Voting

Our absentee ballots arrived a couple days ago. Michigan's primary is August 4. I suppose I should get the thing filled out and dropped off at the township clerk's office. There's a drop box to use when the office is closed (which is most of the time; rural township with part-time staffing) so no dealing with the post office and hoping the ballot doesn't end up re-routed through Chicago. Mail vanishes for years if it ends routed through Chicago.

I have not actually looked at what all is on the ballot this time. Michigan does an open primary so I have been toying with voting Republican simply because our current carpetbagging Congress critter actually has some opposition. It's not the usual pattern of the incumbent being guaranteed another shot at doing nothing for two years, which is good. One thing that always depresses me is seeing incumbents running unopposed. 

I have no idea just how deranged the person running against Jack Bergmann is -- for all I know he's even farther out in the right wing weeds than Bergmann -- but I figure just seeing that someone is running against Bergmann is a good sign. Even if Bergmann wins the primary I'm thinking it would be nice to make the carpetbagger nervous when he sees opponents got actual votes. 

Bergmann deserves the label of carpetbagger. As far as anyone can tell, he's never actually lived in Michigan. What he claims as his Michigan residence is a deer hunting camp near Watersmeet. Running (and unfortunately winning) offices in states where Republicans don't actually live seems to be a pattern. Mike Rogers, one of the Republicans running for Senate this year is rumored to be a Florida resident, and of course there's the classic Alabama case. Tommy Tuberville (current U.S. senator and candidate for Governor in Alabama) has been accused multiple times of not living in Alabama anymore. He did live in the state when he coached college football at Auburn, but that was decades ago.  

Mike Rogers, for what it's worth, was recently thoroughly mocked in social media when his campaign photo shopped his picture. They took a routine, totally normal shot of Rogers in an outdoor setting, probably from a public appearance of some sort, and decided it would be a good idea to do a bizarre turning an ordinary, slightly portly and definitely middle-aged dude into Conan the Barbarian or some other muscle-bound he-man. 6-pack abs, muscular biceps, the whole "I'm competing in body building contests in my spare time" look. It was bizarre. It drew laughs. 

On the other hand, Rogers can actually claim to have a connection with Michigan. He was born in the downer peninsula, graduated from Adrian College, and was a Michigan Congressman until he apparently got bored with politicking. He left Congress, picked up some gigs doing commentary on CNN and elsewhere, and got himself a comfortable retirement home in Florida. Starting a few years ago, he's been trying to get back into an elected office. He ran for U.S. Senate when Senator Stabenow retired; he lost to Elissa Slotkin. Now he's trying again to win the seat being vacated by Senator Peters.

There was a time when I would have agreed with the Wall Street Journal that Rogers belonged to the sane branch of the Republican Party. Unfortunately, once he started lusting after a Senate seat he decided to chug the Trump Kool Aid and went all in on election denial and other Mango Mussolini obsessions. At this point in time, I'm hoping that Abdul El-Sayed ends up as the Democratic nominee for Senate and goes on to destroy Rogers in the general election in November. I'm probably dreaming about El-Sayed -- he's been endorsed by Bernie Sanders so you know the Republicans are going to be screaming about godless communism -- but a girl can fantasize.