Short sketches based on the Democratic Debates

Andrew Yang has been my favourite from the get-go. Smart and direct, with a manner as accessible as Obama, he drops sense bombs on the assembled gathering as if from a UFO. He actually tried to break through the 4th wall, calling attention to the surreal artificiality of the entire event, of the implicit and explicit deception going off like fireworks all over the place, yet the audience seemed cautious, like they were not quite willing to leave their cages and run on the grass.

Marriane Willamson is the person I want over for dinner.

Smart, charming and totally refreshing, she is the aunt we all need, possessed with a preternatural ability to raises the spirit of anybody who hears her speak. Hers is a kind of feminism that you don’t see in politics very much. Typically, it seems women were always coached to be more like men when entering the political sphere, more aggressive or something, but Williamson is her own person. She sinks even deeper into the truth of herself and is a joy to watch. She will heal you with her magic. She will call to you in your sleep. She should obey no rules and smoke on stage. I want her to read my tarot cards.

I knew virtually nothing about Tulsi Gabbard, and when I first saw her on stage I thought she was Wonder Woman. She is the type of beauty I hadn’t historically seen on a political stage, and was in danger of thinking she was just some game show glitter, but she was a lucid destroyer, taking Kamal Harris apart, exactly as Harris had hoped to take Biden apart. It was exciting to watch—Harris, like a short-circuiting robot running and rerunning the only malfunctioning program it had, smoke steaming out of her ears, limbs flailing. And Sweet Jesus, when Gabbard began to speak of what the tiny, vulnerable Hawaiian islands have to face with climate change, I saw them as if from space, and my heart broke.