Cheers!

[Content Note: Videos autoplay at links on "her laugh," "dancing," and "singing."]

I've got a new essay up at Blue Nation Review about why I like Hillary Clinton, and how she's the first presidential candidate who, in a twist on that old canard, might like to have a beer with me.

I like her for being such a nerd! She's such an A-student. She knows everything about everything (or so it often seems), and I will never stop being delighted that she's totally the kind of irrepressible nerd who knows the difference between a yurt and a ger.

I like her laugh. It is a big, loud, cascading laugh. I have a laugh like that, too. A friend of mine once told me it's the kind of laugh that, when he overhears it at a restaurant, it makes him wish he was sitting at that table. I know what he means. When I hear Hillary's laugh, I don't hear a "cackle," or any of the other ways it has been disparagingly described. I hear a laugh that makes me want to be sitting at her table.

I like her expressive face. I once wrote: "I always find the charge that she is inauthentic to be completely hilarious, because Hillary Clinton has about the farthest thing from a poker face as exists in US politics." I like her for wearing her emotions all over her expressive face, whether she's conveying disdain at Congressmen with a transparently partisan agenda, or undiluted joy at meeting a child on the campaign trail.

I like her for dancing and singing and being silly, even when she knows darn well that it will be mocked and ridiculed by people who seize on any chance to demean her. I like pictures of her partying and having a drink. She looks like some damn fun.

I like women who are some damn fun.

One of the most over-done frames in US politics is the old "the candidate with whom you'd most like to have a beer" chestnut. It's never Hillary who tops the list. George W. Bush? Sure. (Never mind that he was a teetotaler.) Trump? Of course! He seems like fun. But Hillary? Hard pass.

I would certainly accept an invitation to have a beer with Hillary (and I trust she wouldn't mind if I imbibed a tipple of Scotch instead). But the fact that I want to have a drink with Hillary, because I find her so eminently likeable in spite of the narratives that she isn't, is rather less interesting to me than this: I'm fairly certain that Hillary is the first presidential candidate in my lifetime who might enjoy having a drink with me.

Click on through to read the whole thing. Which, yes, I totally cried my face off while writing, because that's the kind of nerd I am.