Dear Iowa, As a former Iowan please do this on Election Day...

Re: This Election

Dear Iowans:

I was born in Iowa and my mom still lives in Mason City, so I have a vested interest in this election. 

First of all, let be me clear that this election will make a difference in your life when candidates are discussing doing away with guaranteed access to healthcare and social security -- or starting another war with American boots on the ground. 

Frankly, the GOP side seems to have gone totally insane in a contest of who can be the bigger bomb-thrower and hate-monger, so I will stick with the Democratic side.

Unlike many of you, I am old enough to remember past elections when democrats nominated a person George McGovern in 1972 and Walter Mondale in 1984, each of whom lost by a landslide because Democrats picked the most liberal candidate.  The old adage is “Those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it.”  I was where college kids are today, voting as a senior for the first time in 1972 - and seeing the consequences.

I like Bernie Sanders but polls show that anyone who calls himself a “socialist” has lost 50% of the vote off the top. Secondly, while I like his proposals there is no way to pay for them nor get them through a GOP controlled Congress. It’s all pie-in-the-sky.  The GOP will hit him with their smear machine and like McGovern and Mondale, it will be another “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory” moment for democrats.

I encourage thinking Democrats to vote for Hillary. She is the only candidate with the global skills needed by a President.  I know this since I have negotiated in nearly 50 countries while she has been in over 100. The presidency is no place for on the job training by amateurs. It is challenging even to those with experience, since no one controls the unexpected. She also is a fighter for the middle class.

So, I encourage a vote next Monday for Hillary Clinton, a sane candidate in a year of crazy candidates who plunge America back into the policies favoring the 1% and fiscal nightmare that led to the crash of 2008.

Michael Fjetland

Author, Better Times Ahead April Fool

www.BetterTimesAheadAprilFool.com