We now begin what will feel like sixteen years, but is actually about a year and a half, of primary campaigning. We’ve already gotten a slew of announcements from presidential hopefuls. We’ve got your popular kids, like Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders. We’ve got your progressives, like Elizabeth Warren. We’ve got your “extreme moderates,” like John Hickenlooper—God, he hugs the middle SO HARD. We’ve got your “mayors whose names you can’t pronounce,” like Pete Buttigieg. We’ve got your “stranger things have happened,” like John Delaney.
They’ve each made generally unmemorable announcements: “I grew up in Oklahoma/California/New York.” “My parents had nothing/did well/yearned for a better life.” “I had a hardship/got over that hardship/have a bunch of experience from being a mayor/senator/dude no one’s heard of.” “I believe in the people of this country/that children are our future.” “God bless America.”
These are the Democratic primaries. We don’t need to deal with Trump quite yet. He’ll turn the general elections into an unrelenting circus nightmare soon enough. Until then, why not dispense with the predictable pleasantries and all the insincere stories that are meant to pull at our heartstrings. Why not have primaries we can be proud of?
Why not dispense with the predictable pleasantries and all the insincere stories that are meant to pull at our heartstrings. Why not have primaries we can be proud of?
What I really want to see in the primaries is a wo/man with a plan. I don’t want soaring rhetoric. I don’t really care about the cute stories you can tell about growing up skipping rocks on the Mississippi or playing basketball in Brooklyn. I don’t want to see you in khakis at a barbeque. I don’t want to see you having a heart-to-heart with a knitting club. I don’t want to see your twee Instagram stories. I don’t care if your “most important” job is being a parent. In fact, I don’t care if you have children at all.
All of these things are basically irrelevant. None of it shows me that you know how to restructure the tax code. What I care about most is your plan and how you’ll execute it.
I want bullet points in your speeches, clauses and subclauses, percentages and tables. I want to know that you have a solution for everything. I want to be swept off my feet with speeches that say stuff like, “I promise to fight for climate change with this forty-two-point bill. Point number one: . . .”
And for a rousing closer, I want you to read from your website.
Because so far, the primaries have been all about how Kamala Harris may or may not have listened to Tupac when she was smoking a blunt. Or how Elizabeth Warren “botched” the announcement of her DNA test. Maybe that would matter if Harris was being tested on her audiographic memory of hip-hop jams or Warren was vying for the position of Grand Poobah of genetic anthropologists, but they’re not. Do they understand military budgets and tactical troop deployment? DO THEY? At this rate, we’ll never know!
Now that it’s just us chickens . . . er donkeys . . . judging Democratic nominees, why not shoot for the moon in terms of what the primaries can be? Why not have a competition that is all about policy? Let’s hear about the candidates’ on-the-job skills.
The modern-day campaign trail is like interviewing someone for a software engineering job but spending the entire time on how to make a convincing curry.
It’s not all the candidates’ fault. The media doesn’t always cover what actually matters. And, of course, We the People need to do our part to insist that the candidates talk about what they would actually do on our behalf.
So this primary season, prove to me that you understand maritime law, import and export tariff structures, NAFTA. Say words like “amortization,” “carbon tax,” and “disaster recovery program.” It’s the primaries, we’re among friends. Please give me a stump speech I can geek out to.