Like many other left-leaning people, I voted for Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary. But more people voted for his rival, Hillary Clinton. This is true regardless of the valid complaints against the undemocratic nature of the primary process--the superdelegates and such. The fact remains that more people voted for Clinton than Sanders, so Clinton rightfully wins the nomination.
Now that this has been decided, it is important that left-leaning people fully recognize the choice in front of them. The next president is either going to be Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. No one else has enough people willing to vote for them to actually win the electoral vote. There are some people on the left so hostile to Clinton that they would withhold their support from the Democratic nominee even if doing so meant placing Donald Trump in the White House. I will not even attempt to be diplomatic in my response to this attitude: it is irresponsible and dangerous.
Those who would refuse to support the Democratic nominee should recall 2000, when Al Gore lost the presidency by a few hundred votes in one state. (He won more votes than his opponent in the country as a whole, but, appallingly, that is not decisive.) If even a small percentage of those who voted for Ralph Nader had instead voted for Al Gore, we would not have had a war in Iraq. We would have had a president who took some action on climate change. We would have had a president who took steps to extend health insurance coverage to millions of people. We would have had greater tax revenues and thus more funds to support social programs for the poor. We would have had two more moderate-to-liberal justices on the Supreme Court instead of two more right-wing ones. Instead, we had George Bush and Dick Cheney, who gave us the Iraq war, justifications for torture, complete inaction on climate change and health care, tax cuts for rich people, a Supreme Court more hostile to the weak and vulnerable, and many other things far more unwelcome to a progressive mind than what Gore would have delivered. That is, we saw a devastating refutation of the idea that there was no value in having the Democrat take the office instead of the Republican.
The stakes are even higher now. George Bush, at least, had some government experience. He did not seek to persecute immigrants or build a wall across the border. Compared to this year's Republican nominee, Bush appears to be an exemplar of reason, tolerance, and restraint. This is serious. If you are a fellow left-leaning person (and perhaps even if you are not) you do not need me to tell you the details of Trump's bigotry, misogyny, willful ignorance, and gross irresponsibility. We need to keep him out of the White House.
In my essay endorsing Sanders, I stated many reasons for still respecting Clinton. Among other liberal actions, she championed universal health care and challenged sexist expectations for a first lady. Even if all of the facts that constitute the progressives' case against Clinton are true, the hostility toward her is still too severe. She is a well-credentialed, experienced, and knowledgable candidate, and yes, she does represent a liberal philosophy, even if it is not liberal enough for some. I, too, am suspicious of her hawkish inclinations with respect to foreign policy; I, too, am disgusted by her collecting a $675,000 speaking fee from a big corporation. But by any sensible analysis, a Clinton presidency would create a far friendlier environment for progressives than a Trump presidency.
I understand that people want a more progressive leader in the White House. But until that is a true possibility (and as long as Clinton has the support of most left-leaning people, it is not) the priority needs to be keeping the Republicans (especially this year's nominee) away from the office. Entertain fantasies of a progressive third-party president if you will, but there are simply not enough votes right now to elect one. Keep working on it, by all means, but for now, please, vote for the more liberal electable candidate. That is, the one who does not want to exclude people from the country because of their race or religion. That, alone, is sufficient reason to prefer Clinton to Trump; of course, there are many other reasons. If even one of those reasons matters to you, you have motivation enough to accept Hillary Clinton as the price for keeping possibly the worst presidential candidate in the nation's history out of the White House.
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