1. There’s such a thing as a monumental political swing, but short of French revolutions they take decades. Bernie was fringe politics in 2016 who normalized his agenda for 40% of 50% of the electorate. That doesn’t describe a front-runner in 2020.
2. That everyone, inside the Democratic party and out, who chides us with “this moment is too important, you should all coalesce around a single candidate early” does not understand that the single candidate they have in mind is their candidate, and that we hear this from five different directions daily.
3. Why Trump is being normalized by damn near everyone, who says that “a strong economy will win over everything else.” I was raised to believe that incompetence eventually leads to disaster, and yet these people simultaneously give credit for the DJIA and don’t price in the odds that Trump policies will eventually tank… well, everything.
4. That this normalization disregards the certainty that Trump is exacerbating the trashing of the planet and we’ll end up spending trillions of dollars on disaster mediation. (Although see below.)
5. The fervor I see for Warren online, and in the crowds going to her events, doesn’t jibe with her erasure in the news media. (Although see below.)
6. The fervor I see for Bloomberg in the press and his correlated rise in the polls, when the thing both established and left Democrats hate most are national candidates who haven’t paid their dues and built a base for their colleagues.

Things I fear I understand about the present moment:

1. The strongest kind of media bias is towards profitability, and there is nothing in politics more profitable than a close race. If the conventional wisdom is that Bernie’s negatives will result in a close race with Trump—and why wouldn’t it be?—of course there will be an unconscious bias pushing him forward.
2. Bernie is entirely unlike Trump, but the core of Bernie’s voters sound a hell of a lot like the core of Trump’s voters in their cult of personality. The difference is that the Democrats aren’t running scared and this causes greater division, while Republicans will cave to keep their votes and maintain their power.
3. The same can be said about Mike Bloomberg and a billionaire sweeping in with his money to “save us all because only he can do it.”
4. Warren’s erasure in the media since Iowa: misogyny.
5. Warren’s erasure in the media since Iowa: a sense that she might be a compromise candidate (between Bernie and the moderates), and hence be less exciting (and less profitable) to cover between the convention and the general.
6. A brokered convention could be covered as an astonishing coalescence within the Democratic party, but instead the word “disarray” is going to be the most used in the news media word cloud for months.
7. The normalization of Trump is exactly what you’d expect when the news media (seeking profitable, enraging stories), big money (seeking short term economic gain), and outside forces (seeking Russian dominance into the American vacuum) are all served by a Trump victory.

I’m not scared by any one candidate (although Bernie’s age and moral certainty, and Pete’s inexperience, make me think they’ll be bad presidents). I’m terrified by what the present moment seems to say about our politics.