What Are You Voting For?

Let's start with what we want.

a place to live that we can afford.

People who expect to be planning retirement are looking at their bills wondering how things got to be so expensive.

We want jobs that pay enough for people to live and have some spendable income to enjoy a movie, going out to dinner, taking a vacation.

If somebody works all week and still can't pay the rent, telling them to work harder isn't much of a plan.

There are only seven days in a week, and maybe we could add an eighth day or make days three or four hours longer.

Oh my God, what am I thinking? We'd have to make new clocks and watches and reprint calendars.

That would just make everything so much more confusing.

We want health care we can afford.

Having insurance and being able to afford health care are two different things.

The doctor says avoid stress.

Wonderful.

Can you write that on a prescription and send it to the mortgage company, please? And I want to buy groceries without checking whether the supermarket offers a payment plan.

Would you like paper or plastic? Whichever has the lower interest rate, please.

These are ordinary things.

A roof, a paycheck, food, medical care.

So when somebody asks for our vote, we want to hear what they're going to do about those things.

Give us a proposal.

Tell us how you'll pay for it.

Tell us who benefits.

Tell us how it's going to help us.

Do we have to give up something to get something? Tell us what the trade-off is.

And if you tried it before, tell me whether it worked.

If you're a candidate, applause feels good.

But applause doesn't always mean you did the job.