Presidential Cocktails

Cory Booker, the candidate: Democratic New Jersey Senator Cory Booker has a fascinating biography and progressive credentials to spare. His campaign website is  here.  Before he was Senator, Booker was mayor of Newark, during which time he became famous for being the kinds of hands-on politician who shoveled snow off his constituents' driveways and once, amazingly,  rescued a woman from a burning building.  As a senator, Booker is renowned for his lofty, impassioned speeches and morality-based worldview. Given all of this, it's probably not surprising that the New Jersey Senator has a reputation for being something of a superman. Policy Positions Common sense criminal justice reform (Introduced as a piece of legislation called  The Next Step Act ): This is a sweeping proposal that would include such things as banning solitary confinement for juvenile offenders in federal facilities, sentencing reform, and prohibiting federal employers from asking...

Andrew Yang, the candidate: Like Marianne Williamson, Andrew Yang is not a politician. Yang has worked as a corporate lawyer and entrepreneur, and that, he argues, has provided him a unique vantage point to study and understand the economy. From his campaign  website: I’m Andrew Yang, and I’m running for President as a Democrat in 2020 because I fear for the future of our country. New technologies – robots, software, artificial intelligence – have already destroyed more than 4 million US jobs, and in the next 5-10 years, they will eliminate millions more. A third of all American workers are at risk of permanent unemployment. And this time, the jobs will not come back. Yang's fear for our economic future forms the basis for his big policy proposal: Universal Basic Income  (UBI) . Yang has positions on a large variety of other political and economic policies, but he is only truly running on UBI. He is proposing to give every American over the age of 18 ...

To begin, a non-comprehensive list of the people President Trump has engaged in Twitter feuds with since the 2016 election: Hillary Clinton Senator Ted Cruz Snoop Lion (then) Senator Jeff Flake Congressman Adam Schiff Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un Former FBI Director James Comey Former Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III The National Football League Various NFL football players Congresswoman Ilhan Omar Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Special Counsel Robert Mueller Former FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page The cast and crew of Saturday Night Live Arnold Schwarzenegger I could go on, but you get the point, right? POTUS has anger management issues, clearly, and, equally clearly, a Twitter problem. Honestly, if you had told me, back in April of 2010 when I joined Twitter (follow me:  @LiteraryGrrrl ) that the social media site would one day be a space of contention for Presidential politics AND a force fo...

Marianne Williamson, the candidate: Marianne Williamson is not a politician. Her background is in comparative religion, writing, and speaking on spirituality. She is therefore, as of the time that I write this, the least likely candidate among the large-and-growing field of Democratic 2020 hopefuls. But she doesn't shy away from telling you why she thinks she deserves your vote. Her campaign website gives you  the who, what, and why  of her candidacy. From the "why"section: What we most need now is a political visionary -- someone with a deep understanding of where we have been and where we need to be going. While car mechanics are important, they aren't necessarily the ones who know how to drive you to where you want to go. It is unreasonable to expect the mindset that drove us into the ditch, to be able to pull us out of it. It's not enough now to just know what's happening inside Washington; we need someone who also knows what's happening in...

Wayne Messam, the candidate: Meet Wayne Messam, democratic mayor of Miramar, Florida. Mayor Messam's presidential campaign can be summed up in one word: urgency. Like his slogan states, Messam believes change (political, cultural, ecological, economic) just cannot wait. From his  campaign website: The lack of urgency to plan for the future and take action on the crises we can see coming is the biggest threat facing our nation. As you read this note, the gun violence epidemic continues to take far too many lives, climate change damages more homes and devastates more communities each year, skyrocketing healthcare costs cut off many Americans from the possibility of their American Dream, and crippling student loan debt leaves people of all ages with little hope for the future. Washington is not working for the American people, and these big issues need fresh eyes and bold ideas from someone closer to the people, so our voice can be heard. Together, we can fundamentally...

Elizabeth Warren, the candidate: Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren's  campaign website  asks the question What will Elizabeth Warren do? And it answers:  This is the fight of our lives. The fight to build an America that works for everyone, not just the wealthy and the well-connected. It won’t be easy. But united by our values, we can make big, structural change. We can raise our voices together until this fight is won. This basically sums up Senator Warren's campaign, and also her stance on all the issues. She has positioned herself as the  Rupert Giles to the American voter's Buffy the Vampire Slayer:   that is, she's the older, wiser, more studied mentor that we need to help guide us through our struggles. She's The One With The Plan.  And Elizabeth Warren has a LOT of detailed plans. Where other candidates campaign in more broad strokes without the details (Beto O'Rourke and Bernie Sanders come to mind), or are staking their candi...

Who could forget Drumpf's infamous "Covfefe" tweet?? Covfefe, the scandal: First of all, May 2017 feels somehow simultaneously like it was a million years ago, and also like it was just yesterday. Do you know what I mean? It is the perfect encapsulation of how Trump's presidency has compressed time. POTUS's half-asleep Twitter gaffe became an immediate global scandal. Looking back, it's hard to understand why. I mean, yes, he's President of the United States, so his every utterance and tweet is meaningful by definition. But of course  this tweet was an Ambien-induced mistake. Of course  there is no meaning behind the autocorrect created non-word "covfefe." But the entire world mulled over its meaning anyway. And President Thin-Skin played it off like he meant to tweet it. Because of course he did. When I set out to make a Covfefe-inspired shot I endeavored to represent all of the elements of this non-scandal by creating a shot that...

Pete Buttigieg, the candidate: The "Meet Pete"  section Buttigieg's campaign website begins:  Pete belongs to the generation that came of age with school shootings, the generation that provided the majority of the troops in the conflicts after 9/11, the generation that is on the business end of climate change, and the generation that—unless we take action—stands to be the first to be worse off economically than their parents. It's one sentence, but it tells us an awful lot about how the South Bend mayor and first openly gay presidential candidate is positioning himself in the vast field of Democratic candidates. Mayor Pete is young.  He's a Millennial. He has a perspective that the 2 front-runners (both septuagenarians) couldn't possibly understand: one that is borne out of the reality that he is going to be here to deal with the fallout of the Boomers's shortsightedness.  It's not a bad tactic. The field IS large, and as someone ...

Kirsten Gillibrand, the candidate: Have you watched Senator Gillibrand's campaign launch video yet? If you haven't, take a couple of minutes and do so now: The Democratic Senator's campaign slogan, "Brave Wins,"is both a statement and a question. It asks: What does bravery mean in America? Has bravery always won? Will bravery win now? And it answers: Bravery means true equality (racial, economic, judicial, environmental). Bravery has NOT always won in America, but it CAN. And it SHOULD.  Senator Gillibrand is not the only 2020 Democratic candidate who put out a launch video, but by God, hers is the most inspiring. I'm not backing any horses yet, and I am not asking you to, but I submit that if you weren't fired up and ready to Fight the Good Fight by the end of that video, you might be dead. Or a Republican.  Policy Positions: A national paid family leave act. Senator Gillibrand has introduced legislation to create a national p...

Julián Castro, the candidate: Julián Castro, former Democratic mayor of San Antonio, Texas, has lived the fabled American Promise. His campaign website says it best: Castro has  immigrant roots and American dreams.  Julián, and his identical twin brother Joaquin, are the sons of a single mother who is herself the child of an immigrant. Castro's grandmother Victoria immigrated to the U.S. alone at the age of 7 with only a fourth grade education. She worked her whole life as a maid. Her daughter grew up to become a teacher and a Chicana activist. Victoria's grandsons grew up to be Ivy-League educated public servants. Joaquin is a member of Congress. Julián was mayor and later HUD secretary during the Obama administration.  The family has a lot to be proud of.    Policy Positions: Education reform. Castro backs universal pre-K as well as two free years of higher education for all Americans Gun reform. The former San Antonio mayor advocates for...

Kamala Harris, the candidate: Democratic Senator from California, Kamala Harris has a deep background in public service and roots in activism. The Senator has written about the fact that her parents met while  protesting for civil rights at UC Berkeley.  Racial justice is something that the candidate feels intrinsically connected to. Her father, a professor of economics at Stanford, is Jamaican and her mother was an Indian immigrant. A transcript of Senator Harris's speech delivered at her  campaign launch  speaks to these roots:  We were raised in a community where we were taught to see a world, beyond just ourselves. To be conscious and compassionate about the struggles of all people. We were raised to believe public service is a noble cause and the fight for justice is everyone’s responsibility. In fact, my mother used to say “don’t sit around and complain about things, do something.” Basically I think she was saying. You’ve got to get up...

Hello and welcome to our boozy adventure! Who are we and what is this adventure about? I'm glad you asked! We are a family of drinkers, political junkies and hopeful cynics. We, like many of you, have spent our time since Inauguration Day 2017 crying, raging, drinking, panicking, and working to get Democrats elected in the midterms. We celebrated in the Blue Wave and cursed the unfair defeats of Beto O'Rourke, Stacey Abrams, and Andrew Gillum. And now we're staring down the barrel of another long presidential election cycle wondering how the hell we are going to get through it with our minds and our livers intact. If you can relate, you've come to the right place! And we have an exciting proposition for you: PRESIDENTIAL COCKTAILS! From now until Inauguration Day 2021--or until we die in a nuclear holocaust, whichever comes first--we will research every candidate (their positions, career highlights, personal foibles, etc.) and create unique cocktails for them! G...