Great Question

An old girlfriend wrote me this email the other day about our presidential candidates:

I’d love to know who you think would be a great candidate for this great country. Frankly, I have no idea ! 

Boy, that is a tough one. Not because I do not know who I will vote for but because I have a hard time telling anybody else how they should think. Here was my short response:

Thanks Abby. I can't tell you how to vote but I will say that even though most people and politicians lie, Trump takes it to a new level! I could never vote for him. He said he never said "lock her up", turns out he said it repeatedly.

I hate liars.

She responded:

So do I, but as you said, they all are! It’s a surreal nightmare! 

Now Abby was never particularly religious when we were an item long ago but I believe that she is now and I think has definitely drifted right politically. And I have no idea how she will vote and frankly, it is none of my business. She equivocates a bit at the end which tells me that she will probably vote for Trump. But who knows? Vote for whoever you want to. Not my concern or job to make anyone's decision but my own.

I do judge politicians by the company they keep and the "team" they associate with. I used to wonder how anybody could align with these sorts of malevolent folks?

Truly pernicious individuals, antithetical to my policy preferences and moral code.

But are they any worse than people like this?

Now that is a tough call! I loathe these progressives. I can't even join the local Democratic club because they were openly hostile and anti semitic to me forty years ago and I am pretty sure that it is not now any better. I didn't leave the party, the party left me. I guess I am a liberal conservative, or maybe even a conservative liberal at this point, if we are granted any license for nuance or to deviate in these highly partisan times.

But I think that the distance between Joe Biden and the batshit progressive wing of the Democratic Party is much farther than the distance between Donald Trump and his band of crazies, in fact I am not sure there is any distance between them whatsoever.

So I don't even struggle with my decision for the top of the ticket. But that is based on my values, my experience, the news silos I tend to associate with, and the way I process critical information.

You may come up with a completely different answer and that is the beauty of democracy. My thought is that you should take every piece of information that enters your orbit and ask yourself if it is valuable, shaded and who may be trying to influence or manipulate you with it? Because the pressure from the media machines, on either side of the equation, who no longer even try to hide their bias, is constant and pervasive.

Think of the things that are important to you and focus on policies, not personalities or parties.

For me it is the environment, civil rights, choice, the economy and the rule of law. Your litmus test may be entirely different.

Choose wisely.