…it’s perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. Bobby Kennedy in a speech to a large group of African-Americans on April 4th, 1968, breaking the news that Martin Luther King had been assassinated by a white man.

Michele and I saw the Kronos Quartet last Wednesday, April 4th. It was a tribute to Martin Luther King with arrangements by a variety of contemporary Chamber Music – for lack of a better descriptor – composers. It started with the Star-Spangled Banner, their version, inspired by Jimi Hendricks, but it was their version of Billie Holliday’s Strange Fruit that most moved me. It was a funeral dirge that was both intimate and universal. It seemed to be for our poor country as much as MLK, the sad music sort of reached out and encompassed all of us. Sitting in Bing Concert Hall, about 24 hours after the Debate, listening and feeling the sadness engulf me was…well, sad. I felt deeply sad and trying to write about the Debate, I still do.

By Debate, I mean the January Democratic Presidential Candidate Debate. The subtext of which is really a fight over our country’s soul, who we want to be as a country. I know what I want us to be and I think I know what most of my friends want but it seems to me that what we want is not universal. It was not universal even on that stage with the most liberal group of candidates we’ve seen in the last forty years. The debaters came in two flavors, just like most of us listeners, those that think that Trump is the problem and, with a little fine-tuning, everything will be fine, and those that believe that Trump is the result symptom of the problem. To be clear, I think Trump is the result of a political class, on both sides of the aisle, that has not walked its talk. I am aware that belief colors my view of the different candidates, I am also aware that the Democratic Establishment falls into the everything is basically fine group – although they frame it as “what we have is the best we can get” – and that conviction colors their view of the different candidates.

Joe Biden is probably the most extreme Trump is the problem candidate and his campaign has a sort of restoration of virtue vibe about it. To my ear, that sounds like “Let’s go back to business as usual” and although I don’t see Biden getting the nomination, he has a lot of money and, seemingly, a big part of the Democratic Party Establishment backing him. I say that because the questions at the debate had a distinctly pro-Biden, anti-Sanders cast as the screenshot at the top illustrates. The question was to Biden BTW and it stayed on the screen after Biden, smiling, agreed that Bernie did owe us an explanation. However, Trump is most surely running on the economy and, although Biden was instrumental in the economy Trump ran against, Biden seems to think he can beat him there. Ironically, Biden is taking the same tactic that Trump used when he ran against the Obama Economy, “Don’t believe the numbers. That’s Wall Street BS; how are you doing? Believe your own eyes”. I like that tactic but not Biden. He doesn’t speak about the oncoming Climate Disaster with much conviction and I hate his take on international relations, supposedly his big area of expertise. He is a big Kissinger fan, which says it all, Biden says, “Kissinger doesn’t have a rival for the depth of his knowledge & strategic thinking. He’s always been my reality check. I’ve sought his counsel and he’s a friend.” Lastly, he is really too old, really really and his age is showing; watching Biden stumble around mid-sentence on some semi-memorized bit, it’s hard not to laugh, he gets so befuddled.

Pete Buttigieg is almost the polar opposite and he is running on change. But, like Obama who also ran on change, Buttigieg is the change rather than new policies being the change. He is the best looking and most charming candidate on the stage and, I suspect, he is the most intelligent also, but he did nothing to enlist me, partially because Climate Change seems to be so low on his agenda. On his website, Rising to the Climate Challenge is eighteenth on his list of Latest Plans, below the fold, and behind Indian Country: Achieving Autonomy for Tribal Nations & Enhancing Opportunities for Native People to Thrive. Clicking through to Rising to the Climate Challenge brings us to a series of moderate proposals that don’t mention fossil fuels.

Amy Klobuchar, on the other hand, has Climate Change as her third issue on her website, behind Healthcare For All and Shared Prosperity and Economic Justice. Klobuchar’s basic pitch is “I’m from the sensible Midwest.” It’s not my shtick but I would much rather have her than either Biden or Buttigieg. And, apparently, so does the NYT. I think it is becoming obvious to people who like the status quo, the rich, the powerful, the influential, that Biden is not going to be able to carry the flag and Klobuchar is a conservative down-to-earth midwesterner with enough of a populist streak to maybe satisfy the proles.

Of everyone on the debate stage, Bernie Sanders’s answers most match mine. He’s too old and yells too much – like he doesn’t quite trust that the mike is hot which I’m beginning to think might be a sensible attitude – and I can come up with a dozen more reasons not to vote for him but his what he wants for the country match my hopes almost perfectly. I liked Governor Inslee and gave him money because I loved that his priority was the Climate Crisis and I thought he had a chance to get nominated because he’s white and male and not too radical; then he dropped out, after going nowhere. I liked Yang – still like him, partially because of his age and his out of the box thinking but he didn’t qualify for this debate and, I suspect, that will hurt, if not end, his slim chances at getting the nomination. I don’t think Bernie will get the nomination either, the Democratic Establishment is almost entirely against him and they are doing everything they can to ensure the Democratic ticket remains Sanders-free. I say remains because what is happening seems to be following the patterns set in 2016. However, I’m coming to the conclusion that I should follow my own advice and vote and contribute to Bernie Sanders, whom I agree with, rather than somebody who I think, obviously wrongly, has a good chance at the nomination.

Speaking of chances, I’m not even sure how Tom Steyer met the requirements to get on stage, but he did. Steyer says Climate is his biggest issue and I’m starting to believe him and so does CNN, he was shut down when he tried to weave Climate Change into an answer. We were told “We’ll get to that later” and they did, for less time than they spent trying to gin up controversy over Bernie supposedly saying a woman can’t win the presidency. I’m starting to warm to Steyer which, given my track record, might mean he is going to drop out.

I’ve been an Elizabeth Warren fan and I especially like her core issue, corruption in government – huh? I like the issue, not the corruption – but her revelation attack on Bernie has soured me. I don’t understand it and trying to understand the unanswered quote that Time featured this week, I thought a woman could win. He disagreed, just makes me mad. According to both Warren and Sanders, Bernie deferred his running for president to Warren’s possible running in 2016. I find that hard to believe that three years after deferring to Warren, he told her that a woman couldn’t win. The meeting, reportedly to form a nonaggression pact, took place in December 2018, and, now, thirteen months later, Warren’s interpretation that Bernie said a woman couldn’t win has become the official storyline. On the debate stage, Bernie wasn’t asked what he said, he was accused: “Senator Warren confirmed in a statement that in 2018, you told her that you did not believe that a woman could win the election. Why did you say that?” Why? not did you? According to CNN, the description of that meeting is based on the accounts of four people which seems to give the Warren interpretation authority, but that makes it sound like four people were there and they all agree independently but the four people part just isn’t true. Again, according to CNN, two people Warren spoke with directly soon after the encounter, and two people familiar with the meeting. That’s actually one person, Elizabeth Warren. Maybe the whole thing is just a misunderstanding but I find that, also, hard to believe.

For the first time this election cycle, listening to the candidates debate has left me more discouraged rather than encouraged.