Let's upset Republicans' plans

Republicans have been planning for this election for more than 30 years.

They started building their plan to take over American government from the bottom up back during the first Bush administration. State Republican committees sought out and sponsored local individuals for town and village and county government positions. (In Pennsylvania, that would be boroughs, in Louisiana, parishes. Same difference. Whatever the name, it’s the local municipality below state level that isn’t a city.)

Instead of starting at the top with senators, they worked to get people in at the lowest levels, where they can be trained up to move higher when openings exist. And, while they were there, they could oppose any Democratic or Independent ideas for improving things, and recruit others to their own viewpoint.

This happened so gradually that it was nearly invisible, but it happened. State-level party chairs groomed lower-level eager beavers to take neoconservative Republican views down to the lowest levels of government. I saw it happen in the town where I grew up, where the Independent town supervisor had trouble getting anything done because of opposition from neoconservative Republicans, who ridiculed the proposals and tried to finagle everything so it was to their credit alone. And then I heard about the state-level gatherings where they were praised for it.

It’s time to end this.

It’s time to end the post-Reaganite Republican takeover of towns and villages and counties and cities — the places we are closest to. Yes, cities are generally more Democratic than Republican, but there are exceptions to that in some of the smaller cities. Let’s bring them back, too.

You can do this — vote Blue all the way down the ticket. Don’t miss any elected jobs, no, not even dogcatcher. Make sure every race gets a vote for the Democrat.

(I know. Some places don’t have Democrats running, only different flavors of Republicans. Do what you can, okay?)

It takes very few people to change the outcome of a local race — fewer than a dozen in some places. Be one of the dozen who makes the change.

You can do it. Upset the Republicans as much as Trump’s incredibly awful debate performance upset them.

Think about it.

We have the power, if we work together, to change the country. Let’s do it.

And if you are voting on a mail-in ballot, see if there is a local drop box you can use instead of the mail. The current Postmaster General wants to mess with the mail so that ballots don’t make it back to local governments in time to be counted. Don’t let him do that with your ballot.

Let’s do this, all of us.