Political persuasion is rarely friendly, and there will be lots more yelling, blaming, placard-waving and marching before we get to the November midterm elections. But I hope there will be some fervent singing as well — maybe even some of what used to be called protest songs.

I think of 16-year-old me in 1963, hitchhiking to the Newport Folk Festival with my Martin D-28 guitar to witness Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and the Freedom Singers, all swaying with locked hands and singing “We Shall Overcome.” Then there’s the memory of Toby Keith on TV four decades later, whipping a huge, scary outdoor audience into a frenzy with “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue.”

Throughout my career, I have come up with musical harangues, broadsides, laments, parodies and political potshots, and my forays into folk agitprop tend to be laced with humor, in hopes of encouraging members of the audience to laugh at those they might fear and oppose.

In the spring of 2016, I wrote a song about the candidacy of Donald Trump called “I Had a Dream.” (“His little finger on the button, he was doin’ his thing/Our new national anthem was ‘My Ding-a-ling.’”) The whole thing seemed like a joke back then — the song, him, the idea that the guy could be elected president. When I performed the number during that summer and early fall, most people loved it, and why wouldn’t they? I was preaching to a choir. There were a few unhappy campers, people who walked out in a huff, but part of my job description is ruffling feathers, so I took their displeasure in stride.

I haven’t been singing “I Had a Dream” much these last two years, although not long ago I came up with a little thing called “Presidents Day.” (“There’s a reckoning coming in November they say/In the meanwhile it’s unto Robert Mueller we pray.”)