Politics, Etc. by John Nesler
Henry Wallace, Vice President under Franklin Roosevelt
The New York Times, April 9, 1944
On returning from my trip to the West in February, I received a request from The New York Times to write a piece answering the following questions:
Below are the varieties of tomatoes which I currently have available for sale. All of these varieties are indeterminate. However, a few are dwarf varieties which tend to max out at around 4 feet tall (making them ideal for container growing). Please read descriptions closely.
Yesterday I posted an article that was written a decade ago about the Bayshore Mall, the mall in Eureka–where I lived for a brief time when I was a kid, and visited frequently as I was growing up. The article, “Death Stalks Bayshore Mall,” portrayed how what had once been the crossroads of Eureka’s social and commercial scene had become the most visible symptom of Eureka’s dying economy, and cast in a pretty harsh light the struggling people who were hit hardest.
For a couple of years after my parents’ divorce in 1990, I lived in Eureka, California, with my mom and sister. We subsequently went to live with my dad in 1993, but I visited Eureka many more times to see my mom, through about 2001. A lot of complicated stuff happened, and my mom ended up living back east, and for reasons I don’t care to get into, I haven’t talked to her in about 13 years.
But my memories of Eureka persist. One of the commercial centers of that then-logging town was the Bayshore Mall. Built in 1988, it was an outlier–the only mall in a hundred miles in any direction. It was a fresh, thriving, new place during the timespan that I lived there. I remember seeing a re-release of 101 Dalmations there, and watching Aladdin while an absolutely hellacious storm thundered down outside.
If you pay attention to pretty much anyone who delves into the details of politics and elections for a living, you’ll find that they are terrified of how election night in November will play out.
In the mix with all the other craziness that is going on, we still have a presidential primary ongoing—Bernie Sanders has clearly opted not to drop out, given that he participated in an online campaign event on March 22, and his campaign has expressed interest in participating in an April debate.
Thus, the beat goes on. But the average person probably isn’t aware of what’s been playing out with the primary, due to the COVID-19 crisis.
To say that the outbreak of COVID-19 has been a source of global disruption would be a gross understatement.
Here in the United States, the disease has introduced added complexity to an already complex and time-sensitive process: the 2020 Democratic Primary. Many primaries have been delayed by weeks or months, and more changes—such as delaying New York’s primary to June—are likely in the cards.
You could be forgiven if you have been vaguely keeping one eye on news coverage of the Democratic primary, and more or less understood there to be around 5 to 8 major candidates that are seriously in the hunt for the Democratic nomination. Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Pete Buttigieg have all generated a lot of headlines, while several others such as Andrew Yang, Corey Booker, and Tulsi Gabbard have also amassed fervent fan bases.
Theodore Roosevelt was never a particularly restful soul. After he left the presidency, and then failed to reattain the White House running as a member of the self-created Progressive Party in 1912, Teddy wished to remain an active voice in politics. Between September 1917 and his death in 1919, Roosevelt penned a column which regularly appeared in The Kansas City Star, a newspaper which is still in circulation today.
The Democratic primary preseason is progressing more rapidly than most casual observers realize. As of this writing, we’re not that far off from the tipping point where the days left before the Iowa caucus (142 days away) equals the duration of the actual primaries (125 days from the Iowa caucus on February 3rd to the Virgin Islands caucus on June 6th). We’re at the point where a lot of things are going to start happening very, very quickly.
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