I’m sick and tired of political candidates blowing up my phone looking for money.

First and foremost is Val Demmings, running against Marco Rubio for Senate in Florida. Every damn day she texts me for money, AND I DON’T EVEN LIVE IN THE DAMN STATE!

And the odds of her winning are low anyway, right now she’s almost five points behind in the polls, and although anything can happen, in recent polling inaccuracies, the advantage always breaks to the right.

But no, I’m supposed to give my cash to Val.

Where it’s first going to get whacked by her consultants, and then her ad agency and what little is left of my dollar will be blown, because no one is more out of touch with how to reach the people than political candidates.

I mean come on, you expect someone to change their opinion? Based on your biased advertisement? That’s right, ads are now all about train-wreck, you push the limits, you attack your opponent and people have no idea what to believe. You’re influencing nobody, but you’re burning my money.

Heard about someone changing their vote recently? In the last month, who is on the fence and based on something they’ve seen and read are reconsidering? I haven’t, and I reach more people every day than live in many cities. People are dug in. They might not admit their political opinions are frozen, but they are.

And all that money…

Remember Lindsey Graham complaining that he was being handily outspent by his Democratic opponent last cycle? GRAHAM WON ANYWAY!

So you want me to add my bucks to that conflagration? NO WAY!

You want to come up with something innovative, a word of mouth campaign, I’m interested in that. But no, if you advertise online at all, it’s on Facebook. Have you read the news? Meta is dying. But don’t expect the Democrats to be up-to-speed on anything. All they know about Tik-Tok is it’s a Chinese company. Ask an elected official if they use it. OF COURSE NOT, IT’S FOR KIDS!

Well, in truth it’s not. That’s where America is today, on TikTok. And I’m not saying there’s no politics on TikTok, then again, the company said it would not carry any political advertising, thank god.

Because it’s not even about advertising anymore. It’s about word of mouth. Energizing people to actually vote. Whether it be by mail or in person, to make the effort. I mean people are sitting at home feeling powerless and all they see is millions of dollars spent on campaigns ineffectively. Do these candidates have their interests at heart? NO!

This is kind of like the Liz Truss story.

There’s a good column in today’s “Washington Post”:

“Liz Truss’s resignation is a warning for Republicans”: https://wapo.st/3z1qIzM

Bottom line, Truss was out of step with the public, never mind her cohorts in the party. She just ran with the ball, thinking she could score because she possessed it. But the rest of the world fell out, and in truth this is not what her constituents wanted, they wanted more money for social services and higher taxes on the rich, she proposed just the opposite!

Kind of like abortion. Most of America wants abortion rights.

But the Republicans pushed the ball over the goal line, and now in many states good luck, you can’t get the procedure, even if it’s a health issue.

And for a while there, there were these stories about the burgeoning left, the victory in Kansas, women refusing to vote for Republicans based on this one issue.

But if you’ve been following the news for the last week, and I don’t recommend it, the horse race press has gone on and on about the red wave. Yup, gas prices, inflation, the Republicans are gonna win.

Michael Moore did a good takedown of this:

“Mike’s Midterm Tsunami Truth #22 – Don’t Believe It”: https://bit.ly/3TlrmjH

Is Mike right?

First and foremost you can save the right wing backlash. Moore has been neutered, just like the “New York Times,” only lefties are paying attention.

But there is a huge enthusiasm gap.

Biden is doing an excellent job, but the Democrats refuse to run on it, they’re keeping him away from campaign rallies. Isn’t this how Gore lost, by keeping Clinton at arm’s length? I mean let Joe come out and revel in his accomplishments, preach his policies, which now have him with a 48% approval rate, which is nearly half of the country the last time I checked. But NO, the Democrats are afraid. They’ll take my money, but they won’t question themselves, their policies, their campaigns. They hire hack consultants who believe TV is king when ratings are absolutely horrible. But old people watch network and cable, and they all vote!

I’ll let Moore attack that canard:

“Here is the real world we live in now: in the brief 14 years since Barack Obama was first elected, 56 million 17-year-olds have turned 18 and become eligible to vote. And since that day in 2008, they have set new voting records in election after election. In my state of Michigan alone, the youth vote more than doubled between the Midterms of 2014 and 2018. In fact, the only reason Obama won was because of youth vote. He won 66% of it. Get this: Obama lost every single white age demographic except for white youth. The majority of all white age groups over 30 voted for McCain. But the kids (and an overwhelming turnout from people of color and women) is what put Obama in the White House.”

But are the Democrats speaking to this? No, it’s like they’re lost in the twentieth century. Ever think of motivating the youngsters, never mind the base? The youngsters don’t mind standing in line, they leave the house all the time, they can drop off their mail-in ballot. But no, the Democrats would rather focus on the nearly dead with live-in assistance. Not that it’s a crime to be old, but we are experiencing a youthquake akin to the sixties, enabled by technology, and the Democrats are oblivious!

And they’re so negative.

The Republicans are confident and boisterous. They assure you they can win. They’re beyond optimistic.

The Democrats? Well, we’ve got the weight of the world on our shoulders, we know it’s an uphill climb, we might win, but if we make a good showing we’ll…

We’ll what? You either win or you lose. The Republicans play to win, the Democrats don’t even play to show.

So, you’re asking me for money.

The last thing I want to do is actually give you money, because then I’ll be dunned for the rest of my lifetime to give you more. I hear this all the time, especially regarding philanthropy. Someone would give, if only the charity promised to never contact them again. But no, the candidates and the charities are like CDNow, which had a sale every month, then every week, and then every day, AND THEN WENT OUT OF BUSINESS! Kind of like Amazon’s recent Prime Day. Well, there’s a Prime Day in July, and another around Thanksgiving, and you’re primed for discounts, but now there’s one in October so Amazon can make more money? It was a FAILURE! Read about it: 

“Amazon’s October Attempt at Prime Day Falls Flat, Analysts Say”: https://on.wsj.com/3MODCGN

Corporations are usually more in touch with the public than politicians. But both are mostly concerned with the end result, making money and getting elected. They don’t care about you and me, no way. Politicians get elected and they keep on telling us their hands are tied.

Sure, Bernie Sanders established this small donor paradigm back in 2016, but you could believe in Bernie. Can people we don’t believe in stop asking us for money? Better yet, make us believe in you. Say something more than I’VE GOT TO BEAT MY OPPONENT!

And in truth, all candidates should be funded by the government, and that’s it. Give everybody an equal amount of money. Tax me for it, I’m down with that. But you can’t raise taxes a single dollar in America, no matter what the cause. That’s insane! As for this shrinking of the U.S. government, the same people who desire this are the first to have their hand out when there’s a natural disaster.

And let’s not forget the blue states are keeping the red states alive, in general anyway. Yes, the taxes on the “elite” disproportionately go to red states. But they keep bitching anyway.

Kind of like the Inflation Reduction Act. Forget the name, but a big component of the legislation was about climate control and electric cars. And in truth, this is benefiting red states, because auto production, never mind battery production, has moved south, where there are no unions, where pay is less. But at the same time, the elected officials of these states don’t stop complaining that climate change isn’t real and electric cars are a boondoggle.

Don’t expect the average citizen to figure this all out, never mind know all this.

And they don’t believe a single ad. They vote for the team. The facts are irrelevant. And you want me to waste my money enabling you to poorly present the truth to people who either don’t understand or don’t care or both? NO WAY!

I’m just an average citizen, living my life. I’m a number, at best, in the political maelstrom. But I do have a smartphone, and I can’t make it so only people in my contacts can reach me via text, that the rest are blocked, because we all know we get important texts from doctors and other establishments which are not in our contacts! And then there are the contacts with multiple numbers.

Which the spammers have too. Believe me, the people hounding you to buy an extended warranty have nothing over the politicos. They never text from the same number twice, it’s a game of whac-a-mole, you keep blocking them but they keep getting through to you. You check your phone, and it’s spam. And they don’t have a good text spam filter yet, e-mail spam filters are vastly improved, but with texts it’s open season, you can reach ANYBODY!

And I’ll let you in on a dirty little secret… IT’S LEGAL! You can’t stop it, the government has approved it. You see despite asking us for our money for TV ads, they don’t reach many people. And no one picks up the phone anymore, not unless it’s someone they know, and mail…fuhgettaboutit, it’s all bills and advertisements, then again, most people pay their bills electronically these days, they’ve gone paperless. So, the politicians are using text, the foremost means of communication in America today. AND WE HATE IT!

Val Demmings is just pissing me off. I don’t want Marco Rubio to win, but Val has quite the nerve. What next, I receive texts from indigenous people in Canada? Maybe Ukraine, the country needs my support.

Once again, I don’t feel like I’m a cog in the machine, not at all, I don’t believe the machine needs me, other than for my money and my vote. The Democrats keep losing, democracy is fading, and they keep saying to hang in there, that it’s a long process. Yeah, sometimes it has to happen NOW! But all those inured to the system, the lifers, tell us it can’t be done. But to paraphrase the title of Sammy Davis, Jr.’s autobiography…YES IT CAN!

I’m gonna vote, don’t worry, I always do. And I’ll support my team. Just don’t ask me to believe you’re in it for me. The right is outrageous, excoriates anybody who does not heed the party line, and the Democrats shoot each other, when they’re not arguing about how they can’t do anything.

And with that, I’ll leave you with a bit of levity, the best thing I read all day:

“To the editor: Why don’t the Dodgers simply claim victory? They must stand firm that they are the rightful winners over the San Diego Padres. They can clearly state that the series was rigged from the very beginning, and they should be playing the Philadelphia Phillies in the playoffs right now. (‘Dave Roberts is expected back, but Dodgers face other key offseason questions,’ Oct. 16)

“The Dodgers organization can hold a rally just blocks from Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia. The day before the rally, manager Dave Roberts can proclaim that ‘all hell is going to break loose.’

“The rally can start with a few players speaking. Justin Turner, Mookie Betts and Clayton Kershaw can all tell the crowd how they should be anointed to the National League Championship Series, not the Padres.

“Roberts can follow with a fiery speech designed to rile the crowd of loyal fans. Then Andrew Friedman, the Dodgers’ president of baseball operations, can finish off with a plea to the excited fans to march over to Citizens Bank Park and demand that the Dodgers play the Phillies. If a few security guards get hurt or even killed in the process, so be it.

“What do you think?

Steve Finch, Redondo Beach”

https://lat.ms/3eRMYVN