In the fall of 1992 I was a junior in college and it was in this season when I was, I suppose you could say wooing, but at least beginning to talk to my eventual wife. I do remember this election as a background to the romance but apart from a few people whom I at least tended to regard as a little fanatical the emotional intensity and absolute horror of the opposing side was not in evidence to anything like the same degree that it is now. As almost all of my family and most everyone else I knew were Democrats I associated that faction and its supporters with being generally good and the Republicans and their followers as otherwise, and as I was 22 years old and other than the one term of Jimmy Carter, who was regarded as something of an aberration from the great history of the Party in the 20th century, there had not been a Democratic President the entirety of my life, I imagined that if one were ever to be elected again that it would be a tremendous boon to the quality of life of the non-business-driven people like me whom the Republicans, in their avarice and indifference to the quality of public life, were not allowing to thrive as they should have been. But on the whole the level of antagonism was not that pronounced. A couple of members of the faculty at school held a debate on the question of allowing gays in the military--one of whom actually took the side opposing it!--and while there was one forerunner of today's progressives who made a show of storming out of the hall in disgust at this, my sense was that most of the audience regarded this as drama queen behavior and not helpful in promoting his favored position. Clinton won that year, of course, over the first George Bush, in what now we see was a very significant and transitional election, to an extent that I did not perceive at the time. When I think that my grandparents and their World War II generation era cohorts were still alive and not actually "that old" (my three living ancestors were 68, 69, and 71 that year), and how quickly after that they seemed to grow incapacitated and die, you realize what a demographic shift is coming in the decade ahead now as all of the Baby Boomers just entering their 70s begin departing the scene en masse. I don't know what I was doing on election night (probably drinking), but whatever it was I was not paying much attention to the results. I was with some of my friends and I remember we walked by or perhaps stopped briefly in a room where some people were gathered watching the coverage on television and the supporters of Clinton on the TV were solemnly holding hands and singing "The times they are a-changin'". When we moved on from this scene one of my friends quipped that if the times were changing, why are we still singing the same songs we sang thirty years ago? Of course the times did change very much, but nothing much like the way I imagine the people singing that night thought they were going to change.
I am going back to this memory in part because I am a total loss as to how to vote in this primary. I feel like I am only a Democrat at all anymore because I am obviously not a Republican, or don't feel that I would be able to become one at this point, but almost all of the people running on the Democratic side I don't really recognize as sharing a lot of my political values either. By process of elimination I can say I am definitely not going to go for Mayor Pete or Yang (too alienated from their worldview), no on Steyer (who is he? what exactly does he believe in that is of any interest to me? Sorry, I can't pretend I care enough about climate change for it to have any effect on my voting). I don't really want to vote for Bernie Sanders and heaven knows I am being warned on all sides, by intelligent and presumably well-informed quarters as well as hysterical ones, not to dare even thinking of doing so for myriad reasons, all of which lead to catastrophe. But I admit, he talks my language more than any of the other candidates do, and as I often do feel unsuccessful and excluded I am drawn to his expressions of anger towards the wealthy and powerful. At the same time I feel that I am supposed to try to resist this and be stronger but there is a real issue surrounding social acceptance, or more the lack of it, that is causing people on all sides to make these reckless, irresponsible votes. But I have to be stronger.
Warren is similar to Bernie Sanders, right, but more socially acceptable, perhaps because she has a more responsible and professional base? I was leaning towards her at the beginning. She has not been particularly inspiring on the campaign trail and the ranks of her supporters have turned out to be a crowd that is by and large almost as distasteful to me as the much-derided "Bernie Bros" (none of whom I have ever actually encountered in real life, however) are to a sizable segment of the Democratic electorate. She is still in play though. I can't see a way to vote for Biden in good conscience, and while I know where he comes from, both geographically and "culturally", more than any of the other candidates, he's never come off as either a great intellect or a great leader, and especially now. Bloomberg, never. Who is left? Klobuchar, I don't know anything about her. What has come out in the campaign to me (and I have not been following as closely as I could have) is that she is a centrist, she is smart, she'll know how to run the bureaucracy; I need something more specific. "Smart" means almost nothing in itself nowadays, especially where Democratic women are concerned, other than perhaps Gillenbrand, who was seen as flaky, they're all smart enough, there just isn't enough differentiation to make me feel that this person's particular smartness matters in some way that I can't get from any other smart person. I am tempted to vote for Klobuchar because a lot of sensible people seem to like her and it would be for me kind of an unorthodox, risky vote. But nothing she says or that I read about her makes any impression on me. I'd have no idea what I was voting for.
Oh Tulsi (Gabbard--she just goes by Tulsi on her signs though) is still on the ballot. All the respectable people seem to hate her, which makes her interesting, and I have watched some of the videos of her working out--she'd certainly be the fittest president we've ever had, given that Washington, Jackson, Eisenhower et al, were older men by the time they ascended to that office. But the media blackout of her has done its work, as I had forgotten about her until I just looked at the ballot, and obviously had not been considering voting for her.
So I guess for me it really is between Sanders and Warren, and maybe Klobuchar if I can find anything she has ever said or done or any position she has that has any appeal to me at all. But this is really not a great set of candidates to try to take down the most hated and dangerous President of all time (though I still think George Bush II may have been worse, and certainly I got more worked up over him than I do over Trump--I've kind of emotionally checked out at this point).
