esquire.com – The shebeen is closed temporarily on the general subject of the Democratic presidential nominating horse race. The two candidates are so close on 90 percent of the issues that, as they say around the backstretch, you can’t shine a flashlight between them. The other 10 percent of the issues are made up of an unstable compound of butthurt and outrage that has exploded the whole thing into uncharted and fantastical political realms and I choose not to vacation in any of them.

One thing I will talk about is how to keep the legitimate populist concerns of the Sanders campaign alive.