Kitchen table issues. I have to get used to the lingo.

I assume it means somewhere there is a table in the kitchen with chairs where the family sits and eats the every-day meal and talks about what’s happening in their lives and the world around them to help them know what they think and how to vote.

That’s a lot of assumption. It seems to me it’s an idealized stereotype. Maybe still operative and extant in the Midwest on the farm. Maybe.

There are a lot of houses, apartments, wherever people live nowadays, that may have a kitchen but not a kitchen table. There are too many families where no one eats together. The kids are off in their rooms, munching, playing video games or whatever kids do these days. The dad is sitting in his chair watching sports on TV, eating food from the tray in his lap or resting on the side table, as he yells at the screen. The wife sits alone in the kitchen eating by herself, shaking her head, saying sadly, “Where did it all go?”

That’s a stereotype too, and one size does not fit all.

If there is a separate dining room beyond the otherwise all-purpose gathering place where the TV resides, that room is reserved for the place mats, the fine china, the wine glasses, for the special gatherings, usually with friends, becoming less and less frequent.

There still are kitchens with tables and chairs and sitting families, eating together some kind of food, silently conversing by phone, texted “Pass the salt,” and the texted answer, “Get it yourself.”