I'M PAYING MORE attention to this election than any other election in my entire life. I'm doing it because I have to for my job—but I'm still doing it. I've watched all the debates and the town halls and the major speeches, and I've seen all these motherfuckers perform the act of enjoying down-home unpretentious food for the workingman... a consequence of letting Iowa matter, I guess. It's weird that we let Iowa matter this much. If Iowa didn't go first, nobody would care who they picked in their primary. Without its firstness, winning Iowa would be like being good at Quidditch. Not real Quidditch—I mean that shitty real-life version they play at colleges that have official policies about microaggressions.

Anyway, I've been paying deep, cornea-parching attention to this election, and I still really don't care. I'm more informed than ever and yet I'm less invested than I've been in any presidential election I've ever been aware of, which I suppose goes back to "Clinton vs. Bush: The Saxophoning."

I'm a loud Jew liberal with East Coast roots who's a member of two different unions, so I think I'm supposed to like Bernie Sanders—and I do like Bernie Sanders. He's my people. He could be my fucking dad. I could have fallen off him and turned into myself. You know, like how coral reproduces. He's wonderful and there's a big part of me that hopes he wins, but he also kind of seems like the guy running for class president who promises to make Mountain Dew shoot out of water fountains instead of water. There's no way the school's congress is going to allow his bold Mountain Dew plan to come to fruition. Who's going to pay for it? (And the metaphor continues, blah blah blah, except it's really about free college.)

I like Hillary, but I think I mostly like her because she seems angry. I feel like she'd call Paul Ryan a stupid little bitch—and I like that. We haven't had a mean modern liberal in office since fucking... ever? Carter wasn't mean, Bill Clinton was problematic (but not mean), and Obama is too smart to be mean. If Obama roasted you, you wouldn't know for like, three days. It'd come to you while you were driving to work, like, "Oh... fucking Obama clowned me within an inch of my life and I didn't even know it. I actually hugged him as I was leaving."

As for Martin O'Malley... he exists.

I don't know if I'm nonplussed by the Democratic spread, or if I'm just overwhelmed by my dominant feeling during this election cycle, which is "Not Trump." That's all I really care about, "Not Trump." I know we throw Hitler shit around all willy-nilly, like if a sandwich place gives you a sweet pickle instead of a dill pickle they're Hitler, but this dude is fucking Hitler. Trump is so scary, I want to buy a gun. He's such a bright neon ghost story of a neo-con nightmare that it's scared me all the way around the political spectrum to the point where I want to bear arms.

I may not care who it's for, but I'm definitely going to vote, and I hope you do too. @IanKarmel