First Wave

As far as I can tell--and it involves math, so this involves the intervention of a web-based counting application to do the figurin' for me--there are 297 days still until the 2016 California presidential primary election. That's the better part of* a full year until I have to make any kind of decision on which candidate I want to tell people I was totally behind all along.

Even though California is an open-primary state, meaning I can vote for whomever I want even though I'm a registered Republican Not Even In Name, I took the irresponsible way out and skipped both of the Fox News pre-debate debates for two reasons: 1) No Herman Cain and 2) The presence of Donald Trump. It's not that I object to his candidacy any more than any of the others, it's just that I was worried I was being suckered into watching professional wrestling, which I have vowed not to do since the Iron Sheik retired. Streak still intact!

Say what you want about the field of Republican candidates** and their contest to screech over one another in an effort to prove that they're all the exact same person,*** on the Democratic side we've had to watch the slow, shambolic rattle of the the formerly inevitable Hillary Rodham Clinton campaign as her team of experts deploy a remarkably effective strategy of attempting to make her seem less and less of a human capable of forming a precise opinion about anything of substance while simultaneously working their virtuoso-level parallel track of turning the boringest parts of everyday logistics into a garbage mountain with the old-food whiff of scandal. Frankly at this point if it doesn't all end with her getting a blowjob from an intern, it will be a miracle.

Of course this has been great news for the non-Democrat socialist old white man in the race, Bernie Sanders, whose strategy so far has been to cede time at his own events to people who are mad about stuff, mostly stuff he has no great personal experience or real credibility to speak about seeing as he's from old, white Vermont. Things like immigration and race relations.

Bernie's greatest strength, in my opinion anyway, so far is that he's not actually Hillary Clinton, a Democratic Leadership Council moderate with a hawkish streak when a lot of more up-to-date progressive thinking has been formed in reaction to and in the wake of the GW Bush Iraq debacle and Afghanistan quagmire. He benefits from the comparison (his anti-war bona fides on Iraq at least are impeccable) while his biggest hinderances are that a) he calls himself a socialist, the nuance of which is going to be lost entirely on NASCAR types and b) he is not named Elizabeth Warren, everyone's secret politics girlfriend. He's a stand-in for the preferred pantsuit, but ultimately likely and knowingly unelectable, evidenced by the movements to draft Joe Biden or even Al Gore. Yes Al Gore, a candidate so terrible he managed to get edged out (admittedly with a bit of help) as the incumbent party candidate during a roaring economy and a period of almost unprecedented sustained peace.

So at this point, a year-ish away from any real voting, we all squirm a bit and bitch about the Hillary-ness of it all and lament not who she is but who she isn't, but even this time next year, one thing Hillary is not or will not be? A Republican. Everything will change by convention time, of course. Then the nominees will be set and we'll sulk off to our corners with our respective Red Team and Blue Team and we'll worry way less about whether or not this person is the best candidate for the job and more that the election of the other guy is the last dash of a bland ingredient needed to complete the world annihilation nuclear goulash none of us ordered. This is American politics less post-9/11 and more post-Bush v. Gore. We have one goal: to save our country from the inevitable destruction wished upon it by traitors from within, like the people who live in the houses on either side of you and 90% of the people who don't re-post the memes you vomit all over Facebook.

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*This is what you get from people with humanities degrees when they confront fractions, dodges like "the better part of" or "most of the way to" or the more reliably fleixble "-ish."

**Expertly groomed? Largely upright?

***Sean Hannity