I figured I'd talk about politics in this post, in part because politics is less annoying right now than my day-to-day life. My youngest son is wearing me out. Nothing serious, but he's going through a tough stretch at the moment, for some reason, and he's been a struggle to deal with. I'd rather watch the impeachment proceedings on endless loop than listen to him whine again. To make things worse, S is out of the country for work, so it's all on me. She gets back tonight, and it will be none to soon.
Wednesday was particularly bad. It was an hour-long temper tantrum before bed. That's the worst time too, because it prevents him from getting a full night's sleep, which is what he needs most. He was really tired yesterday morning. I wanted to let him sleep and take him to school late, but that doesn't work, because I have to take his brother to school on-time, and so he'd have to get up and go with me anyway. Also, he had a field trip that he would've missed. That's actually a good thing -- the field trip -- because it's about a 45-minute round-trip bus ride, and kids his age often doze off during bus rides. He was much easier to deal with last night, so I'm thinking he might have caught some Z's.
He's an odd kid, not in a bad way, but sometimes in an exacerbating way. He's super particular about the most random things. It's like he has a mild OCD-ish condition. I've never known a kid so fastidious. When he puts his jacket on, he gets really upset if the sleeves of his shirt roll up at all; his socks have to be perfectly lined up on his foot -- seams at his toes, tread on the bottom, pushed down on his ankles; his bed has to be made to his precise specifications before he'll sleep in it -- all blankets smoothed out perfectly across the four corners; and he's always grousing about his pants being too tight or his shoes being too hard or his milk being too hot or too cold or something else that's not exactly to his liking. Sometimes he gets really upset about it too. That's how most of his tantrums begin -- something trivial isn't perfect, and it snowballs from there. I do my best to nip it in the bud, but once the wheels come off, it's nearly impossible to get them back on. At some point, I just throw up my arms and let him cry about it, because I literally don't know what else to do. Sorry, kid, nothing in life is ever exactly the way you want it to be. Go ahead and cry if it makes you feel better, but it's not solving anything.
Which is actually a good segue into politics, because I'm hearing a lot of liberal complaints about the slate of Democratic candidates, and my feeling is: Don't pull that shit in this election. When people ask me if I'm for Biden or Sanders or Warren or somebody else, my answer is "yes." Every candidate has flaws, some of them big flaws -- Biden is a past-his-prime gaffe-prone white guy; Sanders is way to the left economically of the median Democratic voter; same with Warren; Booker doesn't excite people; Buttigieg is too inexperienced and privileged; Klobuchar is the female version of Booker; Steyer and Bloomberg are super rich dudes trying to buy their way in; etc., etc., down the long (but rapidly shortening) line. Fine. But, we gotta roll with what we got, and we need everybody on board, begrudgingly or otherwise, with whomever comes out on top. Because it's either them or Trump, period. Worst case scenario isn't John McCain or Mitt Romney -- that flank of the GOP is dead (in McCain's case, literally, RIP) -- it's a whole new, meaner, more vicious animal.
And, look, maybe everybody will get on board in the end. It could be people are just fired up now in the primary season, and once a candidate actually emerges, "anybody but Trump" will carry the day. I hope so, but I'm a little worried -- not full-fledged freaking out (what's the point?), but a bit on edge.
With all that said, I do have candidates I like more than others, of course. My previous list has totally disintegrated, being that my top candidate is not even in the race anymore. I'm not going to make a whole new list, but I'll give you the abridged version. It's based almost exclusively one criterion: most likely to carry the swing states needed to win the Electoral College. Admittedly, this is not a very good criterion, because it's almost totally unknowable. We have little idea what will motivate the electorate in the tiny slivers of swing areas to turn out on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November next year. All we can do is guess, and my best guess, based on the elections -- special, midterm, gubernatorial, etc. -- since 2016, is that we need somebody moderate in demeanor, who will push a slightly left-of-center agenda on economics (expanded Obamacare, infrastructure, stronger unions, higher minimum wage), immigration (expanded legal immigration, humane treatment of all immigrants, reasonable border security), guns (anti the insanity we live with now), climate (less fossil fuels, more renewables), and the military (strong defense, not too hawkish), while being pretty liberal on social issues like abortion, LGBTQ rights, and racial justice. Oh, and also somebody who is totally charismatic and will inspire tons of different types of people to vote for them -- basically another Barack Obama.
But, there is nobody like that among the Democratic candidates. So, again, we have to make due with what we got. As Dan Savage likes to say about love, and it works for politics too: There is no 1, but, there are a lot of .65s that we can round up. To that end, based on my criterion above, I give my top-five candidates below. First, however, I want to emphasize that this is not a list of the candidates whose policies I most like. That list would look totally different. One of biggest fallacies people make in politics is assuming the positions they hold are also the ones that would be the most politically advantageous to adopt (Mike Pesca once called it MSNBC-itis). I'm trying not to make that mistake. The counterargument, however, is that nobody knows what's politically advantageous, so you might as well do what you think is right, and work to make that the popular position. I understand that, and it could be correct. I even espouse that philosophy at times. So, I could be approaching this in the totally wrong way. We likely will never know, at least not until it's too late. That's the problem with predicting the future.
Anyway, my list...
Actually, I have to go. Something just came up. If I get a chance, I'll finish this post later this weekend. That's unlikely, however, because we have a pretty packed weekend. Instead, this will probably sit until next week -- the world's worst cliffhanger. And that's assuming I even feel like writing about this then. I might post about a totally different topic. That's the luxury of having a blog with a readership in the low double digits.
Until next time...
Wednesday was particularly bad. It was an hour-long temper tantrum before bed. That's the worst time too, because it prevents him from getting a full night's sleep, which is what he needs most. He was really tired yesterday morning. I wanted to let him sleep and take him to school late, but that doesn't work, because I have to take his brother to school on-time, and so he'd have to get up and go with me anyway. Also, he had a field trip that he would've missed. That's actually a good thing -- the field trip -- because it's about a 45-minute round-trip bus ride, and kids his age often doze off during bus rides. He was much easier to deal with last night, so I'm thinking he might have caught some Z's.
He's an odd kid, not in a bad way, but sometimes in an exacerbating way. He's super particular about the most random things. It's like he has a mild OCD-ish condition. I've never known a kid so fastidious. When he puts his jacket on, he gets really upset if the sleeves of his shirt roll up at all; his socks have to be perfectly lined up on his foot -- seams at his toes, tread on the bottom, pushed down on his ankles; his bed has to be made to his precise specifications before he'll sleep in it -- all blankets smoothed out perfectly across the four corners; and he's always grousing about his pants being too tight or his shoes being too hard or his milk being too hot or too cold or something else that's not exactly to his liking. Sometimes he gets really upset about it too. That's how most of his tantrums begin -- something trivial isn't perfect, and it snowballs from there. I do my best to nip it in the bud, but once the wheels come off, it's nearly impossible to get them back on. At some point, I just throw up my arms and let him cry about it, because I literally don't know what else to do. Sorry, kid, nothing in life is ever exactly the way you want it to be. Go ahead and cry if it makes you feel better, but it's not solving anything.
Which is actually a good segue into politics, because I'm hearing a lot of liberal complaints about the slate of Democratic candidates, and my feeling is: Don't pull that shit in this election. When people ask me if I'm for Biden or Sanders or Warren or somebody else, my answer is "yes." Every candidate has flaws, some of them big flaws -- Biden is a past-his-prime gaffe-prone white guy; Sanders is way to the left economically of the median Democratic voter; same with Warren; Booker doesn't excite people; Buttigieg is too inexperienced and privileged; Klobuchar is the female version of Booker; Steyer and Bloomberg are super rich dudes trying to buy their way in; etc., etc., down the long (but rapidly shortening) line. Fine. But, we gotta roll with what we got, and we need everybody on board, begrudgingly or otherwise, with whomever comes out on top. Because it's either them or Trump, period. Worst case scenario isn't John McCain or Mitt Romney -- that flank of the GOP is dead (in McCain's case, literally, RIP) -- it's a whole new, meaner, more vicious animal.
And, look, maybe everybody will get on board in the end. It could be people are just fired up now in the primary season, and once a candidate actually emerges, "anybody but Trump" will carry the day. I hope so, but I'm a little worried -- not full-fledged freaking out (what's the point?), but a bit on edge.
With all that said, I do have candidates I like more than others, of course. My previous list has totally disintegrated, being that my top candidate is not even in the race anymore. I'm not going to make a whole new list, but I'll give you the abridged version. It's based almost exclusively one criterion: most likely to carry the swing states needed to win the Electoral College. Admittedly, this is not a very good criterion, because it's almost totally unknowable. We have little idea what will motivate the electorate in the tiny slivers of swing areas to turn out on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November next year. All we can do is guess, and my best guess, based on the elections -- special, midterm, gubernatorial, etc. -- since 2016, is that we need somebody moderate in demeanor, who will push a slightly left-of-center agenda on economics (expanded Obamacare, infrastructure, stronger unions, higher minimum wage), immigration (expanded legal immigration, humane treatment of all immigrants, reasonable border security), guns (anti the insanity we live with now), climate (less fossil fuels, more renewables), and the military (strong defense, not too hawkish), while being pretty liberal on social issues like abortion, LGBTQ rights, and racial justice. Oh, and also somebody who is totally charismatic and will inspire tons of different types of people to vote for them -- basically another Barack Obama.
But, there is nobody like that among the Democratic candidates. So, again, we have to make due with what we got. As Dan Savage likes to say about love, and it works for politics too: There is no 1, but, there are a lot of .65s that we can round up. To that end, based on my criterion above, I give my top-five candidates below. First, however, I want to emphasize that this is not a list of the candidates whose policies I most like. That list would look totally different. One of biggest fallacies people make in politics is assuming the positions they hold are also the ones that would be the most politically advantageous to adopt (Mike Pesca once called it MSNBC-itis). I'm trying not to make that mistake. The counterargument, however, is that nobody knows what's politically advantageous, so you might as well do what you think is right, and work to make that the popular position. I understand that, and it could be correct. I even espouse that philosophy at times. So, I could be approaching this in the totally wrong way. We likely will never know, at least not until it's too late. That's the problem with predicting the future.
Anyway, my list...
Actually, I have to go. Something just came up. If I get a chance, I'll finish this post later this weekend. That's unlikely, however, because we have a pretty packed weekend. Instead, this will probably sit until next week -- the world's worst cliffhanger. And that's assuming I even feel like writing about this then. I might post about a totally different topic. That's the luxury of having a blog with a readership in the low double digits.
Until next time...
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