If you want to win, want to throw the bums out, campaign like you mean it
If Democrats want to break their losing streak, they must flip the script
I’ve been lax.
I’ve ramped up my sportswriting, but relaxed weighing into state affairs and, not that I had a big toehold to begin with, national affairs, too.
I’m upset with myself.
Others, too.
Our president, a convicted criminal, is laying waste to perhaps the two things that have long separated us among nations.
One, the greatest economy in the world, ask anybody prior to two-and-a-half weeks ago, before he took a tariff torch to the markets and consumer confidence, like he’s ushering in a recession as fast as he can.
Two, due process, not to mention federalism, as long as he continues rounding up young men to send to El Salvadoran gulags, who may or may not be criminals, we can’t really know, because the executive branch — him, the Justice Department, the FBI, the Attorney General, ICE, Homeland Security, you name it — has thus far made no evidence available.
Likely because they have none.
Meanwhile, our governor keeps searching for scapegoats, be they the tribes, who I promise are more popular in this state than he is; our state forestry department, who he figures must be responsible for his ranch burning up in the moments the whole state was burning, conveniently forgetting the forestry department can’t be everywhere at once and, given its name, mostly exists to protect forests rather than his ranch.
Here lately, he decided it’s the state department of mental health that’s been bamboozling everybody and, oh, yeah, he alone should have the power to appoint state supreme court justices, which surely has nothing to do with his batting average in that court being abysmal.
Then there’s Ryan Walters, a name that might be slander to call anybody other than our joke of a sate superintendent, who, let’s see, is using state money to sue something called the “Freedom from Religion Foundation” for, it appears, sending letters?
Not to mention, or so it would appear, hoodwinking new state board of education members on new social studies academic standards.
Not to mention a million other scandals, from allowing federal money to be misspent, from handing out teacher bonuses only to attempt to claw them back, from once insisting you could teach the Tulsa Race Massacre without mentioning race.
Such a pile of self-aggrandizing, self-serving, utterly un-self-aware selfishness.
It’s against that backdrop I watched state rep and house minority leader Cyndi Munson announce her gubernatorial ambitions.
To be sure, of everybody in the race to date, I’d rather she win than anybody.
Also, I really liked a few of the things she said.
For instance:
“I’m not what you would call a typical candidate for governor. I work for a living, I pay my student loans, I rent my house and I know what it’s like to live within a budget. I feel the pressure of rising costs of our daily necessities.”
Also:
“I don’t come from a wealthy family. I’m not beholden to any political party. I’m not an extremist. I have a proven track record for working across the aisle to get things done.”
This, too:
“We need to fund our public schools to the regional average and increase pay for teachers and support staff. We have to find tax relief for working families in the middle class, not just billionaires in the top one percent. I led the bipartisan effort to repeal the state sales tax on groceries and I will continue to find ways to help everyday people.”
Good stuff, but it left me wanting.
Because where is the righteous indignation?
Where is the seething anger she must feel for active bad faith governance that’s trying to kill public education in our state, that’s sending tax dollars directly to wealthy parents of private school students, that’s attempting to create religious schooling with your tax dollars, too?
Where is the utter and exhausting embarrassment for all the fights Kevin Stitt has chosen with the tribes, the attorney general, the courts, with everybody who attempts standing between him and the additional buffoonery he’d commit if they didn’t?
Where is the visceral disappointment for what this state could be and what it will never be if it continues electing the same only-in-it-for-themselves idiots it’s always electing?
Where is speaking directly to the voters who vote only for those who make them angry, who, once elected, only make them angrier, because that’s the whole point?
Where is the contempt for the bad actors who always surround us?
Of course, it was just an opening statement, just an introduction, perhaps no time to be unpleasant, harsh or difficult … yet.
But aren’t all of us who’d like to turn this state around tired of the nicety of state-wide office-seeking Democrat after state-wide office-seeking Democrat after state-wide office seeking Democrat?
Of Dem after Dem after Dem trying to convince the electorate they really are like them, they really are a reasonable alternative, they’re really not a crazy liberal?
Wouldn’t it be easier and more effective to instead explain their Republican opponents are not like them, not worth their trust, time and money, don’t share the same Oklahoma values the rest of us do.
You know, play offense.
Reject the old, tired strategies that play into the opposition’s hands.
Quit trying to be a viable alternative and insist it’s the other side that hasn’t been viable in a long, long time because they haven’t been.
Have a spine.
Flip the paradigm.
Play for keeps.
Because Oklahoma’s worth it.
“Have a spine!” Yessir, that’s the ticket. I so enjoy it when your kindled flame tries to start a fire. Keep up the fine work, Clay.