay Packers or the Minnesota Vikings longtime rivals in the same conference. But even these supporters will often root for their enemies when the Super bowl is on the line.
In the US our politics is toxic. I’m seeing my campaign now more like my wife’s attitude toward my defeatism when I struggled to make teaching work decades ago. “SNAP OUT OF IT” she would tell me when I’d let my depression take over.
America has to snap out of it. We’ve got bigger fish to fry and hovering a microscope over overblown hot button issues will not allow us to prepare our next generations for the challenges they face. I’ve always been prepared to tell Democrats that. On the local level in Duluth I am not trusted by Democrats because of my opposition to a massive school building plan ten years ago. My opposition was taken as anti-child. Had that been the case I would agree with their irritation with me. But from my point of view I was only acting the part of a traditional Republican skeptical of big spending. I think the best proof there was good reason for the skepticism is the fact that today in Duluth our public schools no longer offer French. We laid off too many teachers to support that very traditional class in our schools. Meanwhile I’m in my firth year of Duolingo French. When I started back on the School Board ten years ago we only let our healthier sized Easter school offer fifth year French. The Western high school Denfeld only offered it for four years. Today neither of our schools offer it.
So I will wave my “I like Democrats” heresy’s gladly as I campaign while Pete Stauber keeps warning his supporters that their opponents aren’t American.
