Well, I Don't Like the Optics of THIS

.@SenWarren: I was ‘troubled’ by @BarackObama’s $400,000 speaking fee from a Wall Street firm https://t.co/oz2ADEZRB1 pic.twitter.com/huYZLQP04K

— POLITICO (@politico) April 27, 2017

I don't think any Dems need to be conceding that optics is the only metric that matters right now. In fact, they need to resist that frame. https://t.co/vyxCm14osv

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) April 27, 2017

I spend every day covering a pres who won b/c of "optics," only cares abt "optics," & leverages emphasis on "optics" to destroy this nation.

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) April 27, 2017

I'm getting a little testy w/ Dems & the supposedly serious media abandoning any & all pretense of meaningful analysis in favor of "optics."

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) April 27, 2017

And if "optics" do matter, how about the "optics" of President Obama using his personal wealth to help people? https://t.co/wefHFkNZ42

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) April 27, 2017

How about the "optics" of only starting to care about speaking fees when the fees set by WM are being earned by women & Black men?

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) April 27, 2017

So, the new progressive paradigm is defending Ann Coulter's right to speak, but shitting all over President Obama for getting paid to speak?

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) April 27, 2017

No thanks to those "optics."

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) April 27, 2017

Y'all, I am super depressed about the future this week.

The only people who actually know what they're doing are being relegated to the sidelines because they're neoliberal establishment monsters or whatever, and people with dangerously simplistic policy fantasies are taking over, on both sides of the aisle, by relentlessly harassing out of participating anyone who has real, practical experience and hard-earned expertise to match.

Increasingly, it doesn't seem like there's much room for complex, intersectional thinkers in our politics at all anymore, and that is deeply troubling to me.