I’ve been there, Bernie fans. Back in 2008. I raged against the reality that my candidate was losing. I claimed I might not vote for the Democratic nominee. I said the dumbest things I’ve ever said or thought in my entire life, embarrassingly misinformed and wrongheaded in my false certainty – writing that's still out there on the Internet forever, to my shame and regret.
And then I walked into the voting booth in November and voted for Barack Obama.
We have reached the point in this primary where the reality that was apparent by March is now undeniable: Hillary Clinton is going to be the Democratic nominee. She is going to be the Democratic nominee because she got more votes and won more elected delegates than Bernie Sanders, who ran a tough and usually principled campaign. She’s currently on pace to end the primary process with a lead 3-4x as big as the one Barack Obama had in 2008. There is no possible version of the delegate rules based on the actual votes that ends with anyone but her in the lead.
She is not a perfect candidate and will not be a perfect President – but I have never voted or worked for a perfect candidate. I never will either; there is no such thing as perfection in politics. And one of my guiding principles is to never make the perfect the enemy of the good.
Nor is Bernie Sanders a perfect candidate. He’s offering an appealing vision, an inspiring call to arms, but one with plenty of holes and its own ideological blinders. And for some idea of why I doubt his general election chances, I’d encourage everyone to visit two articles on Vox: This one, to calculate how much extra in taxes you’d owe under his plan, and this one showing how much people are actually willing to pay for his priorities. But this is not about crapping on Bernie, who has at his best run a campaign that appeals to our ideals and our better angels.
The temptation to insist on the purity of our ideals is always strong. The belief that the country is just waiting for a more pure and unchecked version of our message is appealing, but it’s chimerical whether Ted Cruz or Bernie Sanders espouses it.
At this point, we are facing a very real choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. One of these two people is going to be the next President of the United States, and if we care about progressive policy we owe it to ourselves and to the nation to grapple honestly with that choice.
Donald Trump wants to nuke ISIS, torture wantonly in a way that goes far beyond what the Bush administration did, and murder anyone related to terrorists in cold blood. Donald Trump’s proposed foreign policy is the aggressive pursuit of war crimes and international brinksmanship.
Trump isn’t arguing about the best way to increase the minimum wage or how much higher to set it; he’s arguing it should be abolished or lowered. Clinton and Sanders disagree about the best way to expand heealth care coverage, but agree that we should expand it. Donald Trump wants to dismantle Obamacare and Medicaid, and promotes dangerous conspiracy theories about vaccinations. Donald Trump doesn’t believe in Climate Change; Hillary helped negotiate an international climate accord.
You get the idea. There is no issue of concern to progressives on which Donald Trump would be anything short of a historic disaster. The worst that could be said of Hillary is that she could be bolder. I can understand being uninspired by “Trudge up the Hill,” as President Obama put it this weekend, but at least we’re all trying to get to the same summit.
You don’t have to be an active supporter of Hillary Clinton. You don’t even have to particularly like her. But given the choice between a misogynistic bigot and an imperfect progressive, actively undermining the progressive is a strange strategy.
Trump or Clinton: Pick a side.