This year, she’s deciding on the lesser of two evils. That won’t stop her from voting

I don’t consider myself a news junkie, but I do closely follow politics. I think this is because for years I reported on Texas politics.

My journey started back in the mid ’80s when the news director at the Austin TV station I was working at told me I would be covering the Capitol. Ugh. I had to actively try to cover my revulsion.

It’s not that I hated politics. It was more that I knew a photographer and I would be hauling camera gear the size of a love seat along with a tripod that was like carrying a steel pipe filled with kettlebells up and down the four flights of the Capitol’s slippery marble stairs.

I would also be doing all of these in heels. Because this was four decades ago and women in Texas had yet to be liberated from wearing stilettos.

Besides the physicality of covering the goings-on of the regular and special sessions of the legislature, it could also be a great big bore. But I was fortunate to learn two things from a veteran reporter. Juicy stuff uses boring as a hiding place and you have to listen to what a politician is not saying more than what they’re currently yapping about.

I’ve used this wisdom even after I stopped covering Texas politics in many facets of my life. For example, when someone is telling me a story, I’m thinking, hmm, but what are they not telling me? And if I believe someone or something is dreadfully boring, I might feel compelled to do some research.

But as much as I would like to tell you that my training and experience is helping me understand and navigate the 2024 presidential election, I can’t. I’m currently in a perpetual state of WTH?

At the very top of my WTH? list is how did we get here? How do we have the exact same candidates running for president as in 2020?

A vaccine was created to help curb a worldwide pandemic in under a year and yet here we are in America, four years later, without the imagination, fortitude and effort to have fresh presidential candidates.

In political parlance I would be called a “double hater”:– a person who finds no joy with either candidate. But don’t worry, I’ll be voting for one of the two —but good Lord it’s going to be painful.

I’m also angry that the reason we have the same two candidates is absolutely due in part to ego. The ego of two elderly men who can’t let it go. I’m not saying with age doesn’t come wisdom but at some point you need to have the wisdom to tap out.

Another thing that is boggling my mind, as in I find myself spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about these two candidates’ spouses, is why didn’t the wives step up and say something like, “No we’re not doing this again. You’re way too old and if you do it you’ll be navigating divorce proceedings in between your campaign rallies.”

The only explanation that I’ve come up with for these wives not saying “never, ever again” is that having your partner be president is an excellent job if you want to create a zone of spousal avoidance.

Think about it. If your significant other is president, you can guarantee you’re not going to see them that much and you’ve got a big, rent free house in which to hide in. And there’s an excellent staff.

Unfortunately, the rest of America can’t hide. We have to pull ourselves out of this fever dream and realize this is our reality, as unappealing and frightening as that might be.

Reach Sherry Kuehl at snarkyinthesuburbs@gmail.com, on Facebook at Snarky in the Suburbs, on Twitter at @snarkynsuburbs on Instagram @snarky.in.the.suburbs, and snarkyinthesuburbs.com.