Many years ago, when I was a beginning reporter – callow, wet behind the ears, justifiably underpaid – an old city council member in Laramie told me how things work in local politics.
He explained that there's a pendulum, and sometimes people with crazy notions get elected, and things go temporarily astray. Then, when it goes too far astray, the pendulum swings back, other people are elected, and things get better for a while.
In Laramie, when things got too crazy, a few well-known business leaders would run for city council, giving up their Tuesday nights if they got elected.
It was a pretty common sense city council back then, with a UW engineering professor as mayor, along with a contractor, a civil engineer, a store clerk, a minister, two educators, and a banker on the board. And they had a wily city manager who once told people complaining about poor snow removal to “pray for sunshine.”
(One member of that council, however, decided that a street should be named after himself. I wrote a lead sentence that said he wasn't about to wait for someone else to think of it. But the editor said we'd play it straight, and let the gall of the idea occur to readers on their own. It did. No street was named after the guy.)
So why am I recalling the pendulum in Laramie all these years later, an entirely different epoch in geologic time?
Because the clear thinkers among our Democrat friends – if there are any “Blue Dogs” left - desperately need to get together, draw straws to see who has to run for office, and return some sanity to their party.
They need to show the rest of us that nutty Jasmine Crockett, AOC, Socialist Bernie, Kamala, The Squad, Pretty Boy Newsom, loopy Tim Walz, Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell aren't the standard bearers of the party once led by FDR, JFK, Lyndon Johnson, Scoop Jackson, Sam Nunn, the list goes on.
Disagree? Consider the headlines we're seeing from political races in New York, Virginia, California and Maine.
In New York City, they're about to elect an aspiring communist to be mayor. He wants to freeze rent, make public transportation and child care free, and open city-run grocery stores, all paid for by “the rich.” He wants to “seize the means of production.” Sound familiar? That's pure Marxism, folks.
And, barring a miracle, he's going to win. Voters there are that stupid.
In Virginia, we all know that Jay Jones, who wants to be attorney general, once fantasized in emails about killing a political rival and his kids.
He apologized, and the apology is good enough for fellow Democrats, who steadfastly refuse to withdraw their endorsements.
The governor of Illinois, J.D. Pritzker, said in an interview last week that Jones only fantasized about killing an opponent and his kids once, and anybody can make a mistake once.
Jones was once caught driving 116 miles per hour. But, hey, it only happened once, so that's probably OK with Pritzker, as well.
Out in California, a Democrat candidate for governor once dumped a pot of scalding potatoes on the head of her husband. A judge made her take anger management classes. No doubt the potato episode is also OK with Pritzker, because she only scalded his noggin once.
And last week we learned that a Democrat running for the U.S. Senate in Maine had a skull and crossbones tattoo – once popular among actual Nazis - for years. He recently had it covered over with another tattoo.
I'm more sympathetic to the Maine guy, who says he got drunk with a bunch of other Marines years ago and just made a poor choice of tattoos. (Pritzker would probably point out that it was only one Nazi tattoo, so all is forgiven.)
I predict that the Democrats will someday find their way out of these deep, dark woods. Their pendulum will swing back.
But, for the sake of blessed Republican majorities in the meantime, let's hope it doesn't happen any time soon.
(My skeptical wife says Republicans will find a way to screw up this golden opportunity.)
Dave Simpson can be contacted at DaveSimpson145@hotmail.com
