I am going to have a really hard time here.

[PatrickforO]

47. Well the truth is, based on the comments on this thread, that

every candidate has some minor flaws.

I noticed you asked for links from the person who thought Kamala should go fly a kite.

I'm sure you know these, and forgive me if I'm telling you what you already know, but:

https://votesmart.org/ is a really good site for looking at what candidates have actually done. It also has links to their websites, bios, speeches, and ratings from various groups on issues. It also has a 'political courage' rating under 'positions.'

https://www.opensecrets.org/ is where to find how much money their campaigns have received and from whom. I like it because it gives the percent of funds coming from small donors. I always look at that.

I usually also look at each candidates' website, obviously, and research articles that have been written about them. Now, I like to see negative articles from the right because that shows our person has gravitas - judge a person by the quality of her enemies, as it were. And by where they stand on the Green New Deal (my grandkids need that now), healthcare and social security. Those are my issues.

Now, about Kamala - I don't think she should go fly a kite, but to my mind (as an economist) she's a bit weak on fiscal and monetary policy. Nothing else about her scares me.

I've said this before, but Booker's opponents will try and tar him with Wall Street affiliations.

Klobuchar is a good candidate - I haven't looked deeply into her positions as yet.

Gillibrand will not enjoy my support in the primary but I will obviously support her fervently if she is our nominee. Hope not, though, for Franken's sake.

I don't know much about Castro except that he has very little executive experience.

I love Warren because I'm a fiscal and monetary policy wonk, and she totally gets it. I'd rather she stay in the Senate though, because ultimately I think she will get more done there - to my mind she's taken over as the Lion of the Senate from Teddy (or Lioness, we should say). The Wall Street lizards, corporate shareholder primacy people, MIC and billionaire parasites all absolutely hate her, so that's very encouraging.

Bloomberg...no. I agree with AOC on that. A society that allows billionaires is immoral.

I like Sherrod Brown. Very solid progressive. He'd be great.

Biden...no. The 2005 bankruptcy law he supported betrayed our children and grandchildren and is helping to make them debt slaves. In my state alone, 733,700 people owe an average of $35,000 in student loan debt and are remitting an aggregate of $2.7 billion a year that is leaving our state, not being used to purchase local goods and services, and even worse, about 85,000 people are in default - they can't buy or sell cars or homes, their wages are garnished forever, the loan principal keeps growing and their credit is ruined. They don't get tax refunds, and their schools won't release transcripts. And, due to this law, THEY CAN NEVER GET RELIEF FROM THESE DEBTS THROUGH BANKRUPTCY. Biden did this to our children and grandchildren and I will actively oppose him tooth and nail. Plus, he was a good ol' boy in the Anita Hill hearings. My wife dislikes him for that, though I'm not happy with it either. He was a good VP for Obama, but...no.

Tulsi Gabbard - many people around her really seem to dislike her, it seems for her foreign policy leanings, and for her unfortunate anti-LGBTQ stances through about 2010, when she 'evolved' on gay rights as did so many others. Pardon my cynicism.

Beto? He kind of went like John Lennon for awhile, but he's getting his mojo back with that Trump demonstration down in El Paso. Like Obama, Beto is new and untried. I sure like the way he talks thought.

Bernie? Well, I was a huge Bernie supporter in the bitter 2016 primaries. I'd rather he not run this time because others have picked up his torch, and he unfortunately (and somewhat unjustly to my mind) has been tarred with racism, or at least a cavalier attitude toward social justice as opposed to economic justice.

In the meantime we should all be ready - the right wing will be working really, really hard 24/7/365 to ridicule, discredit and divide us around candidates, and in my 60 years I've seen us be stupid and fall for that far more often than I've seen us stick it out and stick together.

As Obama said - we cannot allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good.