Well, you know the election season has started in earnest when..............

When you start to get email from campaign managers asking when it would be convenient for you to take a phone call from (pick one). You already know what the call will be about: "can you give me money?"

I usually pick from three standard responses.

1. "Sure, he/she can call, but I am overseas, so it will be a transatlantic call, and I have an insane schedule, so it will have to be arranged on short notice." One major candidate has actually said yes, please to this (maybe google told this candidate something I don't know?), which was the kickstarter for the reason for this long-winded post. Please bear with me.

2. I don't respond at all, as their positions and/or presentation do not come across as presidential to me.

3. "Sorry, but your candidate has exhibited very un-presidential behavior in the recent past, and I am not in interested in speaking with him/her."

Now, I know how come they have my email and phone number. I have contributed to almost ALL of them at some time in the past. Sanders, Warren, Booker, Inslee, Beto, Klobuchar, Hickenlooper, Gillibrand, Castro, Harris (?? I think?), etc. But that was for either Congress or a governorship. I didn't even know who Pete Buttegeig was in 2016, so I have never contributed to him. He seems to have gotten himself elected mayor of South Bend without my help just fine.

I have communicated, in writing, to all Senators who publicly urged Al Franken to resign need not bother. Some do anyway. Some just don't pass information on. Every year I have to tell new staffers of Gabby Giffords' sensible gun laws group that I don't NEED special attention from Mark or Gabby (I've known them for over ten years). They, at least, apologize for the oversight.

However--this past week, one of the candidates whom I might consider supporting, if our views jive on enough issues important to both of us, actually did reach out, and still wants to talk with me. Now, I'm no big fish, can't even contribute the max allowable (and if they insist on pushing for that, the conversation is over). You can know people--their net worth still doesn't rub off on you when you shake hands or chat over dinner.

I'm taxed in Germany, so every for $50 I send them, I have to earn $100. Of all the solicitors of contributions that ever called me, only ONE (Russ Feingold) seemed to know that.

NO ONE seems to be interested in Americans Abroad. This is what I will ask about. We are a voting bloc of about 6 million people. That is a population greater than over 20 of the States of the Union. There will always be the idiots who think we are all gazillionaire tax exiles living in villas in Monaco or on the Cayman Islands and sailing on yachts, but there are about 5,999,700 of the 6,000,000 of us to whom that does NOT apply. Many of us live in countries that have higher income tax rates than the USA, plus a 20% sales tax on everything and service we purchase, and we STILL have to file US tax returns in case someone missed something somewhere. Only three countries in the world do not recognize residence-based taxation: the USA, Eritrea, and some other small African nation that I have forgotten. Most of us are here because our jobs sent us here, our personal lives (i.e. married a foreign spouse that did not want to live in the USA) demanded it, or we just found our life's calling outside the USA without that meaning we wanted to renounce our citizenship (virtually no one does--"I yam what I yam," and all that).

Sure, there is medical care reform, tax reform, correcting foreign policy, defense policy, addressing income inequality without Nazi style confiscation from people we don't like, and repairing the Justice Department--assuming that one is even possible at this point. But all candidates seem to have laid out their positions on the "DUH" issues: poverty is bad, lack of education is bad, lack of health care is bad, and climate change is bad. Like Jesse Jackson told in his legendary address to the DNC so many years ago: "you're RIGHT. But that's not enough."

Now before the calls start raging for this to have been posted on the primaries board, it was consciously NOT put there. First off, the "Primaries" board is by definition about a series of events, the first of which doesn't take place for nearly 11 months. I look, but I don't play, as there are no primaries that are upcoming this year, and therefore nothing to comment on. I find the requirement to state a preference (or lack of one) a bit putting off, but that's not my decision, and I'm happy to not play. Predictably, posters there often have interesting things to say, and then the "usual suspects" act (seems to me anyway) like paid staffers, dutifully letting us know every time their candidate has switched toothpaste brands.

This post is not about the far-off primaries. It is about campaign finance (or, at leatst, one aspect of it that has come home to me here in Germany).

I'm sure LOTS of us are getting either phone calls or requests to take them. Has anyone else been asked to take a call from, and speak with their (or any other) candidates yet? I mean, not including anyone who already works for one of the candidates. I expect a lot of this in a year. It seems early now, except that we ALL know that this will be like 2008: the race for the Democratic nomination is a de-facto race for the presidency. (Caveat--it was in 2016, too, so NOTHING can be taken for granted).