We’re in trouble. Now is the time for people to begin running for office in the little places, like the 7th congressional district where I live, and where a dud of a Republican placeholder is our current representative. And we have a new, fresh face! Mark J. Lindquist is gearing up to run for that office, and he’s certainly enthusiastic and outgoing, which is a good start.
But I think he’s doomed.
Nice website, but it’s all about Mark. It’s like a vanity page for Mark Lindquist: I learn that he’s served in the Air Force as an analyst for the NSA, and when he got out he’s been working as a motivational speaker for Fortune 500 companies, and he aspires to sing the National Anthem at the Superbowl. I could find nothing about policy. For instance, this is is a largely rural district, with a lot of farmers who tend to vote Republican — where does he stand on agricultural policies? Personally, I’m a university professor, and I want to know what he’s going to do for education. I can’t find it! At the top of his web page, it says he is “reinventing American politics”…how? What’s he doing differently?
His big plan is to sell books to fund his campaign, thereby getting big money interests out and changing American politics. It’s not very revolutionary.
If he’s the Democratic nominee, he’d probably get my vote simply because I’ll vote against Republicans automatically, but he’s going to have to work harder at presenting some deeper policy vision if he wants to sway my Republican neighbors, who consistently outnumber me around here.
Where I live (suburb east of Columbus, OH), there is a special primary on August 3 to replace Steve Stivers, who abandoned ship after fucking us all over by becoming a Trump lapdog and is taking a job at the Chamber of Commerce. There is a dirty dozen Republicans vying to get the nomination, and they are all trying to outdo each other in being as racist and Trumpish as possible. About the only difference I can see about them is whether they trash Critical Race Theory or not.
I am still registered with the Republican Party. In the past, I’ve tried to use primaries to try to get a more reasonable candidate (but then vote Democratic in the regular election). But in this one I cannot figure out whether to vote for the most objectionable in the hope that in the general election he gets defeated because of being so objectionable, or the least objectionable because I am in a gerrymandered district where the Republican almost always wins.
ahcuah, There are plenty of anecdotal stories of Democrats who voted for Trump in the 2015 Republican primary because someone with such a host of obvious shortcomings would have the least chance against HRC. So about that…
Is he at least openly a Democrat? Over the years we’ve had a few empty suits locally who cheerfully plastered the district with yard signs exhorting people to support their candidacy but when I checked their websites there was no party affiliation and the platforms were all meaningless platitudes. They seemed to believe that simply not being the incumbent was a sufficient qualification. Granted, sometimes it is, but not always.
NSA analyst who hasn’t blown any whistles? Means he’s a paid-up member of the surveillance state.
I still think PZ for PreZ! has a nice ring to it. And you need to start somewhere.
So he’s the same kind of candidate the right-of-center “centrists” in the Democratic Party have been pushing for decades now. He has the kind of qualifications that appeal to Republicans, he doesn’t give a damn about you or anybody you know because the only people he wants to please are the 1%, and he doesn’t want to talk about policy because although it isn’t publicized he’s against the things most of his constituents want (non-military spending and sensible policy) and intends to try to appeal to Republicans, who won’t vote for him in the general because he’s a Democrat. And he’s going to lose, because such candidates nearly always do if the state isn’t deep blue, and the party will conclude that it’s because he didn’t lean far enough towards the Republicans. We’ve been here before, and until the Blue No Matter Who crowd learns to shut the fuck up and refuse to support these clods, we’ll be stuck with it.
He’s got many, many brand new ideas regarding the shape of wheels and the locations of axles. If only we listen to him and vote for him, he’ll have government working perfectly within just two years.