I have this analogy when choosing a political candidate. If my toilet is broken, I’m going to hire a plumber. I’m going to hire someone who isn’t afraid to get dirty and deal with shit. Literally. I don’t care if that plumber is shit covered or smells like shit. I want the plumber that has tons of experience doing the job of unclogging shit.

The office of POTUS is a job like any other. Like a plumber. Shit’s gotta get done. Shit’s gotta move. And I don’t care how dirty the plumber gets or how dirty the plumber is. All I care about is that my broken toilet is fixed at the end of the job. I don’t care how likable the plumber is. I don’t care how rude the plumber is. I don’t care if the plumber made money off of rich people giving speeches about plumbing. None of those things matter at the end of the day if my toilet is still broken.

All I want is a plumber who can do the job.

And Hillary Clinton, by a wide wide margin, is the most shit-covered candidate there is or ever will be. And that is a good thing. Because all that shit says she’s got experience. She’s done things before. Sometimes, it goes well. Sometimes, it goes bad.

You know what a candidate who has no shit on him says to me? No experience. You don’t have a single fuck-up on your resume? You’re clean as a whistle? You’re not covered in shit because you got down in the muck to fix something? I don’t want you. You’re going to make mistakes. Everyone does. I want Hillary because she’s made her mistakes already. She’s learned from them. I don’t want your shiny, clean, plumber tools making mistakes when the first toilet they touch is my toilet.

There is big debate about Bernie versus Hillary going on right now. To me, it’s absolutely clear. I absolutely agree with Bernie on all of those ideal things. In an ideal world, yeah, it would be great if… <follow with any number of Bernie’s ideas>. We don’t live in an ideal world. We live in this world. It’s kinda shitty sometimes. It already has an immense plumbing structure known as the United States Government. It’s a massive bureaucratic, slow-moving, antagonistic beast of a thing. And someone’s gotta move the shit in it in some direction. My preference is that shit isn’t dumped on me. My second preference is that shit isn’t dumped on anybody else either. Yeah, it would be great if the plumbing of this nation worked differently. It would be great to overhaul huge parts of it. But what are you going to replace it with? And will it really be better than what already exists? Bernie is a plumbing architect, if there is a such a thing. He’s the theoretical physicist of plumbing. Well, it’s worse than that. Because theoretical physics is based on evidence. I’m not sure liberal political ideals can be converted into policy that improves the machinery of government for the better.

It’s an immense task to do that. And the people in the government and the citizens are not going to let that happen easily. The government is already obstructionist. How can an architect implement his design if the workers assigned to do that job are against it? He can’t. Thus, Bernie can’t. I’m sorry, but it’s just a practical thing. It’s not just politics. It’s common sense. If you got a plumber architect who had never done any plumbing before telling actual plumbers what to do, what do you think will happen? They will disagree and do their own thing anyway. That’s not leadership. Leadership requires changing the minds of all of the workers. And if that can’t happen, fire all of the workers and put new workers in place who will work with the new architect plumber.

That’s not going to happen. You know why? Only voters can fire those old plumbers. Look at Bernie’s base. Young people. Inexperienced people. You know what they are voting on? They are voting on ideals. They are not hiring a plumber. If they were hiring a plumber, you know they would do? They would hire a local plumber. They would vote for their local representatives. But you know what? I’ll bet you anything that TWO years from now, we won’t see them turn out to vote. We all know they only get excited about presidential elections. But when shit needs to get done, they don’t care. Because issues don’t affect them as much. They can afford to vote for an idealist architect because of their privilege. 

You know who can’t afford to vote on their ideals? People without privilege— Minorities. Black, Latino, Muslim, Mexican, and immigrants. Shit’s about to get real for them. They can’t afford to not care about this election. They desperately need a plumber to fix their shit. You can’t worry about ideals if you’re worried about getting killed by police, getting kicked out by the government, or getting stereotyped openly by a leading candidate for president. Rhetoric turns into action. And there is some seriously scary rhetoric out there. A whole ton of shit could be dumped by those other plumbers on perfectly good people. If I were one of those good people, I would be very careful about who I choose as my plumber.

All of the criticisms I see heaped onto Hillary are all positive traits of a good plumber. People keep throwing shit on her. But they’re not throwing shit that I care about— that’s she’s not a good plumber. They can’t throw that because they can’t. She’s the best plumber in the race.

Let’s compare who’s the shittiest.

Winner: Hillary Clinton

Nobody can compare to the shit-covering that is Hillary. She has shit from doing actual plumbing. But more than that, she has shit from other plumbers throwing shit at her hoping it will make her look bad and make her competitors look good. The other plumbers spent 8 hours throwing Benghazi shit all over Clinton. She sat and endured it.

Scandals. Clinton and scandals are synonymous. Email server, Benghazi, speaking fees, all of it. She’s a dirty shit-covered plumber. Except that shit isn’t even exclusive to her. It’s just part of the job of politician.

Speaking fees? I’d be jealous too if I had never had any real experience that people were willing to pay to listen to. How many of her detractors (i.e. shit-slingers) fit this category?

The email servers? She said to go ahead and release them! It only shows how hard she works to dedicate herself to her job of plumbing shit. All of the previous Secretaries of State did the exact same thing as she did. So why not throw shit at them, too? Because Hillary.

Benghazi? That’s part of the job of Secretary of State is to respond to terrorist acts. Yes, she was in a leadership position at that moment in time. Yes, she responded decisively. Were mistakes made that are now clear in hindsight? After 8 hours of scathing interrogation, the answer is— NOPE. If another terrorist attack occurs, who do you think would be best to respond to it? Someone like Hillary who has had to think about that moment over and over again and consider all of the alternatives? Or someone who has to go through it the first time? All of the Monday morning quarterbacks have offered their ideas of what she could have or should have done. Every opinion of every politician, pundit, expert, polemicist, and politician has been thrown at Hillary. No person is better qualified to know whether any of those could have been good ideas or not than Hillary Clinton. Who has thought about terrorist attack more than Hillary Clinton? Who has been forced to think about terrorist attack?

Loser: Marco Rubio

I’m just gonna throw Rubio in there as an example of someone who is squeaky clean because he’s done nothing. All he’s done is sit in a Senate office clicking yes or no on things that other people have written. He’s qualified only click yes or no to decide if he’s more Aragorn or Gandalf, not lead people, much less an entire government. When someone hasn’t done anything yet, we can’t throw any shit on him. He has no Benghazi because he was never in a position to lead people. He was never in a position to make mistakes that could be criticized. Does that mean he will never make mistakes once he’s in a position to do so? If that’s what you believe, then why do you look up “plumbers” and not “attorney” for someone to fix your plumbing? Maybe because you want someone who’s done it at least once in his lifetime?

Loser: Donald Trump

Trump, like Bernie, is running on ideals. They may not be the same ideals as yours or mine, but they are ideals nonetheless. So he’s a kind of plumber who has a fake solution to a fake problem because you don’t know anything about plumbing and his fake solution sounds exactly like what your solution would be. Trump knowing nothing about plumbing is his greatest strength because his solutions sound like common sense to other people who know nothing about plumbing.

Trump doesn’t care about fixing the plumbing. He just cares about getting hired as your plumber. He knows a lot about business, but business is a whole different machine than plumbing. Could that experience apply to plumbing? Maybe, but probably not. We are not voting for a dictator. We’re voting for someone to fulfill a government office.

Loser: Bernie Sanders

Bernie has the least shit on him. He’s been consistent throughout all the decades as a career politician. He hasn’t changed. But the world has changed. The world has changed enough so that suddenly, he’s somewhat of a viable candidate! But you know what is most damning about Bernie? That change happened without him. He had all of those years of fighting the good fight, but we have never heard of him until this election cycle. Why is that? Well, the answer is simple. He is not a plumber. He did not get shit done to move the country in a direction such that his ideas would get implemented. If he had shown such leadership, he would be considered mainstream instead of the outside position of the liberal ticket. He is the same as before which is the greatest mark against him. He has and always has been a voice for what’s right. But a voice shouting is not the same as muscle rolling up its sleeve and getting shit done.

Finally, a word on Hillary’s speaking fees as a sign of her selling out. This reminds me of the Chris Rock joke about Siegfried and Roy’s tiger going crazy. Tiger didn’t go crazy. Tiger went tiger. Politician didn’t get influenced. Politician went politician.