Tag: politics

I can’t get the general election off my mind so I’ll write about it again. This cycle will be my last dance as an activist.

Inevitably, I’ll attend a few events, donate money, and offer counsel when asked in 2026. I would like to see the governor thrown out of office, along with her coterie of Republican lackeys and extremists. At the same time, I plan to scale back my political work going forward. It is time for the next generation to take the reins of this political wagon. In many ways, they already have.

Every political poll I read shows the candidates for president and for our congressional district within the margin of error. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that some long-time Republicans plan to vote for Kamala Harris because of the sh*t show the Trump campaign has become. Whether they will go beyond the top of the ticket is something not asked by people who discovered hidden Harris-Walz votes. We’ll see how it goes, yet on Sept. 15, Trump’s lead in Iowa shrunk to within the margin of error at 47-43 percent.

I don’t believe Trump is planning to win the old fashioned way by getting the most votes. I don’t see him doing anything to get more votes. It is widely expected Harris will lead in the popular vote.

Regarding the outdated electoral college, it is too close to call in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Arizona, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Georgia. Trump is believed to have a plan to steal the election by creating so much confusion on and after election day with regard to state level electors that the U.S. House of Representatives will decide who is the next president. Or maybe it will take another form. It’s anyone’s guess today whether that is even possible. I have no doubt Trump has a plan to win any way he can to the detriment of our Democratic Republic. His plans are not about us, they are about him.

Christina Bohannan winning the First District Congressional seat would be a big deal. It would be a return to normalcy after having a congresswomen who keep her lips close to the rear end of Mike Johnson and Donald Trump. The magic eight ball is hazy on that race.

I was the only person on the state park trail Monday morning. It is often like that. I walk at a quick pace to keep my heartbeats per minute above the goal rate. So far I have been able to get in at least five walks per week. It is likely for the best no one was around because I would stop and talk politics with anyone I know, defeating the effort to raise my heartbeats per minute.

A week from the election there are some positive signs. Not enough to lift the tension that keeps us on the edge of our lives. At seven days to go, I’m ready for this thing to be over. So is most everyone I know.

I expect the Republican nominee for president to declare victory shortly after the polls close in California on Nov. 5, regardless of how many votes are counted. It’s his thing and it will tired us constantly until the next president is sworn into office on Jan. 20. When Trump loses, his malarkey will drag on past inauguration day. Dude may not be able to put two coherent sentences together, yet saying he lost to Kamala Harris is not in his vocabulary.

I’m not saying Harris will win the election. Voters need to speak. I am a reasonable person and attempt to follow logic in seeing the election unfold. What I do know is Republicans swept Big Grove Precinct in 2020. The margin with which Trump won here was small enough we could flip it to Harris with 18 more votes. Whether that will be done is an open question on October 16 as early voting begins in our county.

A lot of balls are in the air three weeks before the election. The main issues are a strong economy, the Hamas-Israel War, Republican efforts to flood the stream with malarkey to discourage voters from voting, and a general inoculation injected into the body politic during the first Trump administration. We became tolerant of lies, extreme hyperbole, and the egregious actions of Republican state government: enough so to let them flow through our hair like warm water from a shower head. Only we never fully cleanse the toxicities.

To say it plainly, my expectations are low.

That doesn’t mean I gave up. Clearly, I didn’t. I also admit it takes more work than expected to help people make a plan to vote. I plan to continue to do that work.

My cohort of septuagenarian and octogenarian political activist friends organized an event before the primary. (Some nonagenarians are still around, yet are taking a well-deserved break. Their work beginning with the Adlai Stevenson campaign is appreciated, they earned their spurs). We held a “meet the candidates” event for local voters, something not often done these days. All five primary candidates for county supervisor showed up to speak briefly and to shake hands and chat for a couple of hours.

In August, we fired the engines for the fall campaign to put on another meet the candidate event, which also served as our kick-off event. First Congressional District candidate Christina Bohannan was our keynote speaker. We had eight candidates in all and more than 65 attendees. It was good turnout for a small, rural city.

After kicking off the campaign we began planning and doing: we finished our third postcard party with seven people writing postcards to voters for our house and state senate candidates; planned a meet and greet event for a state representative who is not well known after redistricting; deployed a sign crew to get out the word about our candidates; and are deploying a door knocking crew to the far western part of our new state house district, where one of our members was raised. I started a special newsletter to facilitate communication, although most of our planning is done in person and via email. Phone calls? Only when we have to. Text messages? No. I would describe this as off grid organizing.

What does off grid organizing mean? Barack Obama described it as well as anyone could last night: “It was great to be back in Pennsylvania today. If this election is making you feel excited or scared or hopeful or frustrated or anything in between, don’t just sit back and hope for the best. Vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Vote for Democrats up and down the ballot who will fight for you. Then help your friends, family members, neighbors and coworkers register and make a plan to vote.”

With the demise of the coordinated campaign, we feel left on our own. The county party was able to hire a couple of organizers that work out of the First Congressional District campaign office in the county seat, yet we rely on them only when we have to. We know what we need to do and just do it. If there is a bill for advertising, we split it up and pay it. To promote our local races, we reach out directly to the state house candidates and find they are very willing to have us support them. In any case, a state house campaign is separate and different from a district wide or statewide campaign. Down ballot races are very important, so a cookie-cutter campaign doesn’t work well.

The county organizers telephone us to ask for our help. We do what we can. What hinders us, especially door knocking, is the large number of our group that have trouble moving around and are in the midst of cataract surgery, hip or knee replacement, diabetes, arthritis, or other ailments of aging. We had a conversation this week about door knocking and to a person felt it is not the kind of campaign that is needed. The number of doors a campaign knocks is no longer a meaningful metric. How deeply we penetrate social networks matters so much more. When the campaign office calls us, we politely decline.

The 2022 election cycle was my last experience door knocking and it was an eye opener. I tried to make it to every door knocking event that was in my county and my state house district. To a person, people contacted required no additional information about the election or candidates. They knew the candidates, had a plan to vote, and did it mostly on their own. If they were not going to vote, no entreaties from a stranger would change their minds. People yelled at me from behind closed doors, “Go away!” The world has changed since I re-activated in politics during the 2004 campaign.

So what do we do to get Democrats out to vote? We talk to people, in person or via the telephone. We talk to people we have known for years, and in some cases, for decades. We make sure they plan to vote. We don’t take this for granted. We ask if they need a ride to the polls. We share information and discuss issues in the campaign.These are normal conversations between rational voters. We need more of that.

Eventually my cohort and I are going to die or move to a home. Until we do, at least this campaign, we are activated.

Solon Area Democrats got together for a meet the candidates event on Sept. 28 at the Solon Public Library. The room was packed. Eight candidates and elected officials spoke, then we broke the group for one-on-one conversations between candidates and voters. We could feel the energy in the room.

Our featured speaker was congressional candidate Christina Bohannan, who has been rising in the polls. We have a distance to go to elect her, yet it seems possible this cycle. The aforementioned energy will hopefully carry her across the finish line.

Most notable about the event was the reunion of many area people who worked on previous campaigns, including a nonagenarian whose first political campaigning was for the Adlai Stevenson. She wasn’t the only nonagenarian present. It was good to see old friends again. The point of the day was to kick off the final push into the November 5 election. This group has been activated. What will they do?

I scheduled a door-knocking event in the afternoon but it was a bust due to lack of volunteers. The house and state senate candidates from my district took a walk list. I did too. That was it. While in person voter contact can be a positive motivator, that contact will have to come from other places this cycle. It will come from the 65+ people who attended our event. The method will be word of mouth among family and friends about the importance of this election.

In a recent post, I suggested there is a new way to canvass, and based on Saturday’s experience, that is both likely and correct. The number of doors a campaign knocks is no longer a meaningful metric. How deeply we penetrate social networks matters so much more.

37 days from the election there is excitement among Democrats. One hopes we will make some gains in closing the gap between us and the Republican majority this cycle. At minimum, we should be able to break the Republican super majority in the state senate and increase the number of Democratic state representatives. There is no time for analytics. We must continue to do two or three things each day to elect Democrats. That is how we will win and move forward.

Time is flashing by in the run up to the Nov. 5, general election. I had our county organizer run walk lists for our event on Sept. 28. I hope to work some of them before then. Election day will be here in 43 days, so no time to lose.

I have only a couple of priorities. Encourage Democrats to vote. Encourage people to vote the whole ballot. Encourage voters to have friends and relatives to do likewise. That’s pretty much the ball game.

I read in the Washington Post House Speaker Mike Johnson cannot wrangle his caucus and doesn’t have the votes to prevent the government from running out of money on Sept. 30. That means he will again rely on Democrats to keep the government open. It would be an electoral disaster for Republicans to shut the government down right before the election and they know it.

Expectations for the election 43 days out are that Trump will win Iowa by a lesser margin than in 2020. Two of the U.S. House races are competitive and Democrats Christina Bohannan in first district and Lanon Baccam in third district stand a chance of flipping those seats. It is important to note that flipping five or six U.S. House seats nationally is all it would take to flip the House to Democratic control. Iowa Senate Democrats need one more seat to break the Republican super majority. They seem likely to do that, yet unlikely to flip the chamber because their numbers are so far down. In the Iowa House, Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst said she would like to see the minority move from the current 36 to somewhere in the 40s. That, too, seems possible.

I had hoped to be out of elective politics by age 72. That won’t happen this year, and I continue to do two or three daily things related to the election. I will continue for the next 43 days.