Mahanth S. Joishy is the Editor

Like some of you, I am disappointed that there are no women left in the 2020 campaign for President. In a heretofore diverse field that once boasted a strong coterie of women, blacks, an (openly) gay candidate, a white Hindu, a half-Indian, and a Chinese-American, it now just comes down to 3 odd-looking and verbal diarrhea spewing white male septuagenarians: #PervertOrangutan, Joe Biden and Bernie.

Women are largely to blame, which is all the more upsetting. We’ll get to that shortly.

I am willing to expose to you my personal arc in this presidential race in order to establish my deep baseline thoughts about all of this.

As a member of the Mayor Michael Bloomberg administration for 12 great years for both New York City and my local government career, I consider him to be someone who would be an extraordinary president. I also knew on the other hand, he could have no potential path whatsoever to the White House. As I told friends less familiar with his background, Bloomberg is the dictionary-definition of uncharismatic. Stop & Frisk was a disgrace and he had no answer for his policy. Between you and I, I didn’t donate the campaign a dime. 😉 However, if he uses his substantial treasure to help sink the #GrabbingOurPussies party come fall he shall have done us all a huge favor, and I admire him for it. Speaking of treasure- Treasury Secretary might be a good place for Mike to land.

Andrew Yang was from beginning to end my heart in this race. Yang is the only presidential candidate I’ve ever seen in this lifetime who treated his audiences and supporters like adults, discarding the partisan tropes abused by both sides to instead tell voters the harsh truth with liberal use of data and facts, speaking intelligently about them. I love how he forced the Freedom Dividend onto the agenda singlehandedly. I donated to and was loosely part of the Yang Gang. However, I always knew he’d never get more than 5-10% of voters in a nation that is extremely racist and mistrustful of Asian Americans like Yang. I see him as the Commerce Secretary in 2021 (you read it here first).

At first I kicked the tires of the Kamala Harris campaign and wrote about it on these pages. I was on board the Kamala train for a bit, though not very enthusiastically. As her campaign rolled on it became apparent her management team was painfully incompetent.

I love Hawaii. I deeply appreciate every American combat war veteran. I love the ocean, and surfing. I am a Hindu. I visited a beautiful Hindu temple in Kauai, which Tulsi has attended. One would think that Tulsi Gabbard would resonate with me for these reasons. I truly wanted to like her campaign. However, I loathe this wolf in sheep’s clothing and her campaign. Drop out already, you Republican plant!

Joe Biden has become incapable of stringing a grammatically correct sentence together, which has shaken my confidence in him since his glory days as Obama’s sidekick. Bernie Sanders says things I agree with, but has no chance of getting any of it done. He couldn’t get free health care or college done in tiny, liberal, homogeneous Vermont, so we are supposed to believe he’ll turn all of America into Denmark?

I kicked a lot of tires on a lot of candidates, and spent a lot of time doing it. I’m a political junky to the core, but for most of 2019 one struggling to find a camp to join while the various tribes slaughtered each other gratuitously. So in early Fall 2019, I finally threw my weight behind Elizabeth Warren. She had it all, in my estimation. Highly intelligent, accomplished, relatable. A former special education teacher- which would help her deal with the #PervertOrangutan. She could take Bernie’s plans and actually execute some of those worthy goals. She is a lecture-prone professor, sure, but one you could also play beer pong with after class. People made fun of her for having exquisitely detailed plans. I ask in all seriousness, what is wrong with those people?

No matter. The Elizabeth Warren star rose and fell before 2020 for no discernible reason to me. Except that she is a woman, and the concurrent fears that a woman is unelectable in the general election. This is entirely unfair. And it’s largely the fault of women, because the data shows that far more women have voted in Democratic primaries than men. But they didn’t poll or vote for Klobuchar, Warren, Harris, Gabbard, or Gillibrand. They picked men, like so many female #PervertOrangutan voters often following the lead of their husbands and boyfriends straight into the Gates of Hell. As bad, the female candidates never tried to unite or back one another with, say, endorsements when they dropped out.

Of course I’m going to #VoteBlueNoMatterWho, but now we have to sit back for the next few months and watch as Bernie and Biden claw at each other in a Grumpy Old Men Death match- which already promises to be a bloody civil war. The other side is licking its chops in the meanwhile. Thanks, ladies.