How to Win the November Elections

I was talking with a business colleague the other day, about how I prefer a smaller cell phone size, so it fits in my pocket easier, without fear of bending or breaking it. I said it helps to have deeper pockets though, but because they’re men’s pants, they do, tacitly acknowledging the longstanding beef so many women have with clothing manufacturers, regarding a significant lack of pockets in apparel for women.

Then I said, “What will it take to get more pockets into women’s clothes, an act of Congress?

I was joking, of course, but later I was thinking, what if there WAS some kind of legislation directing pocket equality between the sexes? And the more I thought about it, the more I became convinced it could be the key to winning in November. Here’s how I see that going:

First, we get some Democratic Congress-people to create the Pocket Equality for Women, or “PEW” Act, into which they write a mandate to include at least two pockets in every woman’s top, vest, skirt, and pants. Pockets need to be real and not merely for decoration, deep enough to be useful… at minimum, the length of an average woman’s hand. I bet Nancy Pelosi would be down with it. 

Naturally, the PEW Act will set off alarms within the purse lobby. Big Purse will be like, “Good God, man! If women can carry their cash, license, credit cards, and cell phones in pockets, we’ll never sell another clutch. We have to kill this thing in its sleep!”

With that, the lobbying from CoachPAC grows fierce on Capitol Hill, as they lean on the Congress-people they’ve bought… I mean, “Those to whom they’ve donated campaign funds, trips, and sample bags.”

They’ll find some willing listeners, I’m sure. But the problem, like with everything else that’s been lobbied out of existence, they can’t come out and say they’ve been bought off. They’ll need to find some other angle that they can tout in public, to use to kill the bill. Now why would anyone be against pockets? This stymies them for a few days. But then, the Alabama delegation has a breakthrough:

“People can smuggle things in pockets… contraceptives, frozen embryos, very small fetuses… We must protect against Real Live Human Baby trafficking!”

Huzzah! They now have a platform from which they can kill the PEW Act. With all the MAGA talking heads hitting Fox "News" and the Right-Wing Media circuit, they revive their old “Selling Baby Parts” accusations to include transporting. Now, no matter what the Senate does, the bill will die in the House, with Speaker Johnson vowing never to bring it to the floor for a vote.

Hopes are dashed in the short term, but the Democrats seize the chance to bring the case to The People. At every campaign stop, the candidates charge up the crowd:

Pol: What do you want?

Crowd: POCKETS!

Pol: Where do you want’em?

Crowd: EVERYWHERE! [Breaking out the finger guns] PEW PEW PEW!

"YOU CAN'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO... YOU JUST HAVE TO PASS THE PEW!"

At campaign stops, debates, and in political ads, Democrats tout the PEW Act and demand Pocket Equality. President Biden assures the nation that he will never "pocket veto" the PEW Act. The nation’s women, envisioning a life in which they never have to worry about leaving their purses behind, or getting them stolen by someone coming up from behind them, turn out to elect Democrats up and down the ticket. And there is rejoicing across the land.

So, do the women actually get pockets? Eh, probably not. Maybe. Conflicts in working out the specifics and arguing about what constitutes a blouse versus a shirt cause delay after delay to the implementation date and keep kicking the can down the road.

But, with the right to be fully enfranchised human beings restored, as opposed to the current state of being treated as private property/incubators, the momentum carries over into other issues. The new Democratic House, along with the expanded Senate majority and the Presidency, pass bills reconstituting the protections from Roe and Griswald, creating a national guarantee of reproductive rights and healthcare. They also pass a new law requiring that dry cleaning charges for women’s clothing be no higher than the cost for that of men. And for good measure, they add some more Supreme Court members so that the current six religious and Big Business shills are outnumbered and kept from interfering with the will of The People.

Yes, it’s all there for the taking, right in our back pocket, if you will.

 

Director’s DVD Commentary: I apologize if you came here all amped up about a new campaign strategy, and instead, you encountered my absurdist tendencies run amok. But take heart; I’m still confident that a full-throated push for reproductive rights will be a winner, come November. We just have to lay out the facts and turn out in greater numbers than the Religious Wingnuts.