The Day After The CALifornia Primaries

A black man, a white woman, and a socialist Jew walk into the political process. Yet it's the other party that's the joke.

The last three major candidates for the Democratic party have been/are strikingly intelligent, articulate, educated, compassionate, accomplished, and deeply knowledgeable about national and foreign policy issues. They are from demographics long kept out of the White House. But all the social and political activism that came before cracked the stony walls and glass ceiling just enough. It is humbling to think of how many generations have worked to bring us here, and humbling, too, to realize how many others, including the front runner for the other party, seek to stuff us back down. Some will pay any amount to reinstall that ceiling, use the glue of racism and smarmy sales pitches to re-cement the stony walls, will simultaneously slap the front-runner's hand, "Oh, Donald, that comment was a little racist" and continue to back the bigot. The two-step dance that's going on in the GOP party is the stuff of satire and tyranny.

But any time you or I feel like nothing changes, any effort at progress is futile, look at where we are now. Look at Barack, Hillary, and Bernie.Their leadership and very presence on the primary and national elections stage is what we're talking about when we're talking about transformation, change, and progress. Did we think we could get this far without heated debate? Without a rise of emotion? Without some deeply-felt and hotly expressed dispute? Cool, calm, and collected might feel more civilized, but it's heat that brings about change. If this election cycle has lit us up, good. We need that fire to burn hot and strong, because there are many who will try to douse it, who hope to keep all the walls and ceilings intact in that house that they've felt perfectly comfortable in, and that many, many of us have viewed as a prison.
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A black man, a white woman, and a socialist Jew walk into the political progress? No, they - we - have been part of it the whole time. For years. For decades. For centuries. We've been studying and chipping away and talking and voting and raising our children. At some point we no longer needed someone to hand us the microphone. We took it ourselves.