The dust may be starting to settle. Potential candidates are dropping like flies, and only the two old white guys remain. The ladies-gone. The minorities-gone. The LGBTQ-gone. Any mixture of the above-gone.

So I have to consider my options. Do I like the shouting grampa or the bumbling grampa? If both are still sticking around (and I assume they will be) when the Illinois Democratic primary rolls around, which way will I lean?

Sorry, Bernie–you won’t be getting my vote.  It’s not only that I don’t like your politics, and that I think you would be a disaster in the November election; for yourself, for the party, and for the country. And it isn’t only that I am a moderate-centrist who believes that incremental actions can lead to real change. Besides all that, I’ll vote for Biden because Joe, I  feel your pain!

No, not the pain you have felt from the terrible tragedies of losing Neilia, Naomi, and Beau (though I have lost a sister, and have at least a glimmer of an understanding.) What you and I share is the marked tendency to put our foot, or sometimes both feet, into our respective mouths and just say the darndest thing.

Your sentences are often meandering, your nonsequiturs can be conversation stopping, and your mix-ups downright confounding. But I know just how you feel. So many times I open my mouth, and the words that tumble out just don’t match the ideas circling in my brain. I’m not sure if it is because I am speaking too quickly, or because I am thinking thought #12 while still enunciating thought #10. Maybe I lose my concentration just as I am about to make a grandiose statement.

But sometimes even I am amazed by the things I say. You know how Joe B. mixed up his wife with his sister while introducing them at his victory rally in California on Super Tuesday? Well, when I tell a story I may confuse my daughter with my daughter-in-law, my grandkids with my nephews, or my neighbors with their pets (is Boomer the woman across the street or is it her dog or are neither named Boomer?) Yes, I can even confuse myself.

I have seen the look of horror on Barb’s face as she steps in to correct some of my verbal gaffes. I have seen the puzzled look on my kid’s faces as they try to decipher a story I am telling about “your mother’s cousin’s grandson’s second cousin.” Sleepy Joe could not have confused it better.

I don’t share a stuttering issue with Joe, but I have been known to mumble a bit. The result is the same, a failure to communicate. It can certainly be “flustrating.”

So Joe, you weren’t my first choice for the Democratic nomination, but now I am publicly throwing my support your way–to you, to moderation, and to success.  Neither of us may be able to say it, but as long as I can type it, it should come out clearly!

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