"Hello, I'm a Volunteer for Sean Eldridge. Do You Know Who He Is?"

One of the items on my retirement bucket list is working for the local Democrats, since, unlike in Manhattan, ones liberal vote counts in upstate New York.  So, with some futile hope that volunteering didn't involve calling people, my friend Ann and I went over to the newly opened office in Hudson, which had been set up for supporting Sean Eldridge, who's running for Congress, and other local Democratic candidates in the coming election. We were greeted by an enthusiastic young man in a large empty room, populated by hundreds of Sean posters and several long lonely tables, which reminded me of the Salvation Army Center before the lunch crowd comes in.

I was hoping for data entry and not the dreaded phone bank.  Sadly, there wasn't enough data yet to be entered.  First we needed to call people and register their responses so that we could accumulate the data that, with luck I could eventually enter.  He handed us four sheets of paper each with the names, ages, and numbers of 80 of my neighbors, whom I was about to drag from their dinners, chores, and TV shows to be annoyed, enraged, and potentially homicidal when they heard who I was.  With a sinking heart, I took the list.

I'm not a good spontaneous talker.  I become garbled.  My brain shuts down and loses any specific knowledge of nearly anything.  "Umm" becomes my preferred word choice.  Many, many years ago I ran as a delegate for the ill-fated McGovern Presidency in Bayonne, New Jersey, at the time an extremely conservative working class (can't we bring that term back?) neighborhood.  I'm ok with an audience but I suck in any one-on-one debate.   One of my tasks as a candidate was going door to door. It remains one of the most excruciating experiences of my life.  After facing and knocking on the seventh horrible door, a stern skinny woman answered.  I gave her my awkward, stammering, ignorant spiel and she retaliated with nasty fact after fact about his inadequacies and why the Democrats were killing the country.  I think I managed to throw in a couple of "buts" without any follow-up sentences, slumped off in complete humiliation, and staggered home, where I went to bed and pulled the covers over my head.

The Hudson campaign, nearly a half century later, is my next political adventure and I'm still no more competent in conducting these nightmare dialogues. Fortunately, this time I didn't have to confront Republicans or ask for money. The list comprised only registered Democrats and our main goal was to see if they even recognized Eldridge.  Most didn't.

At first I tried to talk through his bullet list of positions, but soon realized that I was droning the same liberal song we've been playing for years.  The issues cooked up by both the Democrats and Republicans have become verbal junk food.  No matter what party we're addicted to, we gobble down those tasteless words and return to the same fast-food Party day after day.  Women's choice, women's pay, minimum wage, universal health care, climate change, supportive government versus family values, jobs without government restrictions, low taxes, fundamental liberties without government interference, strong defense. Blahblahblah.  And no one wants to hear them anymore.  Even my fellow party members were unstirred by Sean's bullet list.

After three calling sessions, I realized the uselessness of offering anything about his ideas. Instead I now say the following:  "Sean is young.  He's a businessman who runs a venture capital firm that supports small businesses (I give examples).  He's rich and doesn't take any corporate money.  He has absolutely no Washington experience, and, gosh, don't we need a change?  And, by the way, he supports all the regular Democratic stuff. " Usually, I detect a burgeoning enthusiasm in my listeners. "Oh. He sounds pretty good."  I suspect that if I were calling Republicans with the same description for a candidate with similar credentials, only replacing "Democratic" with "Republican", I'd get similar upbeat responses.

So, we not only need a clean slate of candidates, we also need some shiny new issues.  Something to kick-start people's brains.  I've got some ideas. 

• The first is universal childcare from infancy through middle school.  Establishing well-run and well-funded centers will reduce the number of welfare and food stamp recipients, and so help offset the costs for these centers.  It will reduce abortion rates, since women can then actually choose to have kids. With women able to work with more security and consistency, the disparities between men and women's pay will improve. So will children's health and education. (So don't get me started on the 40-year failure of the feminist movement to support this issue, along with the kids and working class women whom it would help, in favor of an elitist and now-entrenched gender distortion that has shored up our consumerist, careerist, shallow, vapid, greedy culture.  Just don't get me started.)   
• My second position will solve all the problems in the Middle East. We should establish Kurdistan.  Buffering Syria, Iran, Iraq, and Turkey with a big fat oil-rich region filled with feisty Kurds who don't chew on any particular crazy religious bones and who may actually like us could be helpful. (I haven't thought this through completely, however, and of course there's the nasty process of getting there.)
• My third issue will help equalize pay and reduce income disparity by reducing what men make to the level of what women make, which is generally more equitable (at least on the management level). 
• My fourth position will help address both educational and environmental problems.  We use local, state, and federal income taxes to pay for education and we get rid of regressive property taxes, except for one:  we tax the amount of lawn people own in order to encourage the growth of native meadows and gardens.  Two birds.
• Fifth and last, pay primary care docs far more money and dermatologists far, far less.  Healthcare problems solved.

I need some other issues and a name for my new party.  Meanwhile, it's back to the phone bank, and how Sean's inexperience in politics will save us all.