Dear President Trump,

I just made myself read the WP article about Elizabeth Warren and her claims of Cherokee ancestry. Before that I read the HP piece about Amy Klobuchar having trouble staffing her campaign because many of her former staffers say she was awful to work for. A couple of weeks ago Bernie Sanders faced stark criticism that his 2016 campaign was marked by widespread sexual harassment that wasn’t dealt with adequately, and although he hasn’t (yet?) declared, dirt on Beto O’Rourke surfaced recently as well. So far I’ve not seen potential fatal flaw pieces about Kamala Harris or Cory Booker, but it’s only a matter of time before something is dug up about them and put on display for all to judge.

Seems like you could sit back, save your money, and let the media and the Democrats do the initial winnowing of the field and save your fire power to fully blast whoever is left standing at the end. Is that the plan?

Although I’m clear the Virginia trio should go, I don’t yet know exactly what to think or believe about the various allegations against Democrats who’ve decided to run for president. How do we weigh these things? Are they absolute deal-breakers or is there space for people to own up to mistakes and come through with their reputations intact enough to run a viable campaign? And does it make any sense to toss these people aside when you all get to be presidents, Supreme Court justices, Representatives, Senators, Governors pretty much no matter what crappy (and even criminal) stuff you’ve done. For goodness sake, we have audiotape of you bragging about assaulting women and video of Gianforte punching a reporter and you all still win and get to shrug off the ill deeds or turn them into positives.

It’s a sick, topsy-turvy world right now as some of us work at not being hypocritical and try to do a solid job of vetting our candidates when others of us celebrate the very sorts of things that are (and should be) damning. That’s very messed up.

Guess what’s not messed up, though? When other candidates do not, and I repeat – do not – take the opportunity to trash their opponents like Harris did this evening when she refused to badmouth Warren and instead directed the reporter to Warren’s statement and said that she takes her at her word. Awesome.

May we be safe from harm, both self- and other-inflicted.
May we be happy to treat one another with dignity.
May we be healthy and take responsibility for poor behavior.
May we make peace with the need to grapple with tough realities.

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson