In 1987, while running for president, U.S. Senator Gary Hart was caught hanging out with a woman, not his wife. He was driven from the campaign and made a political punch line for decades, despite being one of the smartest, most talented senators in history. (I covered him as a young reporter and our discussion of the Kennedy assassination still keeps me awake)

Just to be clear - I voted for Bernie Sanders. I’m not a Bernie Bro or a long-time admirer. But I was caught up in the historic nature of his campaign, the sheer audacity of what he tried to do in 2016 and 2020. And I began to believe that the enormous structural change this country needs could be talked about because Bernie is afraid of nothing. He has flaws. But no politician since Bobby Kennedy has the toughness and the courage to tell the truth the way Bernie Sanders does. (Oh - and my daughter worked for him!!!)

“Who does the laundry in your house?’’ asked a United States Senator of the nominee to the Supreme Court.

That was the question that made me semi-nauseous last week during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to a lifetime appointment to the highest court, replacing the departed Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

It wasn’t the nominee’s unwillingness to discuss climate change or any other issue.

Ignore the Trump stuff for a moment. Impossible I know. Three weeks out from the election and my mother is glued to CNN and MSNBC. I can’t get off Twitter. But look behind the every-day and you see the tectonic plates beginning to shift in national politics. And it starts in a state with 620,000 people.