What to Say And To Whom

 There is a massive Trump rally in Minnesota today.

They interviewed people lining up to get in, and one woman said she liked Trump because he speaks common sense and he is for the working people.

David Brooks' analysis is the MAGA crowd is all about you win-I lose; there isn't enough for us and for them, for all those creepy aliens swarming across the border will take our jobs and replace us. He says the Democrats have to be about assuring everyone we want stable, safe community bases from which we can launch explorations and adventures, not as you lose-I win-- but there's so much more now, we can all win.

Brooks says we have to convince people that chaos in Europe will eventually come back to envelop us and so to allow Putin to pull a Hitler, and just invade one country after another is a loser's game.

We all know people who will vote for Trump who are simply beyond persuading.

But every once in a while, we meet someone who seems persuadable, like that twenty something who was serving juice drinks at the JB in North Hampton, who said she was most concerned about protecting her uterus, but was clueless about which party was more likely to to do that. She was just minimally aware of a thing called the Supreme Court and certainly had no idea of the role Trump played in overturning Roe v Wade and she had no idea what that Dobbs case was about or how it related to protecting her uterus.

To call her a "low information voter" is to be generous. She is a low information human being. She had no idea what the word "infanticide" meant and she had not thought much about late term abortion.  When asked who she would like to be President she said, after a moment's serious reflection: Kim Kardashian, who after all is a lawyer and a self made billionaire. (Actually, googling this, it turns out Ms. Kardashian is not a lawyer, but has talked about becoming one through an on line school and then doing "an apprenticeship." Then she discovered she was too busy, after all and put the whole thing on indefinite "pause." So my low information person had that wrong, or at best, out of date information. No matter, it worked for her.)

The People's Choice

Kamala Harris has hit upon a shrewd strategy of couching her pitch in terms of protecting your freedom against the intrusion of the government getting between you and your uterus, your doctor and your freedom to not have to go to church on Sunday, and to keep government out of your bedroom and your love life.

But she has to throw the long suffering true Blue Democrats a bone, and emasculate the Donald. He's been able to bully the tongue tied Biden too long. We wanted someone who could speak for us, someone on the national scene, not just Jamie Raskin and J.B. Pritzker. 

Senator Mark Kelly, a fighter pilot/astronaut might fill that bill; he might be a good attack dog. But Kamala has to be an attack dog to make the true Blues rally. Bernie Sanders took Trump down at every rally. Kamala has to do the same.

In the end, if we really have a democracy, there have to be more of us than there are of them. But, of course, we do not have a true democracy:  Hillary Clinton beat Trump by 3 million votes but it was still President Trump.

Some day, if we are to save ourselves, we have to eliminate the Electoral College and we have to term limit the Supreme Court. 

Then we'll have to address the low information citizen, but that's a long term project.