first-time caucus
i am a big proponent of voting: do your civic duty. however, i’d never participated in a caucus until tonight. i wouldn’t even call what i did tonight participating because circumstances led to me leaving directly after turning in my ballot. but i cast my ballot tonight in my first caucus ever, because for the first time in my voting life, i actually feel like there’s a candidate who’s worth the effort.
anyone who knows me knows i’m a bleeding heart, tree-hugging hippie, so it’s no surprise that i’m supporting bernie sanders. he’s got the right views for me as far as social causes, environmental causes, big bank causes, corporation causes, and even seems a little on the fence as far as gun control, which is pretty much how i feel. on top of that, his campaign was funded entirely by people’s individual donations, not money from superpacs or big corporations or lobbyist groups. from you and me ($35 here).
i would love a woman president. i really would. but i put what a candidate stands for before i ask what gender she is. if hillary were as pro-environment, anti-corporation as bernie is, there is no doubt i would vote for her. if she weren’t kind of shady and elusive, i would vote for her. if she told the people that she couldn’t do this alone – that the populace will need to get involved in order to make real changes in politics, i would vote for her. but as fate would have it, bernie is all these things, not hillary. i’m voting on the issues, not the gender.
“If we don’t fight hard enough for the things we stand for, at some point we have to recognize that we don’t really stand for them.”
this is from paul wellstone, late, great minnesota senator who was champion of the people. i think if paul were alive today, he would endorse bernie.
enough political talk for a while. it’s getting to be gardenblog time soon, and i know people are tired of me bringing up politics. gardening is pretty non-combative.