With this week’s debates, the Democratic presidential primary race is officially upon us. So here’s my official position on the contenders: I love them all, and would be happy to vote for any of them. In fact, I would happily vote for anyone with a pulse and a “D” after their name. Even those whose name I can’t recall.

Oddly, the Democrats have gone from having no bench to an extremely crowded one that could cave under the strain of all those people jockeying for position on it. It’s an embarrassment of riches, whereas the Republicans just have rich embarrassments.

Still, enough is enough. The two dozen (and counting) candidates perversely echo the effect of Trump’s lies: so numerous that we tune them all out.  Let the winnowing begin!

I’ll share my opinions on specific candidates from time to time, even though these opinions will no doubt change weekly from now until the Convention. For now, just some general observations to kick off 2020.

Electability. It’s the mysterious “It” factor, even though nobody has a clue what “It” is. Most simply, “electability” means whoever gets the most votes. Except the Electoral College makes it not so simple, as Al Gore and Hillary Clinton can attest. So we have to consider the whole body politic as we try to squeeze, Spanx-like, all the weird excesses and lacks into some pleasingly redistributed configuration.

Since the highest priority of almost all Democrats and many swing voters is to get Donald Trump out of office rather than assert moral purity (aka “lose”) by refusing to vote for any non-preferred candidate, this shouldn’t be that hard. To recap, if everyone who is alarmed by Trump pledges to vote in the General Election for anyone with a pulse and a “D” after their name, problem solved.

Year of the Woman or B is for Boy? Until recently, none of the super-qualified female candidates was gaining much traction. Biden, Bernie, Beto, and Buttigieg formed the alliterative core of Boy Power. That’s shifted some, with Elizabeth Warren and now Kamala Harris gaining ground. Plus, the only bumper sticker I’ve seen so far besides “Bernie 2020” and “Any Functioning Adult 2020” is “Tulsi.”

Unconscious (not to mention conscious) bias is real. After the 2016 election, HuffPost ran a piece by Max Weiss called, “Things I Blame for Hillary Clinton’s Loss, Ranked.” It began,

Here is my response to the Slate article, “So We’re Still Blaming Jill Stein and James Comey, Huh?” This is a partial list of the things I blame, ranked.

1-199. MISOGYNY

Of course, Hillary won the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, so except for the Spanx Problem, it’s hard to argue that a woman can’t win. What worries me is that I’ve been to many dinner parties in which someone invariably says, “Elizabeth Warren is such a school marm.” And these are people who LIKE Elizabeth Warren! A little while ago there were many stories about women who would love to see a female president but were afraid to vote for one. Even if legitimate, this worry can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. (Michelle Goldberg just wrote a compelling post-debate piece on this dilemma.)

Of course, Democrats and women candidates prevailed in the mid-terms. Trepidation about a female nominee has abated some, and the term “school marm” has mostly disappeared from my own social circle. We have to reckon with our own unconscious bias, just as I did in 2008 when I came to view as racist my conviction that a black man named Barack Hussein Obama could never be elected president.

Feeling anxious?

I have a plan for that: vote for the nominee with a pulse and a “D” after their name.