Dear Bill Thompson,

I have never met you. As far as I know, no one I know has ever met you. I couldn't pick you out of a lineup-and I can say that because I just now went Googling for a picture of you and I didn't even know you were black, so I didn't even know that saying that would have icky weird racist overtones! Seriously. WTF? And I say this as the kind of primary-voting nerd who briefly got into it with Leslie Crocker Snyder campaigners last night on the street. (So maybe I called her a killer, and maybe a bunch of Aborn campaigners laughed their heads off.) And yet here you are, the Democratic contender for mayor of New York. Right now, you are not going to be the mayor, to put it politely, which is to say, you are barely a blip on the map in a political landscape where the tiny Red Sox-loving mayor is a strangely dominant, compelling and, most importantly, famous entity. So what are you going to do? Who are you going to appeal to?

The pissed-off. As your people probably keep bringing up over and over, and one hopes you aren't baffled as to why, yesterday's election reflected a real dissatisfaction, what with at least four, and maybe six, incumbent City Councilmembers getting punted out. Good riddance! Bloomberg's attacks on you are that you have both no experience and bad experience, and your attack on him is "he overstayed his welcome," which is, eh, so-so. But what he's saying about you is just like what everyone said about Barack Obama. Who won fans through oratory and inspiration. Which leads us to...

The debates in October. Oh, look, free TV time. A lot of people don't like Bloomberg but we're not dissatisfied with him because, at the end of the day, we all think he's our daddy and we know he's a little mouthy. Like, we feel that he would go down to D.C. and go toe-to-toe with Rahm if it came to that. We know he's a dick, and we respect that! But what's not as obvious is to us, as emotional voters, is that 1. we'd be "safe" with someone else as mayor and 2. that someone else could stand up for us. Make it clear exactly how Bloomberg has undermined the middle and working classes. (And he has, no two ways about it.) Your voters are Stuy Town residents, and black people, and young people. Oh, wait, look at that-a complete overlap with the Obama vote! Which leads us to....

The Obama strategy. Once upon a time there was an Obama campaign that was not yet a money-printing machine! I remember standing in a parking lot somewhere in Pennsylvania and he got out of this cheap rental car, all gray and tired, going to make some speech. There was no machine there yet. Sure, they had more money than you have now, because you have no money. But what the Obama campaign garnered through showing up anywhere, anytime was enthusiasm, instilling the kind of fervor that it is easy to tap in the young people. You know who is excited about door-knocking and phone-banking for you? OH RIGHT, PRETTY MUCH NO ONE. So go excite a constituency, and put them to work as autonomous field captains. People will work for free if they believe in a cause, and they are set loose to work, which leads us to...

You don't need the money. Bloomberg's insane coffers, well, whatever! Bloomberg pays for thousands of ads because he can. Do you know what is free, however? Editorial space on blogs, TV and newspapers. But you have to give them something to write about. Sit down with your three smartest people and brainstorm twenty ways to get attention. Guess what? This is New York! Your stunts don't have to be too cautious. This is seriously a day and age when nearly all attention is good attention. (Just don't fuck with Taylor Swift, I guess!) You should have a little fun. You should...

Tear some shit up. YOU HEAR ME? Don't be cautious. Enter a pie-eating contest. Start making fun of Eric Gioia on Twitter. Or Perez. Get photographed at lunch with Tina Fey. It is not 1985! You have to be a character in our imagination. We have to know who you are, and conceive of you in our minds. We have a cartoon idea of Bloomberg in our heads; he's the little annoying dude who can't shake that horrible accent who gets driven around in a black Suburban. Who the hell are you?