1. They hate us, you know.

2. Who does?

1. The Indians.

2. Why? They run half of our big tech companies. Why would they hate us?

1. Not those Indians, THOSE Indians.

[He points out of the door of the shack they are sitting in, all shiny with perspiration and apparently slowly rendering themselves down.]

2. They are Native Americans. We're not supposed to call them "Indians" any more.

1. I remember the days when everything was simpler, when things were more clearly defined and definitions didn't change every few months. And when we used whole words instead of incomprehensible strings of letters that no matter how hard I try won't let me pronounce them as if they are a word. When did it all get so messy?

2. Too many wars, too many conflicts that weren't real wars, too many body bags, too many wheelchairs, too many emotional basket cases, too many people thinking they were still in the Army decades after the Army didn't want them. Too many Congresses, too many Houses, too many Senates which denied them basic rights. Sooner or later, someone was going to try to sort it out. And it's our own generation and we can look at them sideways and wonder what happened to them. Then there were the blacks. We told people they couldn't call them nigger, or black, and said "look, now you are integrated" but all we really did was force them into ghettos. We pretended it was social housing but it was really open prison with awful education and discipline. The Republicans pretended it was a social experiment gone wrong but that it was the fault of the people that it went wrong. Sooner or later, someone was going to start to sort that out, too.

But no one ever does, all they do, all we do, is make policy statements then fail to implement them.

1. Fair enough but what about the Indians.

2. Well, all that fuss down south about the Confederate Flag, the people making that noise don't bother to point out that while southerners had slaves, the Yankees, systematically exterminated entire tribes as they moved across the country. They have got away with it.

1. Why don't we have any Indian candidates? We have black, women, a rainbow of Asians, various from south of the border, even a persistent Jewish left wing radical and a Johnny come lately Jewish capitalist. I know there was that woman who faked it, or massively overstated it, but she's so disgraced she's out of the picture.

2. Native American - you really are going to have to start using that if you don't want the newspapers to crucify you. Look, by the time we get down to the last two, all the really good people have gone and we are left with whoever raises the most money and that depends on whoever the backers think they can get favours from.

1. So, who's left then?

2. Incredibly, Joe Biden is still hanging in there as is Elizabeth Warren. I don't think anyone expected them to stay the course and Biden's got a small support group.. Then there's Amy K. Yes, she has a long name, that no one can say or spell without having to double check. Oddly, on a crowded ballot paper, that might just stand out.

There are loads more, including Michael Bloomberg but almost all of them have, as of today, zero support out of 100 delegates that have declared. There is far too much complexity over how to count the total number of delegates but to win a candidate needs to get 1991 to declare support for him or her. So far, the two front runners, with almost three quarters of the declarations so far between then are Bernie Sanders and Pete Butt-something. Another impenetrable name but come election time the stoners and piss-heads will go for him because they'll think his name is funny. Sadly, Tulsi Gabbard has no votes so far. She's Indian - actual Indian. She's a Hindu. She's a major in the Army - now with the National Guard in Hawaii. She's articulate, makes sense and overall would be a great asset to the team but the problem is that the last time we roped in an attractive woman as a running mate we got that mad thing from Alaska so anyone from a remote state isn't likely to get much support. But we should. If we put her front and centre, with her pro-veteran policies, she'd get massive public support across all sectors and races. But she won't get support from the money men: she's taken a very clear stance against big Pharma and the pay-to-play that they use to run Washington. So other industries will work against her, too, in case they are next . The irony is that she's should be the future of the party, if it wasn't for the money thing.

1. But a woman, Indian, Hindu, non-mainland state? No chance. Who else?

2. Amy K stands an outside chance if she doesn't run out of money. She's Gen X, from Minnesota and she's spent years representing farming interests on the one hand and she's been a County Attorney. Her name is, apparently, of Slovenian/Croat origin but she's not an immigrant. She's already only one point behind Elizabeth Warren but she's likely to fade as she had a bit of a moment, so to speak, in one of the debates.

1. Talking of Warren..

2. No. She's actually the intellectual one of this bunch although not necessarily the most intelligent. She's been there or thereabouts in Democratic circles for far too long but she's not tainted with failure like Biden and Sanders. She's a thorn in Trump's side, picking at loose threads in his policies. For example, she's a lawyer and in favour of a strong and fair judicial system - but she's also in favour of strong gun control to contain "the gun violence epidemic," of a system that "treats white supremacy as the terrorist threat it is" (first she's going to have to fix the US law defining terrorism because it's a shambles) and she wants the Food and Drugs Administration to be "based on science" - which is pulling at a very large thread that Trump has left hanging with his strange position on climate change, etc. But can she win? No - but she'd be an excellent right-hand woman for whoever does win.

1, So who are the real front runners?

2. This is going to come as a shock but soon it's going to be Sanders and Bloomberg. And that means we are going to lose the election. In fact, it's all beginning to look as if this is a holding pattern, a dry-run for the election after next.

1. Why?

2. Bloomberg isn't putting his heart or his money into it. He's playing it cool and of all of them he's the one who can most benefit from that strategy. He doesn't need to get out and run big rallies everywhere - everyone knows him, or thinks they do and that amounts to much the same thing. So, what's his downside. Quick analysis - we put ourselves into a lose-lose situation at the last election - we offered the electorate two unknowns in the sense that one would be the first woman president and the other would be the first Jewish president. The party wasn't ready to make either of those choices but we have to keep putting them up or they will always look as if there's something wrong with women or Jews and, of course, if I'm cynical, a vast amount of our support comes from one or other or both of those groups. If we were to put up two Jewish candidates, I think the Party would question it, saying that they were not given a proper choice. So, if Sanders keeps up his popularity and if Bloomberg gets a surge, we are going to have a dilemma.

1. So we need it to be one of them plus Warren?

2. Well, Bloomberg has another problem. He's another tycoon. So if he's up against Trump, the electorate are going to have to choose between two people who are, at least superficially, very similar: rich, self-made, opinionated and bombastic. Will they simply choose the man they know. And if we say it quietly, amongst the craziness, Trump as actually achieved some good things. And even when it's not so good things, he's made things happen. We've had so many years of moribund government that it's actually quite nice to have some progress in so many directions. I mean, he's a prick and all that and he's more redneck than white collar, at least in his attitudes but he's gone and got where the past few Presidents have got up and gone.

1. So, Sanders.

2. Can he physically last another campaign plus an election and then even one term in the White House? The strange thing is that he's gathering support, not falling back to closer to the others. But he's a tax and spend politician and he's not got much detail in his plans except "reform." But he's old - he's a War Baby - the Second World War, born in 1941. He's our Jeremy Corbyn, the highly-principled hard-left Labour leader who just took a major pasting in the UK. We might even be almost wiped our if we choose him. He's the best thing the Republicans could hope for. He's prattling on about "a Green New Deal" and trying to say that there is an "inadequate response" to the coronavirus crisis which is silly because the whole of our continent doesn't have a problem with it and we are ready to handle it if a case arises. He'd be better off trying to eradicate the aedes mosquito. Honestly, he'll be 80 if he gets elected to the White House. I can't see that he can stand the pace. I'm scared that he'll get the nomination - but he'll lose the election to Trump so, whatever happens, we aren't going to lose him in office.

1. OK: who do we declare for, then?

2. My heart says Warren and Tulsi Gabbard. My political brain says Warren and Paul Butt-thing. We can only do one each: I'm going for Bloomberg in the first round, then Warren in the second. You?

1. I've no idea what to do. I think I'll go for Gabbard in the first round, just to make a point, then Warren in the second.

2. And we both know that whatever we do, we're going to lose the next election.

1. Yes. Now can we go for a shower before I drip into nothing?

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