‘Can’t watch, I say.

Seems like Joe Biden has just barely entered the 2020 presidential race and already I can’t bear to watch him in action.   It’s too painful: like waiting for someone to finish a very old joke that they tell very badly.

I will, of course, support him if he is the ultimate nominee, as any sane person would; but the thought of having to watch his fossilized attempts to walk-back three decades of mis-step and mis-speak for the next year-and-a-half makes me instinctively reach for the remote.

The mere fact that he would be running against the most dishonest, most venal and most corrupt president in living memory will only slightly dampen my distaste at the spectacle of the Democrat’s least inspiring candidate feebly hoisting the banner for progressive reform.

If it has taught me nothing else, the continued popularity of Donald Trump has once and for all quashed any delusion I had of the fundamental common sense of the American people.  The fact that Joe Biden is ten points ahead of any other comers in the most recent polls just reinforces that point.

It’s as if we are being held at gunpoint by the pollsters who are telling us to disobey our nobler instincts and elevate the guy who would be least objectionable to the phalanx of assorted bigots, misogynists and toxic greed-o-philes who comprise Donald Trump’s miserable margin.

Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t think Joe Biden belongs in that stew of misanthropes.  It’s just that he is “old school;” and the checkered political past that dogs his primary path is seen as a feature, not a bug, by some of those who might otherwise fall for Donald Trump’s sour “sweet talk” once again.  And, if that is all it takes to defeat Donald Trump, I’m in.

But is it?  If his performance at last night’s debate is anything to judge by, Biden may no longer have the stuffin’ to withstand a pummeling by the Meanest Man on Earth.

In fact, over the past two days, it was the women more than anyone else who impressed.  Of course that is just my husband’s and my opinion, but I have a feeling that there is an unspoken fear that any female candidate will be “HIllaried” in a match-up with Trump.  

There is ample evidence from recent public apathy in the face of attack after attack on women’s civil rights and credible rape and assault allegations against Donald Trump and others within his sphere, that women’s status in America is actually declining after more than a century of upward trajectory. You can thank those hypocrites in the male-dominated “Christian” Right for that stone in our collective shoe.

But Kamala Harris is NOT Hillary Clinton.  Elizabeth Warren is NOT Hillary Clinton.  Kirstin Gillibrand is NOT Hillary Clinton.  Amy Klobuchar is NOT Hillary Clinton.  Tulsi Gabbard is NOT Hillary Clinton.  And  Marianne Williams is NOT…well, I don’t know exactly who she is, but she is certainly NOT Hillary Clinton.

In fact, none of them is anything like Hillary Clinton: not in personal history, nor in political experience.

And Democrats have plenty more compelling women candidates waiting in the wings.  To name just a few: there are Stacey Abrams, Jennifer Granholm and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez.

So it’s time for Democratic handicappers to grow a pair and stop thinking out-loud: “we tried a woman and we LOST!”  

I am so glad that 94-year-old Jimmy Carter is still around to say unequivocally what no one else seems to want to say: Donald Trump didn’t legitimately win the presidency.  Even if no effort has been made so far to quantify the impact of Russian interference on the election outcome, ample evidence exists suggesting it could have been considerable.  That, on top of the fact that Hillary Clinton received three-million more votes than did Donald Trump, pretty much puts a lie to the “We tried a woman and she lost.” argument.

I’m a big ol’ fan of Bernie Sanders and a number of the other men look like exciting prospects, too; but my money is on the women, whom the Democrats overlook at their…and our…own peril.