Tonight's the Night

I fucking love politics, it's true. I know I'm not supposed to, but I just can't seem to help myself, I do. I'm supposed to hate it all, like everybody else does, all the money, the negativity, the endless spin one has to sort through before finding one true fact. I understand why people hate it, in an abstract kind of way. But myself, I just can't do it, however hard I try.

Out of all the different kinds of politics the U.S. has to offer, my very most favorite is the presidential version. Which is, of course, the one normal people hate the most. I adore it all, from the debates to the exit polling, and everything in between. At this very moment, I'm so impatiently awaiting tonight's first Democratic debate I can barely stand it. The suspense might actually kill me, hours before Anderson Cooper says a word. Probably not, but it's not impossible.

My hope for tonight's debate, if I'm completely honest, is for Hilary Rodham Clinton to squash Bernie Sanders like a bug. I've surprised even myself with my lack of interest in Senator Sanders. It's hard to be more liberal than I am, and he's supposed to be the liberal dream, but he's just not mine. I tried, for a minute or two, to let him win me over. But he wasn't making much of an effort to do the winning, so it never happened.

To be fair, Bernie would have been fighting an uphill battle for my support, given the utter impossibility of his winning the general election. Maybe it's just as well he didn't bother trying, but it irks me, nontheless. Because it's not just me he is ignoring, but liberal women in general. Surely he'd sway some of us, if he gave us just a moment of his time. I don't doubt his positions on the issues that matter most to me would largely line up with mine. When asked, he's said as much. But they don't seem all that important to him. He rarely brings them up himself.

The lack of interest in things like reproductive rights, women's access to health care, our rights to be free from the dangers of sexual assault and street harrassment reminds me of the Bernie Sanders his supporters prefer to pretend never existed. The one who didn't get a real job until his forties. The one who may have been less than perfectly consistent with his child support payments, and has been in no hurry to correct misstatements about his own history with truths voters might have found problematic. The one who, quite frankly, seems like kind of a dick.

It isn't only women the Senator's ignoring. Some African Americans have been similarly frustrated by his singleminded focus on issues of economic inequality, and relative lack of engagement with those of racial injustice. Protestors associated with Black Lives Matter went so far as to rush the stage, effectively shutting down his speech. Everyone understands that economic inequality is real, and important, no one's questioning that. But other kinds of inequality, based on race or gender, for instance, are real too.

If Bernie Sanders is a white man, talking to other men, what exactly is so progressive about that?