There’s a great Simpsons Halloween special from 1996 in which two aliens, Kang and Kodos, come to invade Earth and take over the bodies of presidential candidates Clinton and Dole.  After Homer reveals their plot to a massed audience, the aliens gleefully shout, “It’s true, we are aliens, but what are you going to do about it.  It’s a two-party system.  You have to vote for one of us!”

This skit always struck me as a brilliant indictment of the limited vision of our bi-polar political system.  But it also highlighted the potential peril of a race with either two bad options or one in which a fatal blow to a lone acceptable candidate could result in the ascension of a seemingly unthinkable option.  I would argue that we’re in the latter scenario, but there are many who are confused or disheartened by having been presented with what they perceive are two wholly-unappetizing options.

Now, I am of the opinion and have written before that I would be perfectly happy to vote for Hillary Clinton in the general election.  Despite having voted for Bernie in the primary, I believe that Hillary is the most experienced candidate and would be a solid, if perhaps not ideal, follow-on leader to consolidate the many important gains made under President Obama.  What the nation may need, after a transformative presidency (and I do believe Obama to have been hugely transformative in the positive way that FDR and LBJ were and the terribly damaging way that Reagan was) is consolidation, to enshrine the gains made in areas like health coverage, LGBT rights, foreign policy (the Iranian nuclear deal in particular), and energy policy.  Perhaps a Bernie-style revolution isn’t immediately in the cards, given that much of the country is still against many of the more progressive policies and victories of the last eight years.

There are many on the left who remain deeply suspicious of a Clinton presidency.  And I get that.  She is cozy with Wall Street.  There’s no denying that.  She has hawkish tendencies.  Admittedly concerning.  She feels like a cop-out candidate to some, a Republican-light centrist in the mold of her husband.  So when the progressive wing of the party looks at Hillary and feels let down by a Democratic National Committee that clearly pulled out all the stops to get her the nomination, they feel slighted and in some cases cheated.  If the last two elections cycles, presidential and midterms, have shown us anything, it’s that Democrats win when there are large turnouts, and Republicans win when no one cares or they can successfully prevent people from mobilizing or voting.  It’s the main reason behind the massive, illegal, and reprehensible attempt of the Republican Party to disenfranchise large swaths of minority voters over the last several years.  It also tells us that we need all of the Democratic base, the Hillary supporters and the Feel the Bern crowd, to come out on November 8th and do the right thing.  Which means that we have to offer the progressive wing of the party more than simply not being Republican.  It’s a lot easier sell to inspire people to vote yes than to frighten them to vote no.  The DNC needs to include these people in the convention.  It should to allow their voices to be heard and should allow their preferences to shape the eventual platform, even if their demands are not wholly met.  I think Hillary is smart enough to realize this and to court these voters.  Whether she will succeed is another matter.

The truth is that we need all the support we can muster in the fight to come.  I would argue that it’s an existential fight the likes of which most of us haven’t seen in our lifetimes.  We haven’t seen a presidential candidate this odious, this dangerous in a long time, if ever.  Whatever you may have thought of them as politicians, Romney, McCain, and (going back further) Bob Dole and Bush 1 were all fundamentally good men with an admittedly different visions for the direction of the country.  I couldn’t bring myself to vote for any of them, but the prospect of them in office did not fundamentally frighten me.  They possessed mostly sound judgment and would have been competent stewards of the country.  The same is not true of the current opposition candidate.  If you are like me, then you don’t know a lot of his supporters.  You’re baffled by his ascent.  You might even believe, somewhat erroneously, that he is only supported by white, uneducated men.  In actuality, he is supported by a broad spectrum of white men, across class lines that, at least according to one study, have one over-arching trait in common: a predilection for authoritarianism.[1]  This is one among many reasons why his defeat is so very important.  And why (in part) leaders across the aisle, including Bush Sr., Bush Jr. and Jeb! (God bless their Massachusite/Texan/Floridian hearts), have refused to support him.  But plenty of others have.  The grand poohbahs of the Republican Party have finally seen fit to bestow a belated sense of legitimacy upon this man in order to get him elected.  He has already released his provisional list of potential Supreme Court nominees.[2]  If you care about the future legal direction of this country, some names on this list should petrify you.

This is where our two-party political system truly scares the shit out of me.  We could realistically be a massive con job, a Hillary indictment, or just large-scale liberal voter apathy away from an unprecedented, unmitigated disaster of a presidency.  That this bigoted, misogynistic, xenophobic charlatan could be our next commander-in-chief is something that should spur you to action.  We should definitely be able to find common cause over defeating this megalomaniacal, overgrown chia pet.  The consequences to our international reputation and long-term damage to our polity could be devastating.  True, checks and balances would remain in place and would not doubt be used to their maximum effect.  But the discretion of the president to use military force, to enact executive action, to conduct diplomacy, to be our rock in the time of national emergency would be in the hands of a man who is historically unqualified and patently dangerous.

For their part, I believe that Bernie supporters have to concede defeat but not give up the fight.  This means continuing to pursue worthwhile goals like greater economic equality, reduced student indebtedness, and banking reform, but from within the party.  We need their passion.  We need their voices.  We need their youth.  They make the Democratic Party stronger, more vibrant, and more representative of the kind of interests we want to pursue.  In many ways, I think that their ideas are the future of the party.  We have a massive, unsustainable student debt problem.  We are faced with massive, growing economic inequality which is a result of the disastrous policies begun under Reagan and continued by Bush Jr.  We’ve only just begun to try to roll back the fundamental damage that was done during those years including deregulating Wall Street (which, to be fair, happened under Clinton as well), castrating the EPA, and allowing massive tax breaks for the wealthiest.  It’s going to take a long time to get our policies back in line and undo the effects of thirty years of ill-guided regressive policies.  And we’re going to need all hands on deck.  Because the alternative is unthinkable.

I get that Hillary often isn’t the most inspiring candidate.  I understand that you might want someone who more directly represents your views.  But if you value the sanctity of our system, if you appreciate the hard-fought gains to institute near-universal health coverage, gay marriage, renewable energy, and rational foreign policy, then stay the course and don’t abandon the fight when we need you most.  Because if you do—at least based on the sheer lunacy of his remarks to this point—we might just end up with an alien as our next president.

 

[1] http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/donald-trump-2016-authoritarian-213533

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/19/us/politics/donald-trump-supreme-court-nominees.html?_r=0