Women could carry this election and look good doing it.
(Please, please, Elizabeth, don’t drop out of the race five minutes after this goes to press. Or ever.)
Yes, we need, and have a right to, excellent and affordable healthcare. Yes, our environment needs a deep cleaning. Yes, consumers don’t want to be slowly poisoned. Yes, minimum wage should allow anyone to have one job that pays enough to hide some behind the dog food sack every payday.
How do we get that?
Election year politics is like a tire with a screw, or a rock in your shoe. Annoying but not dangerous unless you don’t take care of it. We need that rock to remind us that we have a problem that needs fixing.
How do we let the world know that this country that always refers to itself as #1 only makes the other 194 countries either want to beat us up or ignore us? How do we change that energy?
Two days after the South Carolina primary, Joe Biden announced to a rally, “Decency. Respect. That’s what we need more of. And the soul of America. I will fight for it and I will heal it. No more Trump! God bless you.”
Well lah-de-dah, we didn’t sneeze. Wouldn’t it be easier to heal without fighting first? Joe, people obviously have the power since it was people who got Trump into office despite his dismal record as a businessman, negotiator, lover and scholar.
The point isn’t to beat Trump, the point is to have a president who will talk honestly, warmly and directly to people. Not just all Americans, all people. Someone who doesn’t consider trade and tariffs to be marbles and baseball cards. Someone confident enough to tell CEOs that shaving the tops off mountains to extract coal and leaving all the sludge behind is plain bad manners and is going to cost them a job, a retirement plan, and all the money behind the dog food sack.
The point of this election is to find a candidate who understands world markets, world history, world climate and a world atlas.
Last weekend I was random enough with the remote to catch a women’s bronco-riding rodeo event. I wondered how do they do this and why? Is this animal cruelty? Are these young women in their Resistol or Sheplers cowboy-girl hats out of their ever-lovin’ minds?
Then one was interviewed. Her teeth made me think of Tom Sawyer’s whitewashed fence – sparkling, perfectly spaced and beautiful.
“I’m in this because it’s good practice for when I’m on the range herding cattle. Out there your horse can get spooked and start bucking. If you let him tug the reins out of your hands, you’ll fall off. Out on the range. Out of range.” And she smiled.
So to her, riding broncs for rodeo money was on the job training.
And that’s where we voters are. It is being determined for us by those broncos that bucked us off our beliefs this week to go ahead and vote for the candidate they’re endorsing. Because they think they’re backing a winner? Have these people never watched a rodeo?
Elizabeth Warren is the smartest person on the political podium because she listens. She knows exactly what people in Iowa or New Hampshire or South Carolina said to her years ago. She understands their anxiety, their plight. She’s a woman, so she’s likely a practical thinker. She’s had a couple of marriages and a couple of children, so she qualifies as an average American.
Elizabeth wears her smile well. She’s from Oklahoma City! How great is that, we’re neighbors! She’s ordinary except that she always did her schoolwork. She will not be simply an average president.
And stop calling her a school marm. What, you’ve got teacher issues?