I confess. I am in a bit of a mild self-induced panic. I have not come out for either Hillary or Bernie and the Iowa caucuses are a week away. Excuse me while I go a bit wonky in today’s column, but I need to air things out.

Being this undecided is unusual for me. After the 2000 Presidential election debacle, during the 2004 and 2008 election cycles I became an “early adopter.” A label coined by professionals in political campaigning, early adopters are so enthralled by message and candidate that they sign on, contribute money, and soap-box on blogs and message board before the primaries even begin.

That was me in 2003 for John Kerry. He seemed the right answer for his military and foreign policy experience, and he took it in the shorts by more progressive Democrats, who stumped for Howard Dean. They objected vehemently to Kerry’s vote on the Iraq War Authorization. But then came the killer ground game in Iowa, which sealed Kerry’s deal in the caucuses; followed by the Dean scream; and the win in New Hampshire, which caved Dean’s hopes for the nomination.

We all know what happened afterwards — the swift-boaters Karl Rove employed to undermine Kerry’s one strength — his experience in the military and his foreign policy credibility as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — did its work. The key loss of Ohio — a purple state heavily fought for, with some purported scurrilous vote tampering by Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State — decided the election. The day after the 2004 presidential election was a dark day for the country.

Fortunately, something was prescient about John Kerry’s choosing Senator Barack Obama for the DNC Convention keynote speech earlier during the summer of 2004. The Convention keynote address is the “anointing” speech for the top rising star of the Democratic party. And Kerry and his convention-planning team were on the money. Listening to Senator Obama was revelatory. So much so, that while I was there in 2004 on that convention center floor in Boston, I had to call my friends in California to get them to watch Obama’s speech. I admitted to them and to myself right then and there that this man would be president in four years. Not Kerry. I was right.

So, in 2007, I was ready for Barack Obama, who was by all accounts a long shot — African American, four years a US Senator, and from outside the mainstream “inevitability” of the Clinton Machine of centrist-leaning Democrats. I signed on, phone banked, contributed, and fought against the Clinton machine that threatened to tear the Democratic Party apart during the South Carolina primaries. It was then that my dislike and distrust of Hillary Clinton and the entire Clinton Machine was so hot that it washed me clean of any remaining illusions I had about her.

Eight years later, with two terms under his belt, President Obama is leaving his office to be claimed by one of the next two leading contenders. And this is where I can’t adopt. Not early. Too much concerns me about both Democratic candidates that I cannot be ready for Hillary or feel the Bern. Not yet.

It’s not because I still distrust Hillary. I have softened my view of her since she became Secretary of State under the Obama Administration, and see her as a strong public servant. She would be a good problem-solving president. But there are still major questions hanging over her about US foreign policy in Libya, which gets her Republican detractors hot to establish yet another Benghazi probe.

And what about her role leading up to the current mess in Syria? I can imagine what a Trump or Cruz campaign would do to negatively meme her if she were the nominee, let alone the baggage the name ‘Clinton’ would inspire. Then, there’s her connection to the 1% — the bankers, the contributions to the Clinton Foundation. Then there’s Bill.

Yet, as a teen for George McGovern in 1972 (I was a political junkie early on), Bernie Sanders’ populist message makes me hope and despair simultaneously. His message against the corrupt establishment in Washington rings true, and is absolutely timely for the mess that’s going on in Washington DC. But as Charles Blow says in his op-ed in The New York Times:

…But practicality and incrementalism, as reasonable as that strategy and persona may be, are simply no match for what animates the Sanders campaign — a kind of kinetic, even if sometimes overblown, idealism. His is a passionate exposition of liberalism — and yes, democratic socialism — in its most positive light.

But, let me be clear and unequivocal: I find his earnest philosophic positions to be clear and often laudable, but also somewhat quixotic. I think that he is promising far more than even he knows he can deliver, and the electability question is still a real one, even though polls now show him matching up well against possible Republican opponents.

As a West Coast liberal in California no less, I am somewhat shielded from the rest of the country, which leans conservative. The word “socialist” as a label in America is a broad brush dipped in blood. Add Democratic to the label and fears for a landslide Trump or Cruz victory triggers my McGovern Syndrome.

In the same article Mr. Blow is equally as critical of Mrs. Clinton:

In October, when Hillary Clinton made a spectacle of the congressional Benghazi committee during a marathon interrogation that seemed designed to make a spectacle of her, she emerged stronger than ever. Her polls numbers surged.

That performance had come on the heels of a strong debate performance the week before in the first Democratic presidential debate. She had bolstered the image she wanted to project: strong, smart, capable and battle-tested.

But now, on the verge of Monday night’s Democratic town hall in Iowa — the last time the candidates will face off before the caucuses in that state — and with Bernie Sanders’s poll numbers climbing not only in Iowa, but also in New Hampshire, the Clinton campaign seems increasingly desperate and reckless.

I noticed the turn in the last debate as Clinton seemed to me to go too far in her attacks on Sanders, while simultaneously painting herself into a box that will be very hard to escape.

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So, a week before the Iowa caucuses I am hovering between the negatives I perceive between the two candidates. And this is based from my short-lived experience in political campaigning and observing the long game of politics over the last forty years as a Democratic voter in the United States.

Which way do I go? I don’t expect answers today or tomorrow. I don’t even expect them next week when the primaries start. There’s a long road ahead to the summer and the conventions. And there are enough questions hanging over both candidates for me that I need some assurance on as a voter. As a someone who plans to retire in the next five or six years, where will my Social Security account be? Who will sit on the Supreme Court in the next three years?

Looking at the positives between both, being a Democrat choosing between Hillary or Bernie is not a bad thing. Even with her baggage, Hillary has a lot of experience in how to handle the shit-storm that is Washington DC politics. Bernie has the exact right vision of where this country could go. He is inspirational and really touches a deep nerve in a country desirous of changing a corrupt system. How he plans to do it is still unclear.

One thing is for certain. I feel we’re in much better shape than to be a Republican having to choose between Trump or Cruz, the front-runners in Iowa — of which Senator Lindsay Graham famously remarked last week: “It’s like being shot or poisoned. What does it really matter?”

Let that be THEIR dilemma.