Dan Singh, Nancy and Tripping Bill(y)

A fortnightly rant, FL-S style, with a tip of the hat to the Dave Matthews Band…the inspiration for the wordplay that is the title of this post . 

Chalk one up for the successful small-business owner! 

We here at Fred2Blue advocate locally-owned businesses.  As our friend and former Stafford Board Supervisor Kandy Hilliard says, well-run local establishments provide communities a sense of place; they are bulwarks against the bland, interchangeable exurban retail shopping centers matasticizing across America’s once-pristine landscapes.

I have known Stafford pharmacist Dan Singh several years, since the time when he first filled my family’s prescriptions as an employee of one of those colossal drug store chains located in Stafford County. 

Early last year, he confided to me his plans to open an independent local pharmacy.  Dan was interested in gaining my perspective as a small-business owner and my ideas on marketing and promotion.

Upon hearing his big news,  I was simultaneously thrilled and terrified for him - thrilled because Dan would be doing something very few do these days (open an independent pharmacy), yet terrified because I’ve heard that the big drug chains like to follow the WAL*MART model of squashing small-town competition like so many cockroaches.

Last March, Dan’s Wellness Pharmacy opened for business in a renovated retail strip located on Garrisonville Road in North Stafford.  His has become the Fredericksburg region’s only compounding pharmacy, which is important for patients with challenging and difficult-to-treat medical conditions requiring specialized prescriptions.  Further, he offers a wide variety of herbal and homeopathic treatments, and packaged goods for sufferers of Celiac Disease.

Dan Singh’s marketing savvy and work-ethic are, well, truly amazing.

He smartly bought “space” on the Westbound side of that large electronic sign on Garrisonville Road.  As a result, many know who Dan is, what he looks like, and where his store is located.  Then, knowing that in years past many health-care practicioners ran out of serum, Dan’s Wellness Pharmacy promoted in-store flu shots (administered by Dan’s wife, who is a registered nurse).

One evening this past week, Dan called me to say that he had had his best day ever.  He was working long past close-of-business Thursday, still filling that day’s record number of prescriptions.

And to that, we say ‘way to go, Dan Singh!  Chalk one up for the successful small-business owner!

Words of Wisdom from Mme. Speaker Nancy Pelosi

In a story on this year’s presidential election broadcast this week on Bloomberg Business News, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was asked about the close race for the Democratic presidential nomination.  

When pressed, Speaker Pelosi offered sage wisdom when she said that the so-called Super-Delegates to this year’s Democratic National Convention in Denver should not overturn the people’s (primary and caucus) votes.

With a razor thin margin of delegates currently separating Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the role of the Super-Delegates will be critically important in determining which candidate of the two will be the Democratic Party’s standard-bearer in the general election.

The Hillary campaign argues that the Super-Delegates should be allowed free will to vote as they please.  Well, of course they do; Hillary needs the Supers to attain a majority of 2,025 delegates and the nomination.

But Speaker Pelosi, ever the wise pol and echoing the sentiments of her late predecessor Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill who famously said that “all politics is LOCAL”, recognizes that these Super-Delegates should reflect the will of the people in their states.   She says:

(I) think there is a concern when the public speaks and there is a counter-decision made to that.  It would be a problem for the Party if the verdict would be something different than the public has decided.”

The first-ever woman Democratic Party nominee or first-ever African-American Democratic Party nominee needs to leave Denver with a unified and enthusiastic Party supporting him or her in the general election. Anything resembling smoke-filled rooms will contradict the notion that this year’s election is about change, because - aside from gender or ethnicity - nothing (will have).

The DNC Steering Committee should end - once and for all - the practice of naming Super-Delegates (a bad idea since its inception during the 1984 presidential season).

Bill Stumps. Hillary Slumps.

The thrill of thrills for a political junkie like me is to meet, speak with, and shake hands with a U.S. President.

It has happened to me twice in my life, first in 1980 - with President Jimmy Carter at the 1980 Democratic Convention in New York, and second this past Monday - with former President Bill Clinton - at the Univ. of Mary Washington.

I can now attest that what I’ve often heard said about President Clinton is true; when (he) looks you in the eye, (you) feel as if you and he are the only two people in the room. While I’d stop far short of calling the effect hypnotic, it did draw me in. That’s a god-given gift to this, one of the-shrewdest pols ever to roam the American political landscape.

President Clinton’s address to a crowd of 700 (mostly students) gathered in UMW’s Great Hall was very interesting. And his pitch for candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton, intellectually compelling.

I got the sense that the crowd was there for the rare chance to see this U.S. President, a rock star if there ever was.

Yet with his pitch for Sen. Clinton, touting her knowledge, “35 years of experience”, and capabilities, the former President - despite the applause and hoots and hollers - couldn’t close the deal for Hillary.

The Clinton campaign has relied too heavily on the air assault (broadcast commercial time) and too lightly on ground game.

President Harry S Truman was famous for saying that the most-important job he ever held was that of precinct captain. And yet the Hillary Clinton campaign - here in Virginia where she got trounced, but also in states where (she) won handily, like home-state New York - has not followed consistently Harry’s insight to ”go retail”.

Thursday’s Virginia vote share (Obama’s two-thirds v. Clinton’s one-third) is as lopsided a result as Bush v. Kerry was in November of 2004. 

In its assumption that Gov. Kaine’s endorsement of Sen. Obama (announced at last year’s JJ Dinner) placed Virginia out of reach, the Clinton campaign cynically (and wrongly, in my view) passed on ground-game campaigning in the Old Dominion.  She denied voters the dialog  (between herself and Sen. Obama) and respect that they deserved.

The Millennials First Election

We must not let go unrecognized the importance of the Millennial voter in the 2008 race.  This generation that Baby Boomers raised on Barney, team-play, and empowerment, is skeptical, if not suspicious, of the Baby Boomer generation. 

If the Baby Boomers are the “me” generation, the Milliennials are the “we” generation.  To many Millennials, Clinton 2.0, is how they see their mothers and fathers.  But Obama represents how they see themselves.

The Millennial generation which is indeed larger than the Boomer generation, is driving a paradigm shift. 

Due in large part of their influence, the zeitgeist of the nation has shifted, and heard loud and clear from Millennials are demands for a clean-break from the smash-mouth politics of the extremes (left and right). 

This generation doesn’t have sense-memory of the women’s movement.  And while female Millennials are the prime beneficiaries of their mothers’ struggles for gender equality, the daughters don’t necessarily relate to the race and gender politics that defined and motivated their parents.

They are not awed. 

They live in a world where more women than men are graduating from U.S. colleges and universities, where more women have achieved income parity with their male-counterparts, where it has become (less unusual) to see CEO’s like Carly Fiorina and Sherry Lansing in corporate America, and where accomplished academics like Drew Faust of Harvard are Ivy League university presidents.  Some are accustomed to mom being the bread-winner and dad staying at home, and many have, or are friends with people that have, parents of different ethnic origins.

Whether it is Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, the Democratic Party nominee must fully grasp the enormity of these seismic generational changes, for the candidate of either party that does it best also stands the best chance of becoming our 44th President.

-DS