Great town hall today @ Broomfield, CO with Rep Jared Polis. 1000+ turnout.
So many people thanked him for showing up* and I'd say Boulder County has a decent grip on what the D minority House delegation can do**, which comes down to chip away, keep making calls, sending post cards, protesting and organizing. I heard a lot of subtle reminders that this is a marathon, and we have to keep working the problem.
90% of the time, Polis is stellar; when he stumbles, I truly think it's because he's a very wealthy male geek who has spent his entire life playing on the easy setting*** and just failed to think something through. Clearly, much of BoCo agrees, since we keep sending him back on 20+ point margins for a ridiculously low cost per vote. In other words, I think Polis can afford some risks, and it is probably time to start encouraging our safest Dems in the House to take those risks.
Polis is one of the Dem zen masters at trolling the Rs, and Boulder County rewards that. (Dude introduced the text of "The Internet is for Porn" from Avenue Q into the Congressional Record. With permission. It was epic.) Today's troll from Polis was (paraphrase) DJT made a speech, at least he was coherent. Nice change, but a very low bar, and one speech doesn't change the serious issues. I think we need to see more of this kind of trolling/shading, as blatant as possible, and from those in the safe seats. Comedy works best when it punches up, and we have some really witty, pithy, snarky Members of the House in safe seats. Let's reward them when they troll the Rs.
A point I've been considering: Jared Polis is more back bench -- Colorado has 9 EVs, only 6 million people, and for the most part, ya'll think we're buried in snow 10 months of the year and cross country ski everywhere. But Polis is also extremely representative of Generation X, far more so than the Zombie Eyed Granny Starver. Xers do tend to be pro-education, pro-environment, pro-civil liberties, pro-reproductive health, pro-universal healthcare and pro-technology. GenX does tend to distrust government as an institution, but from our earliest political memories, government has been harming us -- our school funding was decimated under Reagan, our parents were the first to enter and stay trapped in the two income trap that was the result of 70s and 80s GOP economic decisions, we were the first to be slammed by student loan debt and recession hitting as we were entering the workforce, getting married, buying houses and having kids. (Seriously. There's been one at every milestone since we started turning 16.) We're also having a hell of a time breaking into politics because the generation ahead of us is twice our size, living longer with greater health into their old age, and has no interest in giving up power. We're the ones who have been building the internet since it was a bunch of distributed BBSs and 28.8 modems were hot commodities, so we're coming into politics through alternate routes.
Thus, my proposal? When we talk about GenX in Congress -- ignore Paul Ryan. He's the one asshole we all had in our high school classes and nobody liked him then. Focus on Jared Polis, the Happy Mutant Maker who geeks out on Boing Boing, helped create the E-card, married his husband, adopted his children, opposes fracking when it's close to places where people live, has been extending national forests and advocating for public schools.
*I get it. This is a low bar to set and we shouldn't have to give cookies to get Congress to do their damn jobs. But positive reinforcement is not a bad thing, and D's need it.
** Not much, and less than they'd like.
*** yep, he's gay and Jewish, and out and proud about both, but his coming out was extremely easy for him in a supportive family and community and he has a lot of "passes for straight" camouflage. Being able to pass is one of those subtle privileges that can make or break the difficulty setting.