Help with stripping output

[snippsat]

>>> import itertools
>>> 
>>> dcatagory1 = [' 1. AT&T  ', ' 2. FP&L  ', ' 3. WATER ', ' 4. GAS   ', ' 5. PLAN-D']
>>> dcatagory2 = [' 6. AARP  ', ' 7. DIAZ  ', ' 8. DRUGS ', ' 9. HOUSE ', '10. CAR   ', '11. MISC  ']
>>> for item in itertools.chain(dcatagory1, dcatagory2):
...     print(item.strip())
...     
1. AT&T
2. FP&L
3. WATER
4. GAS
5. PLAN-D
6. AARP
7. DIAZ
8. DRUGS
9. HOUSE
10. CAR
11. MISC

Look again at Linux Python 3 environment
So you can at least use Python 3.5 that comes with Mint 18.2.
Mint 19 has Python 3.6.5 as default.