Clinton Haters

Leaving aside for the moment the relative merits of the candidates, I would submit that there’s a special place in hell reserved for Bernie Sanders obsessives who would switch their vote to Donald Trump rather than give it to Hillary Clinton, the candidate whose real and imagined shortcomings they are so fixated on (like most Republicans are) as to have elevated her to comic book arch-villain status. Voting for Trump instead of Clinton would be beyond irrational – an act of petulance that would betray a stunningly juvenile willingness to abdicate responsible citizenship in favor of self-indulgence. It is akin to a suicidal 14-year-old envisioning, with a delicious mixture of self-pity and glee, how sorry all of his tormentors are going to be when he’s gone.

For all I-didn’t-get-my-way stompers out of the room as Sanders withdraws, a few important points…

• Clinton didn’t win this thing because of voter suppression or voter manipulation or a rigged system, or other sorts of skullduggery, or because various media players conspired to help her. She won because more people voted for her than for her opponent, by multiple millions. 
• Like all candidates for public office – like all people -- Clinton has pluses and minuses. But she is not corrupt, at least no more so than politicians generally are, and she is not the horror show some people have convinced themselves she is. She is a middle-of-the-road politician who, yes, has some mistakes to answer for but who is more like Bernie Sanders than unlike him. It’s one thing to disagree with her policy ideas and to not vote for her on that basis. But this over-the-top anger and hatred is bizarre. And inexplicable, except on some dark and deep-seated psychological level that has nothing to do with her qualifications or her ability to operate effectively as head of the executive branch of our government. Turning this irrational anger into a vote for the buffoon Donald Trump is unpardonable. Elections are not about which candidates are more or less deserving, and only people with an over-inflated sense of moral superiority think otherwise.  Elections -- and this one more than most -- are about which candidate is right for the job.  Period. 
• Sanders himself has said this: “I will do everything in my power to make sure that no Republican gets into the White House in this election cycle.” In other words, the man for whom some would commit harikari is vowing not to abandon Clinton for Trump, or anybody else, and to support her in the general election, just as Clinton enthusiastically and very publicly supported Barack Obama after losing to him in a bitter primary fight. Sanders, an intelligent man and a serious public servant, would never, ever align himself with Donald Trump nor place Hillary Clinton in the same category as him
• Finally, and most importantly for the purposes of this discussion, Clinton has not said/done the following: Characterized Ferguson as one of the most dangerous places on earth; called for negotiating with mom and pop on the repayment of their U.S. savings bonds; said her tax returns are none of our business; imagined that she saw thousands people on TV celebrating 9/11; made weirdo phone calls bragging about herself while pretending to be someone else; married and discarded glamour models and made sexually suggestive remarks about her offspring; favored starting a trade war and a worldwide recession by slapping an astronomical tariff on Chinese goods; called for the creation of a Gestapo-like government force to undertake a massive, years-long round-up and deportation of undocumented families; believes members of one religion should be put under surveillance and possibly put in camps; thinks Mexican people are rapists and wants to build a staggeringly expensive 2,000-mile wall that would be the largest infrastructure project since the interstate highway system; believes American soldiers should kill the  innocent children of suspected terrorists; run a fake “university”; mocked a war hero who was shot down and imprisoned for five years; ridiculed the disability of a newspaper reporter; referred to disliked members of the opposite sex as fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animal and inferred that Megyn Kelley asked about those characterizations only because she was menstruating; threatened to crush anyone who criticizes her in print through libel lawsuits; questioned Barack Obama’s country of birth and lied about his birth certificate; acquired her foreign policy expertise by “watching the shows;” accused Ted Cruz’ father of complicity in the murder of JFK; mplied the Clintons murdered Vince Foster And on an on.

This is a person you would rather elect to office than Hillary Clinton?  Can you possibly be serious?The numbers are implacable: Trump cannot win this election without help from Democrats. That some Democrats would give him that help in a fit of pique over not getting their way is repugnant. Get over yourselves and lose your insufferable moral superiority.