Personal Reflections of a Middle-Aged Man

The next Congressional Election is right around the corner. Democrats, you have fewer than 60-days to enroll the electorate in agreeing, and accepting, our country is not doing as well as this administration and Congressional delegates on the Republican side say it is. Most people already know this unless they are watching the propaganda television interestingly called Fox News, but you must convince them they MUST get to the ballot box in November.

Democrats, it’s crunch time and I’m not really feeling it from your side. So far most of the start of the wave has to do with the current administration and his daily tweets and “nincompoopery” committed every day. It really doesn’t have too much to do with anything the Democratic National Committee is doing across the nation. Local candidates are getting it and getting woke, causing some surprising upsets in the primaries, and may be able to make it happen in November.

Although I’m sure no one of note will see this from the Democrat leadership and professional campaign leaders, here are some things you need to do to win, and win big:

• Start talking about the right to medical care much more loudly and broadly. We really do want a Medicaid For All type of program, but most people can’t envision the transition and the final product. You need to paint this picture and make it absolutely vivid.
• Promise to raise the minimum wage to at least $15/hour nationwide and tie all future raises to the CPI to meet actual costs of living and inflation rates. All of us deserve at least a livable wage and a little disposable income to help ourselve and the economy.
• Free public college for everyone is really a no-brainer. Why are we saddling our youth with such debt so early in life? What a detriment to the national economy.
• Make the rights of women a priority and this doesn’t mean going out and promoting pro-choice. Not everyone is pro-choice, but most everyone believes a woman should be able to make her own decisions about her health and bodies without interference by men or government.
• Cultivate the melting pot and that all humans are truly equal. Really put it out there about negative and demeaning comments about minorities and religion by the majority party.
• Really get out there about sensible gun and ammo control. Emphasize it is not about taking someone’s gun away, it is about acting sensibly for someone to own and enjoy a firearm.
• Provide a clear plan for growing the economy, solving DACA and how our country will recognize and solve illegal immigration and undocumented peoples living in our great country and are law-abiding and contributing to our greatness.
• Have someone at every single high school and college event to register people in which it is still possible to do so.
• At these voter registration drives, get registrants to sign-up for text reminders (using something such as Remind), where a text can go out with ways for the electorate to get involved, when to get ready to vote, and with today’s technology, tell them which precinct to vote in and how to get to its location.
• Stop pushing people on us who most of us can’t identify with in today’s society (this means we need younger faces younger votes can identify with over old ideas and incumbents whose time has come to step aside).
• Use Snap Chat, Instagram, and other hip social media to tell your story in a way that younger voters identify with and use often throughout the day.
• Show us we must never again allow a foreign government to meddle in our election and how that will happen.
• Promise us you will eliminate the cap on paying into Social Security to help keep it solvent for many many years to come.
• STOP hiding behind polit-a-speak. If you can’t answer a yes/no question with a yes or no, you don’t deserve my vote. Personally I’m quite weary of any politician who won’t commit and dances around a question without really answering it. You want our trust and our vote, then answer the question and answer it honestly.
• Get out of Washington and actually walk and talk with us. Knock on my door (even if you are Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer), come to our work places, drive yourself around your district, go buy some groceries, sit for a day in a welfare office, substitute teach for a day or two, clean a toilet—step off your pedestal and live our life so you can truly identify with our struggles even though you aren’t living our struggles.

Although I am an informed voter who actually votes, don’t take my vote for granted. You still have to work to get me to check your box.

If you want to win in the way we need, you can’t continue to do what you’ve always done. It is time to be very specific and stop behaving like the image many of us have of an elite Washingtonian whom has no idea how the rest of us live. Because if you really sat down and thought about it, you don’t. Yes incumbent Democrats and operatives, you really have no clue about how most of us live because you no longer live or identify with us (see above for a solution to this issue).

You’ve got to really and truly get woke, and then act like it.

If you can do this authentically, you can do win and win big. Try to BS us and we all lose because those in power who look so much to the past for how it should be now will continue to run our great country towards its demise.

Please don’t let that happen!