Dump DUMP!! and CALM CALM!!!!! WOMEN AND MEN unite behind K!!!

We support Calm a La because she can UNITE US ALL

Vice President Kamala Harris, who in less than 36 hours managed to secure the de facto Democratic nomination for President, “is a viable candidate who can win this Presidential election,” declared political strategist David Axelrod, who helped put Barack Obama in the White House in 2008 and 2012. Axelrod was one of the masterminds behind the Obama campaign that made a different kind of

his-tory in 2008. Now we are writing a new kind of

HERstory, a history that promises to unite men and women behind a CALMala leader. A woman, a black woman, who can be, possibly, our PRESIDENT come November.

Speaking on a Washington Post Live newscast Monday afternoon, the soft-spoken AXelrod (I was a Chicago Sun-Times reporter in the same years he reported on politics for the Chicago Tribune)

called Harris “a unifier,” a woman who will attract all the money and resources she needs to run a successful campaign.

I’d say she has already started.

In her first full day as a candidate, Harris raised a whopping $250 million in campaign contributions — a combination of $100 million in small donations (nearly a million of those from folks like me and you) and another $150 million in large donor contributions and pledges.

Is this really any surprise?  For months and months, we the people have been dying to spend money on anyone — anyone — who can defeat the madman otherwise known as the MAN WHO WILL NOT BE NAMED.

I mean at one point my husband and I seriously considered offering up our sweetest little Angel of a doggie, a Havanese named Poco, as a candidate — knowing for certain Miss P could beat the psychopath with her eyes closed and her paws covering those eyes. Ah, but being an aging doggie, like me, she suffers from the Biden curse. Dare I say it?

Kamala Harris on the other hand is a savvy politician, and a younger energetic woman who has everything it takes to win.  This is not to say it will be easy.  She is a woman, after all, and she is Black and as it happens, we are still (a long long time after the Civil War ended) a nation rife with racism and oh yes, did I say misogyny. Spelled ME TOO?

Speaking at her new campaign headquarters in Delaware, Harris reminded listeners that she built her career prosecuting predators and crooks.

“Hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type,” she said to a cheering crowd.

Axelrod suggests that going forward, Harris needs to identify “a clear position” on immigration. She also needs “to talk about the pocketbook issues” that have motivated voters.

Most of all, Axelrod says, she needs to “go on the offensive” against the snaggle-toothed Republican candidate who just a week ago, accepting the Republican nomination, seemed to be on top of the political world (or was he upside down, so hard to tell when he speaks.)

So confident was NAMELESS and his rag tag MAGA base that they would defeat Joe Biden in November that they went out on a shaky, right-wing limb called J.D. Vance as their vice presidential candidate.

One week later, Axelrod says, chuckling in that soft way that he does, the Republicans are now starting to have “buyer’s remorse.”  And like a reverberation, I’m hearing that word “buyers remorse, buyers remorse” echoing and pinging in all directions! All the way back to yes, Vance’s Middletown high school.

“WOW WOW WOW it’s so good to be back home for once…” he says to his high school admirers

OH PULEEEEZ if you have to go back to your g.d. high school to find your base, and to remind people why they are voting for you for vp then

honestly at first I mistakenly thought he meant Middletown, Connecticut, just a few towns away from where I was born, and a few more towns away from New Haven

where JD VANCE GRADUATED FROM YALE. Gee whiz, what is his fan base there?

In another foolhardy move, Axelrod says “the Trump folks now think they should sue the Biden campaign because they spent all this money attacking Joe Biden and now he’s not running.”

The lawsuit “is not going to get very far — even with a friendly judge,” Ax says chuckling. “A court would laugh them out in 20 seconds flat.” Or less.

Axelrod says the Republican’s strategy was one-dimensional — they focused simply on defeating Biden. DUHHHHHHHH DUMB DUMB DUMB.

How absolutely absurd to think that the Republicans actually believe they deserve a refund now that Joe Biden has stepped out of the race! I mean honestly, Poco and me could have done up a far better dog and pony show, one that would have put theirs to shame.

This reminds me of some rummy who goes up to the race window, drops a bundle on the wrong horse and then goes back to the window to get a refund.

OH PULEEEEEEEZ

My political strategist husband Richard Kirsch put it best when he said: “Donald Trump has always acted like a great big baby.”

That was last night. This morning he added: “Trump is a racist, misogynistic psychopath who has a tremendous appeal to four out of 10 Americans.” This is not a funny statement at all but honestly these days I get through all this stress with laughter.

My first cousin Pat and I text about politics (and music and painting and any number of odd family and landscaping issues) all day (and sometimes, way into the night.) When I wasn’t feeling well one day last week, Pat insisted on driving over the state line to visit me because that’s the kind of extraordinary person she is. After an hour of laughing with her, and I mean laughing laughing LAUGHING because her stories are priceless — I realized I wasn’t sick anymore!

Is there anyone who is completely insulated from the stress we have endured since…ok, since that miserable day in November of 2016, when NAMELESS defeated Hilary. We were blindsided. My son Noah still has not forgiven my husband for promising that Trump couldn’t possibly win. I too was angry at him (but not for long.)

What did I do in the aftermath of the psychopath’s victory? Only my closest friends and family members know this…

I turned on the television and watched

my first Hallmark movie. And while other folks were probably downing tubs of mint chip Haagen Daaz or doing any number of mind-numbing drugs, I feasted my eyes on

Christmas Christmas Christmas, twinkling lights and red and white stockings, gingerbread cookies, smiling Santas and elves, trees blazing with lights…

No matter that I take my religion, Judaism, very very seriously.

Enough about me.

Here are the three vice presidential candidates Axelrod mentioned -- men considered to be in Kamala’s shortlist: Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly and Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear.  Myself, I’d pick Beshear.

Not that I know anything special. But lately I have started to have a kind of intuition.  It happens often when I wake up from a dead sleep.

That’s what happened at 4 am on Saturday July 20,2024. Groggy and eyes half open, I reached for this little black notebook I keep on my nightstand and I wrote in big red letters:

July 20

2024

Calm a la

maybe our next President

I was struggling to finish the last line of the haiku, you can see here the scary words flying through my mind. IN RED INK.

That’s where the haiku stood the next day, about two pm — we finished brunch at 1:30. My husband — who has for decades been my first reader (kind of like first HUSBAND). He reads and sometimes edits my fiction, poetry, journalism and all my bozo blogposts — well, he was helping me to toy with the haiku about 2:19 pm. (Truth be told he made it far far better.) At about 2:19 pm we texted it as we often do to our son Noah, an amazing writer, and instantly, he wrote back:

“HE’S OUT!”

I picked myself up off the sofa, I stumbled. I may have even screamed. Poco may even have left the rug she loves in front of the fireplace.

I felt the way you feel when someone

dies. Or gets married or…

Kind of in and out of time. Otherwordly.

You see, I had been telling my husband ALL WEEK LONG that Mr. Biden would step down on Sunday. Don’t ask me please how I knew. I just had a really strong …feeling.

My husband the seasoned political strategist said, “well, no, honey, but probably by a week from Sunday.” OK sure. Whatever you say because you are the expert honey. Picking candidates and predicting when people will step down is not something I have ever dreamed of doing.

But these are not ordinary times.

Back to Axelrod.

Picking the right VP running mate comes down to “a matter of math,” Axelrod says, “picking which candidate is likely to help find you the 270 Electoral college votes needed” to clinch the Presidential race.

In conclusion, AX notes that Joe Biden “wasn’t in a position to go on the attack in a persistent way for a variety of reasons.” But there is nothing holding Kamala back. Indeed. She has already positioned herself as the seasoned prosecutor and the other guy, oh, well,

he’s the felon!

In a post I wrote earlier this year, I declared that in my columns going forward, the Republican nominee would remain nameless.

Well, I’ve changed my mind. I have decided to give the nameless creepy nominee a name. From here on — until he is defeated in a landslide victory by Kamala Harris in November, 2024, making something called both history and

HERstory

he will now be known as

Donald Dump.

“Donald Dump is the perfect name,” my hub agreed last night. “I’m surprised other people don’t call him that all the time.”

Here’s a new bumper sticker for you:

DUMP DUMP.

It’s perfect — except for one thing: it is clearly an insult to a very famous and very likable little cartoon DUCK, whose quack I keep trying to mimic for my sweet Moo Moo, my soon-to-be 20-month old grandson Monte who lives with his folks out in gorgeous Colorado:

Oh, the other bumper sticker I’d make is simply:

CALM A LA

Because my good friend Alice A out in Colorado suggested it, after she read my haiku on Sunday. I met Alice in August of 2023. She is a dynamo of a woman who gathers dozens, literally, DOZENS AND DOZENS of people in her Denver front yard for summer concerts. Alice introduced me to deep canvassing this spring. She and I have been texting furiously all week, about guess what?

Yesterday, Alice’s son (one of her twins was my incredible son-in-law Geoff’s college roomate.) I do get her twins mixed up.

This son (one of the twins) told Alice yesterday that he didn’t think K could win. Alice tensed up.

My son told me the same thing. OH BOY. Men. Yes, boys, I tensed up.

But then I remembered.

HEY we are WOMEN. From Maine to Missouri, California to Colorado, Ohio to Oregon. Arizona to Atlanta, Boston to the Berkshires

We are women (and men) who think that K CAN DO IT. She can WIN AND WIN BIG.

In spite of the racism and sexism.

And unlike her dumpy opponent. She can. And will.

CALM.

Calm.