Pollsters want to know: is America ready for a gay president? Personally, I’m not even ready for the New Deal, so what do I know? I do know that one can no longer marvel in polite company that a dude is married to another dude. Like you, I’ve been informed that Buttigieg’s marriage doesn’t impact my marriage so long as I submit to baking the cake, as it were.

Then again, what is left to marvel at in this primary, other than the fact that Bernie Sanders is not, apparently, donning a sandwich board and channeling Lyndon Larouche? Take the issue of gender. (Please!) The candidates in this race were literally beyond parody even before Warren felt compelled to say that “trans,” “nonconforming,” and “non-binary” women of color are the “backbone” of American democracy. Such posturing is actually funny in Biden owing to his “yeah, whatever” cynicism regarding all things woke. The former Vice President will one moment be praising women for being the only ones who know the pain of childbirth and the next minute acknowledging that yes, men can get pregnant, too.

Meanwhile, in the eleventh ring of the ten-ring circus that is the Democratic primary, the party’s establishment has recruited something called Deval Patrick. Get excited, America! Granted, Patrick doesn’t have the energized and broad-based support of, say, Lincoln Chaffee, but still. Clearly the party elders are concerned that Biden can’t close the deal against Trump and that the party needs a centrist candidate who can also win over African Americans. The establishment’s aim is clearly akin to that of Conservative, Inc.’s desire in 2016 for a Latinx savior to win over Hispanics while putting a nice sheen on amnesty (Marco Rubio). In that sense, the Democratic establishment’s reading of the American pulse is no better than that of their counterparts in the GOP in their 2016 primary.