I Cried When Warren left, but Now It’s Biden. Here’s Why.

Joe Biden - Flickr public domain

On Friday, March 6, the morning after Elizabeth Warren invited Rachel Maddow into her home for a live interview to discuss her withdrawal from the presidential race, her thoughts about the plans she put forward, and her hopes for the future, I watched two brilliant women talk for an hour without notes, without scripts, without guile — just putting it all out there — and I felt sorrow. Abject sorrow. And I knew I wasn't alone.

But when the hour was over, after they helped me send sorrow packing and replaced it with hope and pride, I knew where I would transfer my allegiance. It would go to the candidate with the greatest chance of building alliances and winning.

I know he may not be Elizabeth’s choice or Rachel’s choice, but Joe Biden is now my choice. It’s no secret I wanted a woman president. I stopped even considering a man when I saw there were women who could not only do the job, but far surpass many of the male candidates. Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren — it’s tough to watch them fail when they’re so damned qualified — but something happened, I honestly don’t know what,  and they didn’t make it to the end.

I built what I’ve written here as a Twitter thread, but I thought I could use this format to make it more accessible. I hope I can convince more voters that there are valid reasons to vote for Joe Biden. These are just some of them:

Watching Warren on @Maddow last night with anger, sadness, and pride. She didn’t make this run but she has a plan. She’s not done, and neither are we. I’m going with Biden now and I’m at peace with that, not because I think he isn’t flawed — he is. But here’s the thing:

Joe will disappoint me, he’ll infuriate me, he’ll embarrass me, but he won’t do anything to deliberately hurt me. People who know him intimately — including his colleagues in DC — talk about his big heart. He gives his cell phone # to people who tell him their painful stories.

He has the support of people like Jim Clyburn, a man with more integrity in his little finger than all of the Trumps put together. Joe understands the necessity of a Big Tent and when he says we’re all welcome, he means it. The people around him mean it. And I need that.

He’ll build a cabinet of people who respect their positions and understand the work ahead. The pros will start in on Day one, the only drama being the enormity of their tasks. I won’t have to wonder if they know what they’re doing. I won’t have to question their motives.

Every Democrat already working in the halls of Congress, in the halls of justice, will get behind Joe, steering him, encouraging him, and he will listen. He will brainstorm. He will understand that the country comes first. He will work hard for us — and he will make mistakes.

Joe Biden has made plenty of mistakes, almost all of them mistakes we’ve hashed over for years. Anita Hill, plagiarism, the Iraq War vote — so many others soon to be fodder for both the left and the right in the coming months ahead. I make no excuses for Joe’s past blunders.

But I’ll support him now, without equivocation, because, of the three old men that are my only choices, (not that Trump is even remotely my choice) he is by far the best to lead us out of this mess. It’s not because he’ll work miracles. He won’t. He’ll be far from perfect.

But he’ll bring with him the best of the best. The proven workers from inside and out. The established pros who are already working tirelessly to take down the Republicans threatening whole segments of our citizenry day after day after day. Social programs will be safe.

He’ll have a powerhouse behind him, already in place, already keenly aware, and deeply embedded in the process of removing the very real threats coming from the White House, from Congress, and from the courts. They know the secrets. All they need now is the unobstructed power.

The transition, if Joe Biden is nominated, will be smooth and seamless. They know Joe and Joe knows them. They are the ‘establishment’, and that’s to our advantage. They’ve seen up close and personal the damage the Trump regime has caused. They’re positioned. They’re ready.

But, until we’re in that place where we’re the decision-makers, we’re mere voices in the wind. We’re hurting but we’re not shattered. We have the means to build again, together. The enemy isn’t us, it’s them.

                                                                            ***

(Cross-posted at Medium)

A Government Of the Women, By the Women, For the People

Photo by Vonecia Carswell on Unsplash

I want women in the highest offices in the land. It’s long past time.

Note: When I started this essay, Kamala Harris was still one of the three candidates figuring into my story about wanting a woman in the White House. Now I have to revise this, because yesterday afternoon word came that she was dropping out. The money just wasn’t there. She might have had the support but without the money she couldn’t go on. (Meanwhile, two male billionaires will be able to stay in as long as they want, never mind that neither of them has a chance in hell of winning the nomination.To say our election process is kerflooey is an understatement.)

So instead of the three women I thought I could highlight, I’m now down to two. But I’ll go on:

Until now I’ve been on the fence about Democratic presidential candidates, but a couple of nights ago, in the wee hours, it came to me that what I really want is for a woman to win. I’m down now to either Elizabeth Warren or Amy Klobuchar.

I want a woman in the White House, I want female majorities in the House, in the Senate, and, if we could ever pull it off, in the Supreme Court. I want those women to be Democrats, but I’d give Independents a hard look. I can’t think of a single female Republican I would trust with those jobs, and if that sounds harsh, too bad. They’ve brought it on themselves.

But back to my two:

Photo: Kathleen Gilligan — Detroit Free Press

Both women are smart, qualified, and are working on plans as we speak. Neither of them are novices. They’re seasoned politicos who know the system. They might look for compromise, even when compromise is seen as weak and namby-pamby (and kind of girly), but they’re both strong enough (and seasoned enough) to see past the BS and get what they want.

They’d both work well with Nancy Pelosi.

They’re tough cookies you never have to be afraid of — unless you’re on the other side. Their own unique assets are their weapons, but they never have to hit below the belt. They’re not hiding anything. They don’t think they’re God’s gift to humankind.

They’re not men.

Senator Elizabeth Warren is from academia and is smart about a whole lot of things, but her strongest asset is that Wall Street sees her as their most formidable enemy. They’ll do everything they can to make sure she doesn’t win because they know she’ll be working even harder to take away their power. They’ve had run-ins with her before. A sorry spectacle.

She exudes a kind of scholarly wisdom, but in a way that’s sort of down-home friendly. She doesn’t brag, she doesn’t talk down, she gets up close and personal. She’s savvy enough to to know how to get under Trump’s skin, and she’ll always come out on top. When he resorts to silly name-calling, she’ll resort to plain facts. And she won’t let up. She won’t back down.

Amy Klobuchar is a rock-solid Midwesterner with a blue-collar background. She’s a former prosecutor and a senator who announced her campaign entry while standing outside in a raging blizzard. She’s no white-bread sissy, so you can get that out of your head. I wrote about Amy a while back — musing about my own need for her kind of strength and comfort — and she’s still growing on me. I could see her dealing with our adversaries, both at home and abroad, and coming out smiling. Nothing seems to trigger her. She’s unflappable.

And now a word about Kamala Harris. I’m sorry she had to drop out. I know her campaign had problems, and maybe she didn’t strike that chord — whatever that chord is — but there’s no doubt she could have done the job. If she had won the primary I would have worked hard for her. She would have brought a refreshing take-no-prisoners toughness to the White House while caring deeply for children and the underclass. But she’s still a senator and a damned good one. Her time will come. I have no doubt.

I want a woman to be president in 2020. My choices now are either Elizabeth Warren or Amy Klobuchar. I don’t care about their histories, their ancestry, their flaws, or their “likability”. I care about their hearts, their minds, their vision, and their ability to do the job.

I know for a fact that each of them would choose cabinets reflecting the needs of a country battered and exhausted by an authoritarian regime bent on creating America’s first dictator. When Donald Trump is gone, when the Republican cowards who enabled him are gone, I want a leader who can start the healing process and bring us back to that place where we don’t have to hide in shame. I want a leader who is a government insider who understands the constitution and the rule of law. I want a leader who sees no problem with nurturing the sick, the poor, and the miserable. I want the next president to be a woman.

We formed the presidency in 1787. That’s 232 years without a single woman as president. It’s time. It’s long past time. And if it doesn’t happen in 2020, it’ll be because of a concerted effort to makes sure it’s always men in charge. It won’t be because the female candidate wasn’t worthy. That’s not going to wash this time.

(My apologies to Julián Castro. If it wasn’t for my very real need for a woman in the White House this time, you would be right up there on the list. I really am sorry. You’re one of the good guys and it’s a shame, but even you have to admit a country having been established for more than two centuries without once electing a female president is really pretty ridiculous.)

(Update: Michigan's primary is on March 10. I've cast my absentee ballot for Elizabeth Warren.)

A Most Sublime Presidency: What If Amy Klobuchar Should Win?

I’ll start this off by saying though I’m leaning toward someone who isn’t Amy Klobuchar, I’m not endorsing anyone for the 2020 presidential election yet. It’s way too early for me. But I’ve been watching Sen. Klobuchar and what I’m seeing is a compassionate, pragmatic Midwesterner wearing her decency on her sleeve. 

She’s quiet-spoken and without guile. She’s uncomfortable bragging about her own accomplishments but doesn’t hesitate to share her resumé when it’s necessary to remind people of her bona fides. She lurks and waits and then pounces with surprisingly tough precision whenever she sees an opening. She’s a force. Not a tornado, but a steady wind driving us toward safety.

I like her. I really, really like her. I like many of the other candidates, too, but Klobuchar eases my heart. I relax when she speaks. I calm down. I hear what she’s saying and I can picture her in the Oval Office, sitting at the Resolute desk, speaking the plain truth with ease and clarity.

She’s funny the way Barack Obama is funny. Her sense of humor doesn’t lean toward snark. If she uses it to skewer she wraps it in velvet first. I could be comfortable with Amy in the White House, and right now comfort is not a word that readily comes up in politics.

I know, even as I write this, that there will be pushback to what I’m saying here. Someone will dig up a quote or an action that will attempt to prove me wrong. So here — I’ll save them the trouble on this one point: I didn’t like what she did to Al Franken. He was her Senate colleague in Minnesota and she knew him as well as anybody, but, when the time came, she joined the others and urged him to “do the right thing” and resign.

Her rush to tell him to resign was infuriating, considering they were supposed friends, and considering his entire female staff came to his defense. I didn’t think I would ever forgive her for that. But I have. She made me forgive her. She has that ability.

So, yes, I could see Amy Klobuchar as the antidote to Donald Trump. She is everything he is not. But how would she be with foreign policy? With the Republicans who won’t be happy when Donald loses? With the aggrieved Trumpsters who will see her as a weak woman they can easily topple? With the fake churchies who thought they were on their way to a theocracy, if not the rapture?

She’d be just fine. She would surround herself with experts and with people who care about this country’s mental and physical health as much as we all do. She would recruit the best of the best and she would listen. She wouldn’t embarrass us in her trips abroad and she would NEVER shove another world leader out of the way in order to get up front. (Not that any of the others would, either. They wouldn’t.)

But don’t let her Minnesota Nice fool you. She was a prosecutor once. She grew up blue collar tough.Her staff says she can be fearsome. She’s been known to make some of them cry. (Okay, I’m not okay with that. Just so you know.) But there’s something about her that says, “Don’t worry. I’ve got this. We’re going to be okay.”

Look, I’m tired. We’re all tired. And this is just thinking out loud — maybe this is what we’re going to need after the madness. But who knows? By the time you read this she may have already dropped out. She’s not all that high on the Popular list. Here’s all I’m saying: With Klobuchar there would be no unnecessary drama. It wouldn’t get personal. Chaos would give in to calm. She’s steady. As a rock. She’s forthright. She would hold us together. When this Trump thing is finally over she would work at healing us. I might even sleep the whole night through. That would be nice.

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(Cross-posted at Medium/Indelible Ink.)