The road to hell…intentions. Rain, what I am certain of – about yesterday which was 65 days away from the primary

Its raining so for the moment after the first long night’s sleep in close to a week I’m almost rested. This after a long day knocking on doors and putting up signs, as always, on Duluth’s busiest streets yesterday. But not just Duluth. For the first time in the campaign with, as of today 63-days-left before the August 13th primary, a new city. It was our next door neighbor Hermantown across straight and busy Haines Avenue. My first two lawnsigns of the knocking were on Hermantown’s side which pleased me because that is Pete Stauber’s home. His status as a former city councilor seemed to be no particular advantage. In fact his name is no more familiar to most people than mine. But I have had the advantage over him. At least in Duluth most everybody knows about the snow sculptor.

Before I began I told myself I would slog through rain to put up signs. A month ago that seemed a necessity. I’m by myself as a campaigner for the most part but already even my lonely door knocking has people telling me that they see my signs everywhere. And because I travel heavily traveled roads carrying a passel of my easily recognizable signs with me no doubt word is getting out about my prodigious work ethic. After a little over a week of part days I’ve already passed out over a thousand brochures and bookmarks. I have a thousand left which will require replacement. I might make them black and white to afford them until some more revenue arrives. I had one stern tiff, more a tail between my legs moment, with my new accountant, Claudia when she discovered I had committed an unplanned $450 expense for two ads in the Reader which for the moment I’m no longer writing columns. The publisher needed the moolah now and I wasn’t willing to shortchange him despite his lenience about prompt payments for me in the past.

And the Reader columns are something else I’m letting myself down on. I had planned to write them weekly and post theme here on Lincolndemocrat. No way. The five or six hours they consume are too precious especially for this blog that has shed readers over recent years because of my diminished activity.

Those columns do offer rewards. Yesterday as I campaigned one fellow a prosperous fellow who moved her from the Twin Cities for his retirement six years ago has been reading my columns and told me he really liked them. I was happy to put a sign in a prominent place and didn’t push him for any more help but I will be back.

I’ve always reckoned myself like a surfer in political waves hanging ten and dodging in and out of curls to stand upright until I land at the beach. That’s one metaphor. The other I love is Abe Lincoln’s old law partner’s description of Abe as having a mind never resting as he calculated his political path despite one crushing loss after an other. That’s me too…..but he save the nation starting at his inaugural at about age 53. I’m 73. Hope a bullet to the brain is not what I can expect in four years for my service.

After 50 yeses for lawnsign placements and 400 (perhaps) nos, I have a good sense for Duluth’s attitude toward America’s politics. I’ve only gotten one or loud talking-tos as a door was slammed in my face. I’ve given my pitch, always anti-Trump many times and thought one in ten people looked at me a little harder when they figured out what I was up to. Many more smiled or nodded their head in agreement and many broke out in wide grins. That doesn’t guarantee a lawnsign. In an America today where some people feel they need to take a gun to their next thanksgiving family feast that’s no surprise.

I’ve had cordial, but short, chats with people who love Trump. Yesterday a cheerful man who remembered having a similar chat with me two years ago assured me my side was going to win but at the cost of making American a communist nation and being frozen our of hell. How could you not have a cordial chat with such a good humored man? Indeed a poll released today in semi-liberal blue Minnesota said only 40 percent of Minnesotan’s felt Trump’s felony convictions were wrong. BUT THINK ABOUT THAT. Four in ten Minnesotans don’t trust the American Justice system…..and we’re not talking about black citizens who have suffered higher rates of imprisonment because we over police their communities making white kids to commit petty crimes safer from the justice system.

It has reminded me how in the depth of the Depression in the 1930’s when feckless banks gamboled people’s savings on the stock market a lot of Americans thought of bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde as national heroes. That’s what Trump the man who gives billionaires trillions in tax deductions has come to be for them. Either vengeance for their disappointments or a randy Old Testament prophet/king.

BY THE WAY. I WILL NOT TAKE TIME TO EDIT OR PROOF READ THIS. IF YOU LOOK DOWN ON TYPOS AND MISPELLINGS – SPOOP ON VOUS.

I will plug on full throttle until the primary. My first base will be Grandma’s marathon and the many outside residents who might notice an interesting campaign and keep it in mind when they return home. That one of a number of ways of trying to initiate a viral campaign which could lead to book sales and donations and lift my campaign which doesn’t need nearly the million that Pete Stauber will spend on it funded by the dark money that the Supreme Court allows to be kept secret to keep Republicans in control of America. Yes this is what I a Lincoln Republican think. It why my blog was named Lincolndemocrat in 2006 during my brief flirtation during the Obama years with the Capital D party. But at Lincoln’s heart was small “d” democracy where all men are created equal by our creator. The old fart who said I’d go to hell with a convivial smile has been propagandized to see democracy as the equivalent of communism without ever realizing he’s got the economic ideas of communism mixed up with the populist notion of dictatorship indulged in my Stalin, Hitler and Mao the three boogie men I was once accused of being like at a Republican convention by a kid who went to Ayn Rand’s beloved Hillsdale College in Michigan. Wow. That’s a long sentence.

This is sort of my equivalent of a column and it took me an hour and a half to crank out. Its still raining. I have ten long sleeved shirts to iron. I’ll do it in the basement listening to Peppa the Pig cartoons in Francais. I have a reoccurring dream of visiting the French embassy as a new congressman and testing out my French with the staff. Its not an impossibility.

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