A B C
Anybody But Collins
I’m been thinking about life in Maine after Susan Collins’ deciding vote for Kavanaugh. I live about 10 miles as the crow flies from her house in Bangor.
Collins comes home to Maine all the time.
She is out and about in public all the time.
If you go to a UMaine hockey game in Orono, you are likely to see her.
If you go to a UMaine women’s basketball game in Bangor, you are likely to see her.
If the girls scouts are giving out an award in Caribou and 50 people show up, she’ll be there.
If the lobstermen are rallying for anything in Machiasport, she’ll put on a smile and a suit and be at the podium.
So I picture myself at the next hockey or basketball game when I am likely to see her. Sure, I could say something. I have before.
But Collins is working hard to create a narrative that it anyone who opposes her and speaks up is being unbearably rude, and is outside the mainstream. She tells us all the facts we’re spouting about Kavanaugh and his history are lies. And honestly, it’s not really the Maine way to get up in anyone’s face when they are going about their day, shopping at Hannaford or cheering on their favorite sports team. You’re going to lose the battle of public opinion in rural Maine every day with that behavior.
But I can’t just sit there either. Or smile and walk on by with my shopping cart.
The easiest silent protest is to where a t-shirt that gives her a piece of my mind. But the same shirt, every day? Under my winter coat in a month or two, so I have to flash it open?
Should I stand and turn my back when she is introduced at a basketball game? Doable, but not sure it accomplishes much. If anything, only a few of us doing that reinforces to her that everyone else thinks she is great.
Here is my crazy idea. What about simple bumper stickers that have ABC printed on them in large letters, with local indivisible groups publicizing that those stickers mean you are voting for Anybody But Collins in 2020? If someone asks you what the sticker means, you explain.
ABC
Anybody But Collins
Because she voted to give a huge tax cut to the rich.
Because she voted to gut women’s rights and health care.
Because she pretends to be a moderate, but she is a hard-core conservative.
Because she vote for Kavanaugh.
ABC
ABC
ABC
And if they agree, you hand them a sticker for their car out of your pocket.
What if she is out and about next week, next month and for the next year and she sees them on hundreds of the Hondas and Subarus that the sensible moderate voters who have always elected her in the past all seem to drive up here?
What if we carried small 12 inch square thin towels or pieces of fabric in bright yellow with ABC printed on them? Easy to just keep in the pocket of your Bean coat, so that when she’s walking by at the hockey game you can pull it out and silently wave it at her? Or show up with your kid at some event she’s using as a photo op and hold it up as a silent, respectful protest?
I am open to other suggestions. I just want a quiet, simple way for the many thousands of us to be in her face every time she walks out among her constituents. Because if a few of us are screaming and crying at her she wins the battle of public opinion even though she has truly lost it today. We need a long-term strategy, easy to implement, that is ongoing and relentless in letting her know she has lost her base and she is never getting it back. ABC would be awkward for her. Uncomfortable. And there would not be a damn thing she could do to protest it.
Maybe she is retiring. Fair enough. But she is so tone deaf and clueless about her votes for Kavanaugh and the tax bill that it’s just as likely she thinks she can wait out 2019 and all will be forgiven and forgotten by 2020 after another 5,000 news cycles.
I’m really, really, really tired of calling, writing, and showing up when I can to protests. I feel like I’m doing it for you guys, for the rest of the country who are screwed by our shitty senator who plays us all for fools to show Mainers really aren’t mostly assholes — we’re a blue state with too many residents who have been conned by a warm, friendly hard-core Bush republican. I want to find a creative alternative strategy to get through to Collins that can work. Because she does not listen to her constituents or care what we believe. Her last few big votes all go overwhelmingly against what all the public opinion polls show Mainers want. There has to be a better way.
If you have other ideas I’m open. I am one part angry, one part discouraged, and a million parts resolved to figure out a way to harness the energy against Collins in Maine and get it through her thick head that she is done. She does not represent Maine values.
I know a lot of you reading this probably hate Mainers a little bit right now for voting Collins in. But Daily Kos Mainers never voted for her. I know I never did. My husband never did. My friends never did. And we need help right now. Not just money, but creative ideas for the next 6-12 months to make it clear to Collins she needs to retire.