Energizer Summer

I’ve been smiling a bit more lately. I have a new joie de vivre. There’s a pep in my step.

My joie de vivre might be because I watched Les Olympiques, which were fantastique. The bounce in my pounce could be due to my new knees, which are also fantastique. I’ve even returned to my summer hobby: playing golf badly.

My zeal is probably because we have a new Democratic candidate for president. When the switch happened, I realized that since President Joe Biden’s disastrous performance in June’s debate, I had been clenching all the muscles in my body at once. For an entire month.

While I’m grateful for the resulting rock-hard abs, buns of steel, and quadriceps of 10 men, it feels good to unclench.

Now that Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz are the nominees, I’m feeling things I haven’t felt for a while: potential, promise and, dare I say it, hope?

The last time I felt politically hopeful was Election Day 2016, when I voted for Hillary Clinton. I went with one of my pucks. I wore a pantsuit and pearls. We took pictures.

By that night, all hope was lost.

I never wore the pantsuit again. It wasn’t fantastique.

But there’s no need to wallow in despair anymore. I believe I’ve become, dare I say it, an energized voter?

I was so energized I bought a T-shirt from the Harris campaign, knowing full well I would become defenseless against the inundation of emails from the Democratic Party. And, boy, have they flooded me. I get five a day from Kamala. I’ve also received emails from Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and sometimes from a random Democrat running for dogcatcher in Sheboygan.

Even the actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt emailed me. Don’t know him? He’s from the 1999 movie “Ten Things I Hate About You.” There are easily 10 things I hate about those emails. But if I unsubscribe, they’ll just give my address to the guy who played Urkel or the candidate for superintendent of highways in Schenectady.

Unsubscribing is like a game of whack-a-mole. It’s better to delete the emails without reading them. Like I delete the ones with the subject lines “Ozempic Scandals,” “Blueberry Health” or “Pee Dribble.” I really need a better spam filter.

All these solicitations make me wonder why campaigns need so much cash. Do we as a country have our priorities straight? The advertising dollars spent on this presidential campaign could be as much as $16 billion this year — yet teachers spend their own money on school supplies. Ce n’est pas fantastique.

As an energized voter, I’m in a unique position, because I write a humorous (I hope!) opinion column. I had always planned to support President Biden here, but I couldn’t figure out how to make that column funny. Biden is a wonderful president who has accomplished some amazing things: the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act, and he negotiated lower prices for 10 drugs widely used by Medicare recipients.

But his performance in the June debate was demoralizing. I began to think that column would’ve just been the word “please” typed 896 times followed by “vote for Joe Biden.”

I would have titled it, “I’m Begging You.”

Instead, I’m energetically asking you to vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.

I doubt many of you are undecided at this point, but if you are, why not vote for the Harris-Walz ticket? They are going to fight for things like gun safety laws, a stronger middle class and protecting reproductive rights. And, notwithstanding the barrage of solicitation emails and texts, they are nice people. Kamala Harris will happily tell you how to roast a chicken. Tim Walz will eagerly WD40 your squeaky ceiling fan.

Meanwhile, the Trump-Vance ticket is promising to give more tax breaks to the rich. Their Project 2025 policies claim that there are too many federal regulations, and they want to abolish federal agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency. Yet they also want to regulate what goes on in our schools and doctors’ offices by banning books and telling us what reproductive decisions we can make.

As someone who has lived for decades with a female reproductive system, I can tell you that women’s bodies are complicated enough without the government involved with what goes into or comes out of our hoohaws.

Plus, Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are not nice people. Their campaign is about doom, gloom and disparaging cat ladies. And there’s no way they know anything about WD40.

But I have another reason to not vote for the Republicans: sharks.

Yes, the sea animal Donald Trump is obsessed with.

Years ago, I suggested to one of the hockey pucks that they apply for a summer job at a place they had worked the preceding summer. The puck refused, telling me, “Sharks don’t swim backward.”

That’s the real reason to vote for Harris and Walz. We know Trump and his Project 2025 cronies will try to push women’s rights back to the 1800s. We know Trump will return to groveling to autocrats and dictators. We know that another Trump presidency will be a repeat of his chaos and divisiveness.

Been there. Done that. Didn’t buy the T-shirt.

Let’s not go back. Let’s swim forward by voting for Harris-Walz. Let’s all unclench.

It’ll be fantastique.