Advice to the Newly Miserable

One advantage of being an Old is having lived through the elections and dreary administrations of Nixon, Reagan, and Bush and finding the country still staggering along afterward.  And whether President Drumpf will beat these crooks, actors, and dopey beer drinkers in perfidy, ignorance, and lousy judgment is still uncertain.  He's a salesman.  He wants to be loved and he wins customers, even without a product, by telling them what they want to hear. In Greenport, where I now live, our new President has enough happy customers to beat Clinton by 25%.  Whether the magic beans will satisfy them is unknown, but what's clear is that those of us who did not buy his line need to come up with a competitive product.  So, some obvious thoughts.   

1. To the National Democratic Party: you are out of touch with many Americans, particularly those in the boonies.  Example: Our mostly rural congressional district had no incumbent this year and was up for grabs.  We had a local fourth generation farmer, an Ivy League graduate, who decided to run on the Democratic line.  He was progressive and deeply understood the local issues and what was important here. Then in swooped Zephyr Teachout, who had valiantly opposed Governor Cuomo and lost to him in the last gubernatorial primary.  Unfortunately, this year she left Brooklyn, bought a house in upstate New York and went up against our farmer.  She is energetic, pitched the standard Dem line, and had achieved some measure of fame, so the New York Times endorsed her and the DNC gave her a bunch of money. I'm not sure if anyone from these organizations even talked to the farmer.  So she beat him in the primary, but after being dubbed a carpetbagger by the Republicans, not surprisingly lost in the general election to a local hack.  She's a good potential Democratic leader but should run in Brooklyn, and the farmer should try again in two years with some party muscle behind him.

2.  To the Millennials who wanted to vote for Bernie in the primary but couldn't and so decided you were being scammed: you weren't. You were registered as Independents or worse, not at all, and shut out of the primary because this is a party election – not general. Take a civics class and educate yourself on why primaries are closed, then join the Dems.  The Democratic Party still has good bones that can be tilted left with enough internal muscle to incorporate Bernie's best workable ideas. 

3. And, to continue, don't just register as a Democrat, start working for the party. One reason the Democrats lose is that, outside urban areas, they have a very small very old local presence.  If there's no local Democratic base, there are no local candidates who can win their way up from town and state elected positions into the national scene. In our town of 4700, only about a half dozen Democrats actually do the boring, unromantic, crumby political labor. It isn't fun. And your fellow party members are typically community rejects and unlikely to be Mensa candidates, but many have fought the good fight for years against a Republican elephant that has lived here forever. They need your help.

4.  In fact, if you can work remotely move to a Republican town or district. Change the demographics and get to know your neighbors.  They nearly all have guns but very few have killed anyone. There's a source of desperation in these communities that's important to understand and to resolve: lack of meaningful work at meaningful wages.  It encompasses race, gender, and religion.   So move out and work for the party. It's beautiful out here and we need your participation (although don't run as a candidate. You'll lose. Leave that to your grandchildren).