What I Learned About Romance From The 2020 Democratic Presidential Candidates

In which I took my desire to Win At Reporting a little too far.

(Above: the most romantic photo of all these damn books as I could muster. Are you in the mood yet? You’re welcome.)

Hello, my dear readers. 

It is almost the end of 2020. Since I last wrote, a few things have happened: I turned 38. I broke a toe — my second one of 2020. I moved this newsletter to Substack, so I could join all the cool kids. I moved my subscriber list over from TinyLetter as well (which is why some of you are now unsure why you’re getting this newsletter but simultaneously relieved to be receiving my glorious prose in your inboxes again).

I also have been attempting to write more Personal Stuff. Why? Well, why not? It’s a pandemic and I’m as identity-crisis-ridden and alone with my thoughts as any other (childless) quarantined person. So.

All of this is a wind-up to an essay I’ve been meaning to write/publish for a very long time. It’s now past the 2020 campaign, so maybe it’s loo late for it. But the idea behind it was a cockleburr that snagged itself on my brain and wouldn’t unhook itself throughout the campaign. I had to get it out. So. Here is a (kind of long but you’re here, which means you have some buy-in already) essay I wrote about politicians and how they talk about their romantic lives.

It is maybe too long. But whatever. The point of having a newsletter is trying your shit out on people who have opted in.

So. I hope you enjoy.

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It is July 2019. I am in my swimsuit, roasting in the glorious dry heat next to a hotel pool in Greece. I am slathered in SPF 50, drinking a glass of rose and reading a thick book. It is my first vacation with my boyfriend, Neil. It’s idyllic. It’s romantic.

“This is without a doubt the horniest political book I have ever read,” I say, slamming John Hickenlooper’s The Opposite of Woe onto the baking cement.

“You did this to yourself,” Neil mumbles from his sun-coma in the next deck chair.

Smart-ass.

This was a few weeks after I made one of my stupider decisions of the 2020 election cycle:  I attempted to read at least one book by each of the Democratic presidential candidates.

It was an on-its-face terrible idea, both because there were at one point roughly 75 Democratic presidential candidates, and because campaign books are deeply awful. Mainly, I decided this in a crisis of confidence: did I feel like I was doing this job well? No. Why? Impostor syndrome, is my best guess. And my way out of this particular flavor of freakout is usually to try to outwork everyone, often in over-the-top ways. And so…I decided to read All Of The Books.

Getting back to Hickenlooper, though. Campaign books are often dull. Campaign books are not often horny.