This election is not about nice

or liking a candidate. It is about working out really painful shit like institutional racism and figuring out the boundaries of our own endless consumerist appetites for oil, cheap food, and mindless entertainment.

There has been zero accountability for the economic crisis that was caused by the greed and irresponsibility of the financial sector, but the middle class is still paying and paying for their bullshit.

The consequences of global warming are becoming obvious (visit Houston, but don't forget your boat!).

Domestically, there is armed insurrection on the fringe-right and they used tanks and tear gas to put down the unrest in Ferguson.

Internationally, we are seeing a refugee crisis of Biblical proportions and the Middle East could devolve into the third world war without even trying hard. It could easily be dominos, one weird thing happens and BOOM, we will be all the way into a MAJOR military event, just like WW1.

We had hope and change last time, Dreams of my Father and the most talented, charismatic and intelligent politician of our lifetimes running or office. I really thought he could bring the entire country together, and we could be the UNITED States of America again, and we could skip a bunch of the nasty we are looking at right now. But it became obvious that the GOP would not cooperate, that they would run the country into the ground rather than compromise about anything. Their greed is just STAGGERING. And it brought the inherent racism out of the shadows and now we have to look at it and deal with it and that hurts, too.

So this is an ugly race. This is a race about dealing with our own national character defects, greed and racism. There will be no "good" candidates this time, because we do not need or deserve "good" right now. My personal opinion, what we on the left DO need is a soldier who knows how to fight in the trenches. We need to win the Supreme Court battle and deal with the gerrymandering problem. Nothing gets better until we deal with those two things. But we are right smack dab in the middle of a war already and it is not going to be pretty unless we can score a few more decisive victories.