Whether she was standing next to Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, or Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton was always the adult in the room. Don’t waste your vote on people selling irresponsible or impossible dreams, she would say. Vote for someone who knew what was possible, and would work tirelessly to deliver it.
If she had prevailed in 2016, we wouldn’t be having any discussions about socialism. Trump’s election freed the Democrats to dream, partly because he made the outlandish normal without paying much of a price for it, and partly because his tax cut proved (again!) that the GOP didn’t really care about deficits. And so, today, the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is pushing programs that would blow up the deficit and interest rates and have no chance of becoming reality in the absence of the long-awaited, never-arriving “revolution.”
It’s fine to dream as long as your dreams don’t turn off swing voters and cost you the election. When it is all said and done, America will crash if it isn’t run by adults, and the Republicans steadfastly refuse to grow up, so the Democratic nominee is our only hope.