Word peeve: Just really kind of

 I've noticed this in grown adults who should really know better.

I've seen it in print, and I've heard it in speech.

Best to illustrate by example: "When I saw it, I just really kind of shuddered."

That sentence contains three modifiers:

1. Just
2. Really
3. Kind of

Pick one. Leave the other two alone.

A woman for president in 2024

What if we elected a woman to the US Presidency in 2024?

Hillary Rodham Clinton famously ran against Donald Trump in the 2016 "None of the above, please God, please" presidential election. In one of the early rallies in her campaign, she called out to a largely female audience, "Who wants to see a woman president?" 

As I have said before, Clinton didn't lose because she was a woman. She lost because she was ... um ... objectionable. Undesirable. An even worse choice than Trump, if such a thing were possible.

I had also said that I would entertain a matchup between two female statesmen (stateswomen? statespersons? respected leaders, anyway) like Condoleeza Rice and Madeleine Albright.

This year, we have two new possibilities.

On the right, we have Nikki Hailey who, in spite of her support of Donald Trump, has shown herself to be an adequate and able politician and diplomat.

On the left, we have Kamala Harris who has spent the last four years in President Biden's shadow, the spare, as it were. Before becoming Vice President, she was also an accomplished leader and politician. If, for some reason, Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race, Harris would be a good replacement for him.

Here's the two of them, having fun together. (Not a real picture. Credit: OpenArtAI)

It's a pretty even matchup, with an interesting twist.

Nikki Haley

Nikki Haley (from Wikipedia)

Nikki Haley was born in 1972, in South Carolina. Her parents were Sikh Indian immigrants. Her birth name was Nimarata Nikki Randhawa. She goes by her middle name, and "Haley" is her married name.

Kamala Harris

Kamala Harris (from Wikipedia)

Kamala Harris was born in 1964 in California. Her mother was a Tamil Indian immigrant, and her father was a Jamaican immigrant. Her birth name was Kamala Devi Harris.

The Bottom Line

So not only would we have two women running against each other, but we would have two Indian Americans, both of them children of immigrants, running against each other.

Both of them have a net positive track record and no serious scandals to worry about (if we ignore Haley's support of Donald Trump). Both are refreshingly young, compared to the current front-runners, meaning that they won't die or go senile in office. And both have a lot of potential.

Haley vs. Harris for 2024. It has a nice ring to it.

It's a choice I'd like to have to make.