Antithetical

I've never been as ideologically aligned with any candidate as much as I am with Bernie Sanders. I once took one of those of political match tests and the top result was Bernie Sanders at 99%. I strongly believe in the social safety net. I should see Bernie as an ideal candidate - so why wouldn't I vote for him in the primary? Simply put, there's very little chance that he can win the general election. When you have a two-party, winner take all Democracy, winning is everything. That's the sad political reality that I've come to grudgingly accept years after losing any political idealism I may have had in my youth.

The thing that's changed for me over the last 15 years, starting around the turn of the century, was a growing realization that my views are antithetical to a large portion of the U.S. population. I'm reminded of it every time I see a clip of Fox News, or hear a bit of Rush Limbaugh being played by a coworker, or read a comment on the Internet. And I'm especially reminded of it during election season. A very large percentage of the U.S. population (maybe even a majority) hates everything I believe in, everything I stand for. I'm talking about a visceral, emotional hatred. That hatred has been largely directed towards President Obama during his presidency, for a myriad of reasons, one of which being that Obama is perceived as a socialist. No one in their right mind actually thinks that Obama is a socialist, but that word is used as a cudgel to attack Obama and categorize him as "other". (Of course, it can't be denied that categorizing Obama as "other" has a racial component, but that's a topic for a different day.)

Bernie Sanders on the other hand is a self-described Democratic socialist. When it comes time for the general election, he will have to wear the label of "socialist" like an albatross around his neck. The Republican party is incredibly effective at using "scary" sounding words like socialist to elicit an emotional response from low information voters, many of whom are swing voters. Bernie has not yet had to face the brunt of the Republican attack machine, and my gut feeling is that he will not survive it.

Hillary, on the other hand, has been under constant attack for pretty much her entire political career, and she's come out of it largely unscathed, or at least with a viable political career. Her Benghazi testimony was a master class in keeping your cool under maddeningly partisan questioning. Regardless of how I feel about her policies, I think she represents the best chance for the Democratic party to hold on to the presidency.

Now, some might argue that the Democratic party has to be moved to the left, and it's better to run a candidate like Bernie Sanders and lose than it is to run a candidate like Hillary Clinton and win, but I disagree. We're coming off 7+ years of Obama slowly but surely moving the needle in the direction of progress. Healthcare, same-sex marriage, equal pay, deportations, climate change, etc. The progressive movement has seen some incredibly important wins under Obama, and you better believe that every one of those wins will be rolled back if a Republican takes the White House.

The thing that scares me is that many supporters of Bernie Sanders see Hillary Clinton as some kind of Wall Street wolf in sheep's clothing. Assuming that she does win the nomination, the political left has the real potential to sabotage her campaign. You can see it in the comments from many Bernie supporters - they would rather vote for Trump than Hillary if she wins the nomination. That's dangerous talk and completely undermines the political movement that they claim to support.