She has too much baggage.

That was the problem with Biden before the debate, before everybody realized he was too old, he had a record, and even though those on the left trumpeted it, those on the right have denigrated it and those who’ve been struggling don’t believe they’ve been saved by Joe.

Yes, a poor case of public relations. Don’t forget, Bill Clinton was sold by Hollywood, you remember “The Man From Hope”…where is the equivalent for Biden?

Nonexistent. Once again, Joe was and still is out of touch with the younger generations. The world lives online, it’s only the ancient string-pullers who deny this, I’d say if you want to put a new candidate over the top you’d call Monte Lipman, whose Republic has dominated the charts for years and years. One hit is admirable. But to do it over and over again? That shows skill. And it wasn’t Taylor Swift who kept her album atop the charts for twelve straight weeks, that was Monte and his team.

Yes, politics is show business. And Kamala Harris has never made a dent.

She ran poorly in 2020, didn’t get a delegate. And for months people have been anxious that if Biden died in a second term Kamala would take over. So now they’re going to give her the prize?

Shouldn’t happen.

Harris’s record? Not good. Don’t argue with me, she’s been painted negatively by the right, and that image has stuck. And it’s not like she’s warm and folksy like Clinton, or all=embracing like Obama, she’s cold. Talk to show business titans… It’s very hard to sell a cold talent, the first criterion is that they’re warm.

And even the donors are pissed at Kamala, for the phone call at the end of last week. Let’s see, you were for Joe before he pulled out, you were for Medicare For All before you changed your mind. The fact that you’re Black…

Hasn’t the left observed this movie for the past eight years, never mind the past couple? The DEI backlash has been extreme. The president of Harvard stepped down, was she the best person for the job?

We are going through a societal readjustment as I write this, to deny this is to have one’s head in the sand. It’s not that Kamala is Black that she shouldn’t get the role, it’s just that she’s not that good a candidate. Don’t qualifications matter?

As for not having enough time left… Hogwash. In France they turned on a dime. Britain held an election in a tiny period of time.

It’s just that the old fogeys want to play by the old rules, which in this case don’t even exist. They abhor change. Meanwhile, Silicon Valley has remade the world in the interim. Enough with the old pols. And Musk has an army of bros on his personal site and he has influence. He needs to be stopped. Can the mealy-mouthed Kamala Harris do this?

No way.

We need an attack dog. We need someone who can fight.

We need someone with no track record.

That’s one of the main reasons Obama got elected, he had no history.

Quick, tell me about Gretchen Whitmer, or Josh Shapiro, or J.B. Pritzker… The average person has no idea who they are, and that’s a GOOD THING!

But I’m fearful the same DNC that closed ranks around Biden, denying reality, is going to rally around Kamala Harris now. She was VP, so what. It’s not like Trump feels an obligation to Pence.

Trump broke every rule in the book and still got elected in 2016. And came close in 2020 (not in the popular vote, that doesn’t matter, but in the Electoral College, Biden squeaked through). Multiple marriages, infidelity, lying… None of this was terminal for the Trump campaign, and he’s now got another bite at the apple. Meanwhile, the Democrats are inured to the past. GET OVER IT!

The best golfer was Black and the best rapper was white. Did they agitate against this? To make this an issue of color is to deny decades of MTV, never mind the ascension of hip-hop to the dominant force in America musically and culturally. Sure, there’s a ton of racism in America, sure the evisceration of the Voting Rights Act is a travesty, but not everything can be seen through the lens of race.

This is about winning. Plain and simple. Is Kamala Harris the best candidate to beat Donald Trump?

The only people who believe this are the DNC and insiders paying fealty. The public already rejected Harris in 2020, she came across as phony. What has changed? SHE APPEARS WORSE!

This is all about perception, don’t argue facts with me, this is the same reasoning that got Biden anointed for a second term. Perception is Kamala is a loser. This is who you want to go with?

Loyalty? You don’t get to keep your job, you get passed over at the company, but your gig isn’t the last stand for democracy.

There are no rules. A new candidate can  get on all the ballots, get all the money and triumph.

But NO!

Look at Hollywood. The movie studios have been eclipsed by Netflix. Which has made the series the standard. And the Oscar ratings have tanked. It’s like the DNC has denied the entire past decade, if not more. This is the gang that can’t shoot straight. Take the gun out of their hands!

And enough with the Mafioso techniques. Where no one can break ranks. We want other candidates, we need other candidates, we want to see who can run best, who has charisma.

Crowdstrike brought down the world on Friday. They didn’t say to disconnect your computer from the internet, they worked fast for a fix.

Technology moves at the speed of light, politics at the speed of molasses, why?

As for getting a Republican involved…

Sorkin and Romney… Mitt is seventy seven, how does this solve the problem? And how come they never tell Republicans to put Democrats in their administrations, to extend the olive branch, why is it always the Democrats’ job?

Now if you get pulled from the game, or don’t get to take the field to begin with, and you complain and cry, you’re not seen as a team player. And the goal of the team is not harmony, but VICTORY!

Why are we protecting everybody’s feelings? If Kamala is the best person for the job, let her be the candidate, but she needs to PROVE IT!

Why is the public always left out. The public has been saying Biden is too old to run again for years. The public got no other choices. And now they’re not going to get a choice again, and you expect me to get excited about Kamala? Not going to happen.

Let us in on the process. You depend on us to vote and win. Why aren’t we consulted?

We’re halfway there. Now is not the time to punt.

Biden had to nominate Kamala, if for no other reason than to double-down on his pick of her for the 2020 ticket. His word ain’t worth much. This is the guy who took three weeks to realize no one wanted him to continue to run except himself.

Stop the runaway train.

Only the Democrats would get Biden to pull out without a plan in place.

Imagine a CEO crossing the line, needing to be replaced, and taking three weeks to step down… The board wouldn’t breathe a sigh of relief and then ask itself what to do next, it would have prepared for the change.

In other words, no one is in charge in the DNC. They had no plan and now we’re going to default to the easiest choice?

Oh, come on. Happens all the time in business. The number two is passed over for the job when the number one retires. The board thinks someone else is better. The fact that the number two worked at the company for years, paid their dues, that doesn’t matter!

But in politics, with no money involved, where everybody is worried about saving face…

How about all those elected Democrats who wouldn’t come out publicly for Biden to step down. You’re breathing a sigh of relief, but we remember, you’re a sheep with no backbone.

Ever hear of doing what is right?

Having an open process to determine who is the new Democratic presidential candidate is what’s right.

The future starts now.

We need a clean slate. We need hope. We need someone to believe in.

And if you think that’s Kamala Harris…

You must owe her money.

Spotify playlist: https://rb.gy/kh0s65

Dickey Betts

“Ramblin’ Man”

“In Memory of Elizabeth Reed”

Richard Tandy

“Can’t Get It Out of My Head”

Doug Ingle

“In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”

Eric Carmen

“Overnight Sensation (Hit Record)”

“Run-Away”

Mike Pinder

“The Best Way to Travel” 

Mary Weiss

“Remember (Walkin’ in the Sand)”

Melanie

“Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)”

“Brand New Key”

Wayne Kramer

“Kick Out the Jams”

Kinky Friedman

“Sold American”

David Sanborn

“Somebody Up There Likes Me”

Charlie Cohn

“Free”

John Barbata

“Happy Together”

“Long Time Gone”

Duane Eddy

“Rebel Rouser”

Karl Wallinger

“Ship of Fools”

James Chance

“Contort Yourself”

Mojo Nixon

“Don Henley Must Die”

Martin Mull

“Eggs”

https://rb.gy/9arc1d

I couldn’t put this book down.

And the problem is…if I tell you anything about the plot, it will ruin it.

First and foremost it’s an easy read. Not “simple,” but “contemporary.” No airs. Rufi Thorpe does have an MFA, but from Virginia, she’s not a product of the Iowa Workshop, which Hannah in “Girls” attended and left because of its pretension, because it adheres to a formula, because everything is overthought and overworked.

That is not Margo, Who ultimately says:

“When you’re going to do something stupidly brave, it helps to have less time to think about it.”

This is where the college educated lose out to the adventurous. Sometimes you can be so busy analyzing pitfalls that you don’t even start. Sometimes you need to just dive in. Step into the darkness and you have no idea what will happen, positive or negative.

And Margo certainly does a number of things stupidly brave.

She lives in Fullerton and goes to junior college. The product of a single mother. She’s going nowhere fast. And then…

She derails herself. But finds a way forward anyway.

And if that’s not obtuse enough for you…

As for encouraging you to read “Margo’s Got Money Troubles,” let me quote the opening paragraph:

“You are about to begin reading a new book, and to be honest, you’re a little tense. The beginning of a novel is like a first date. You hope that from the first lines an urgent magic will take hold, and you will sink into the story like a hot bath, giving yourself over entirely. But this hope is tempered by the expectation that, in reality, you are about to have to learn a bunch of people’s names and follow along politely like you are attending the baby shower of a woman you hardly know. And that’s fine, goodness knows you’ve fallen in love with books that didn’t grab you in the first paragraph. But that doesn’t stop you from wishing they would, from wishing they would come right up to you in the dark of your mind and kiss you on the throat.”

Getting over the hump. Reading enough of a book to get into it, to be hooked. Sometimes it’s too heavy a lift.

But “Margo” begins with this knowledge of the reader, it’s both present and irreverent, a sensibility too often lacking in today’s vaunted fiction. Too much literary fiction is just too damn hard to read, and so much stuff is just lowbrow, romance, mystery, genre.

Not that “Margo” is highbrow. And it seems to me that Rufi Thorpe may have written it for commercial success, something absent from her career to this point.

I absolutely loved Thorpe’s previous book, “The Knockout Queen.” I detailed my devotion here: https://rb.gy/wjofxk But “The Knockout Queen” stalled in the marketplace. It wasn’t completely ignored, it got 637 reviews on Amazon, with four stars, but readers and reviewers still preferred her debut, “The Girls From Corona Del Mar.”

This happens all the time. I read Roxana Robinson’s “Leaving,” released this year, loved it and researched and it turned out everybody kept pointing me to her 2008 work, “Cost,” which I then read. I recommend BOTH! The latter…deals with issues of family and addiction yet is contemporary and real. If you’re a Boomer or Gen-X’er you will relate to so much, when you think it’s going to be predictable, it is not.

But “Cost” is heavier than “Margo.” You do have to get over that reading hump before you’re hooked.

You do not have to read much of Margo to be hooked. I was hooked by the first paragraph. And it was rolling along, and then there was a turn, so wild, but so right that even though it was one in the morning I wanted to wake up my girlfriend to tell her about it.

Too often literary writers are detached from modern society. Don’t you know, the smartphone is the devil? And you can’t even participate in the social media you denigrate?

NOT MARGO!

The book is set in the now. Without pandering. I guarantee you’ll read it and not catch some of the references, some of the slang. But this is what people in this demo, late teenagers, early twentysomethings, employ.

Margo is living in the now. And that’s such a thrill.

Then again, so many readers of fiction do so because they want to avoid the now. However, the most talked about book of the last couple of years is “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow,” at least in my circles. Whenever I bring it up, people’s faces light up, you can see it in their eyes, they devoured it, it touched them, they’re thrilled you’re on the same page.

I’d like to say “Margo’s Got Money Troubles” is as good as “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow,” but it is not. Which has me wondering how successful it will be. Reviews have been very positive. But sometimes when you’re pandering, you’re rejected. Like Katy Perry.

Not that Thorpe is exactly pandering. But reading the book I think she consciously wanted to write something that connected with the public.

But that does not detract from the reading experience.

And I was surprised by the wisdom, evidenced in literary fiction but absent so much of the trash people read.

“‘Beauty is like free money,’ Shyanne used to say as she did Margo’s face.”

Bullseye. Which too many want to deny. And the truth is beauty comes with a cost, not that anybody wants to believe it. But the doors it opens, the freebies it rains down…they’re real, it’s a distinct advantage.

“Like how comedians have to bomb. If you don’t learn how to bomb, then the audience has you on such a tight leash, you’re stuck saying only the things you think they’ll like.”

They should post this on every studio wall. Record label execs should be beaten over the head with this. You don’t want to be constricted by your audience. Which doesn’t really know what it wants anyway. They want you to be just like you were, but then you are and they criticize or ignore you. Furthermore, failure today counts a lot less than it did in the pre-internet era. It’s rolled over by the endless flow of creative lava that pours on to Spotify, on to TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, the whole web, each and every day.

“But Margo knew the world was perfectly willing to punish you no matter what you had done.”

Everything does not happen for a reason. That’s a myth people tell themselves so they can soldier on. Bad things do happen to good people. You can do the right thing and get a bad outcome. The lesson is to learn this and metabolize this and soldier on. Life is unfair. Period. But that doesn’t mean you should stop living, stop risking.

And here’s the apotheosis, what you have to know about every creator, including me!

“…and we would scream to the crow, ‘Look at me! Look at the beautiful insane things I can do with my body! Look at me! Love me!’

Because that’s all art is in the end.

One person trying to get another person they have never met to fall in love with them.”

And it’s so hard. It’s one thing for your family to dig what you’ve done, but someone you’ve never met, have no contact with? That’s the challenge.

And the funny thing is when you achieve this, it still doesn’t make your life whole. It feels good for a while, like winning a trophy, or an award, and then you’re right back to where you were. Kinda like with beauty. You think it will solve all your problems, but it won’t.

And I still haven’t told you what “Margo’s Got Money Troubles” is about.

Yes, Margo has money troubles. But why? And how does she deal with this?

That’s the essence of this book.

If you love historical fiction, “Margo” is not for you.

If you like dense writing, wherein you have to pick apart each sentence, oftentimes with a dictionary in hand, “Margo” is not for you.

If you like a whodunit, “Margo” is not for you.

If you like science fiction, fantasy, “Margo” is not for you.

It’s kind of like Hollywood, it’s easier to repeat the formula. To create something brand new is seen as too risky.

Not that “Margo” plays with the form. It’s a regular book, but the adventure, the choices, the outcomes, are so wild and unpredictable, yet wholly real, that you’re thrilled as you go on the ride.

If you’re a member of the self-satisfied elite, you might not be able to handle “Margo.” Because, once again, instead of being set in the Ivory Tower, it all takes place in Orange County, a flat, overpopulated wasteland full of strip malls and boredom.

Will a guy love “Margo”?

The funny thing is guys have been affected by so much of what is in this book, but they may not like seeing things from a woman’s perspective.

You’ll laugh, you probably won’t cry, but you’ll learn about life in these United States today.

I’m smiling as I write this. Some of you are absolutely going to adore “Margo’s Got Money Troubles,” not that I can tell you exactly who that is, all I can tell you is I LOVED IT!

Tune in Saturday July 20th to Faction Talk, channel 103, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app. Search: Lefsetz