It's getting nasty out there.
I'm not talking about the snow; I'm talking about the rhetoric beginning to be slung back and forth between the two Democrats in contention for the presidential nomination. It's disappointing. I admire both candidates and will support either in the election. But the spirit of collegiality they showed in the early debates is gone and both sides are slinging mud as hard as they can. Yes, neither is perfect. Yes, each one wants to win. But when I begin to see supporters of one say they won't vote for the other, if the other gets the nomination . . . well, I begin to imagine an America represented by the guy with the bad manners and funny hair and I feel sick and deeply, deeply embarrassed. Or by the guy whose father says he was anointed by God to take this country back . . . and I feel scared. Or by any of the other Republicans who represent to me the failed policies of the Right (carpet bombs, welfare queens, takers not makers, trickle down, just say no, God on our side, American exceptionalism, a gun in every pocket, drill, baby, drill . . .)
At this point I don't know who I'll vote for in the primaries. But I'll for sure be voting Democrat all the way in the general election and the mid-terms. I want to see an end to the disgraceful spectacle of a Congress that can vote 63 times to repeal affordable health care but can't find time to look at the President's budget, that cares more about corporate profits than climate change, that seems intent on blurring the separation between church and state, that would put the rights of a fertilized egg above those of the woman carrying it (but doesn't give a damn about hungry children or refugee children or children drinking toxic water) -- I could go on. But I won't. Except to mention the possibility, should a Republican prevail, of four Supreme Court Justices, cast in the rigid mold of Scalia, Alito, or Thomas. I feel faint. I'll just be hoping for a president that cares more about people than corporations and a Congress that will work with that president for the good of the country.