I agree with everything Bernie Sanders says about wealth inequity and corporate concentration of power in this country, and yet, somewhat bitterly and with profound despair, I can’t vote for him in today’s California primary.

For he is electoral death and ruination — a blend of Barry Goldwater in ’64 and George McGovern in ’72, and he will get absolutely creamed on 11.3. The avalanche of outright Trumpian lies and distortions that would fall upon him once (and if) he secures the Democratic nomination would see to that.

My far-from-enthusiastic vote for doddering Joe Biden is strictly strategic. I will shudder repeatedly at his old-guy misrememberings and stammerings on the debate stage if and when Joe goes up against Trump, but he is a decent and compassionate man with a better-than-decent chance of winning. Bernie would get killed — Biden would make it through.

If we were living in a week-old time machine realm I would vote for my bruh, Pete Buttigieg. If we were living in a perfect, consequence-free vacuum I would vote for Elizabeth Warren, but she wasn’t won anything or even come in a strong second since the primaries began.

Everything that happens reaffirms this awful sense that we’re living through dark and doomed times. Stuck in an irreversible downswirl. Unless Typewriter Joe wins the nomination. Then there might be a chance.