I’ve been rethinking my book this morning. Perhaps a good night’s sleep jogged something in my head. My fit bit says I got a good night’s sleep and I don’t recall waking up after 1 AM. For the last week I’ve kept waking with ideas for the book which I have put to good use but which I have decided must be changed. I am serious about getting my sorry but elected or at least to make it possible. I’ll be brutally honest about myself. I’m turning 74 at the end of the year and while I have more piss and vinegar than ever I also am 74. I don’t need a busy two years fighting with Marjorie Taylor Green and people who are either honestly deluded about Trump or craven opportunists who would prostitute their mothers to get ahead in the world. That sadly is what the Party of Lincoln has become. Linty Pete is such a question mark. And I’ll say right now that in any other circumstances other than the threat to our democracy I would not adopt that jerk Donald Trump’s school yard practice of calling people names but he has demonstrated two things. He will kill America as we knew it and name calling has cleared the opposition. And as names go Linty Pete and Pussygrabber for Trump are pretty spot on descriptions.
A couple more things. Just before I drove my grandsons to their respective schools I came up with a new formulation for a campaign book. The reason is two fold. Voters in 2024 will come in two important varieties. 1. The ones who want only Donald Trump. That is the Republican Party’s great peril. (although it is also an opportunity to reform by dumping Trumplicans who are what run the party now) and 2. Young people who want change but who are likely to shoot themselves in the foot looking for a Jesus to walk across the water to save them.
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, there are other categories and the one most suceptible to my charms are the Centrists. My campaign will also require being able to reach them and I think that can be done with a quarter of a million dollars that I will not be spending on myself and that frankly I won’t need until a couple of months before the August Primary. This miraculous Minnesota open primary is the key. And if I defeat or even weaken Pete I’ll have done what I set out to do. I will as I wrote last night be voting for Jen, not Lynn, Schultz if Pete is the Trumplican alternative. AND by the way this morning my French pen pal who practices her English by reading my blog asked why the name Lynn I wrote in the blog didn’t match the Jen on my lawnsign. I wrote back that perhaps the fault was in a candidate who was not that memorable or perhaps that was the fault of an old guy who is forgetful.
I am full of information and have to sort through a lot of things like the names of people I have little contact with and who aren’t in the papers very often. But I think the former is a better explanation and the chief peril of the Democrats. Jen is a good and a smart person. She’s in the legislature and she is something Congress could use. an economist, but if her name doesn’t get into voters heads she will have a hard time defeating Linty Pete if Trump is on the ballot and Red voters come out in droves to elect #45 in the Eighth District.
So that book which in a few minutes I will undertake to reorient…..what do I need to do? I need to get the young people who face a shitty Earth to raise their familys in to get on board like in the Eugene McCarthy days. I believe I have a couple qualities that will appeal to them and which I need to demostrate in the first impression they get of a 74 year old old fart to wit:
A. A long track record of my being in the past where the are now on issues like Civil Rights, Democracy, the Environment, Education
B. A long track record of fighting for those issues and fighting successfully for those issues.
C. Being an honest politician which too many people seem to believe is an oxymoron
Someone who can make a serious case that he won’t just become one of 435 other forgetable congressman but that he has the knowledge and instincts to….at least for two years…..get things A-C accomplished. I have my time on the non partisan School Board to point to an elective post that was one of my few alternatives after the Republican Party closed its doors to a “mass murderer.” “RINO,” “social liberal,” and now a REAL Anti-Trumper.
and kinda adorable in a cute fusty way like good old Bernie Sander was.
I think I can put together a book based on my past writings that will get such voters half way to believing that.
So that is my charge today. Tomorrow I may have to take a break to write a column for the Duluth Reader. This week I had no time to work on that. So for now. Adios Amigos.
