How Democrats Win in 2020

Stop Saying His Name!

If I were a Democrat running for president in 2020, I would have three issues:

1.    Making the economy work for the poor and middle class instead of only for the rich. This issue includes increasing minimum wage while strengthening other labor laws, like time off.*

2.   Health Care for all. No more bake sales to help fund your friend’s cancer treatment.

3.   The environment. This would be a program asking for people to make substantial sacrifices in order to insure a healthy planet for future generations. I actually think that people want to make sacrifices, to make some sort of real effort to clean up the planet.

There is no #4 on my list. If a reporter were to ask me about anything else, I would tell them to shut the fuck up and ask about the first three issues. These three things represent our “long emergency” as the term was coined by James Howard Kunstler.

I would never mention the president by name, not even to insult the fat gasbag. I would ignore him completely. I would force him to talk about these three issues. Democrats have always allowed Republicans to define the conversation. I wouldn’t play their game. The president is a racist. That isn’t news. He’s always been a racist and his core love him for it, so why would anyone choose to try to use that against him? It makes no sense.

If the president attacked me personally, I wouldn’t respond. I would never utter the man’s name. Newspapers shouldn't put him on their front pages. He hasn’t done anything that has been remotely newsworthy since being elected, so why do they obsess over every idiotic utterance that falls out of his fat gob? Stop talking about him.

The only way to win against clown-hair racist-in-chief is to ignore him. He is immune to any criticism, he's proven that again and again. Any attention he gets is like pumping air into a fire. He needs to be smothered by ignoring him, or at least until he starts to act like a decent human being.

Editorial writers and pundits at The New York Times are constantly berating the president as a reality TV star, yet they report every reality TV show thing he does. You can't have it both ways, you can't have the moral high ground while rolling around in the gutter.

*The real issue with making the economy work for all is the income disparities we see in America. We need to return to the tax levels we had back when the USA was actually a representative democracy instead of a country in which a handful of hyper-rich plutocrats make all of our decisions. This would be a difficult message to broadcast since this same group of creeps own all of our media, so I’d go about it through the back door and run strictly on making life better for the working class and the working poor.

The Joy of Dawdling, The Art of Dillydallying, and Taking Time to Loiter

“Slow down, you move too fast,

You’ve got to make the morning last,

Just kicking down the cobblestones,

Looking for fun and feeling groovy.”

-The 59^th Street Bridge Song

It’s illuminating to watch other commuters as you move around the city. So many people appear to be in a hurry, with the exception of those on foot. You can walk with purpose or dawdle, but being in a hurry while walking seems completely inappropriate. I think you call that running. Those with other transportation choices mostly seem stressed to get wherever they are going as quickly as possible.

People push to get on the bus, people on bikes pass on narrow bike paths even when they should know that ahead of them is a traffic light that will stop them dead. The new electric scooters seem custom built for people in such a hurry that they’re willing to take incredible risks to get to their destination with as little regard for their safety—or anyone else’s—as humanly possible.

Of course, so many drivers take it for granted that once behind the wheel of their car, or on a motorcycle, the normal rules of decency no longer apply.

My question for people in a hurry is to ask them why they didn’t just leave sooner? What was so important that you had to wait until the last minute thus condemning yourself to a stressed-out commute to wherever you are going? And why is it so important to break all laws of traffic and physics to get there a couple of minutes sooner?

The other day, I was riding across town for an appointment. I had left with more than enough time to get there while riding casually. I even calculated that I would arrive too early, so I slowed down even more. This allowed me to take in the scenery around me, which in Valencia is considerable and inexhaustible. I am constantly seeing new details everywhere I go.

There is a lot of joy to be had in taking your time, taking the scenic route, traveling the road less traveled, venturing down an unfamiliar street instead of always going between Points A and B.