Leading up to the election last November, I was all-in on Hillary Clinton. This was due in equal measure to her impressive résumé as a career public servant, her capabilities as a politician, and her vision for America’s future. It also helped that, unlike a lot of people my age, I never fully bought into the notion that Bernie Sanders was a better candidate, even though Bernie’s views are far more closely aligned with my own than Hillary’s were. Many of Bernie’s proposals sounded wonderful, but they also demonstrated either a) an overabundance of wishful thinking, or b) a lack of pragmatism, neither of which are typically qualities I look for in a President. Sure, free college for everyone sounds wonderful, but with a Republican-majority Congress – one that doesn’t even see fit to allocate any money to keep people, y’know, alive – it’s a pipe dream. And while Hillary’s proposals were derided for not thinking big enough, in all likelihood, she had much higher odds of passing some of her more moderate legislation than Bernie would have if he were elected.
But it didn’t matter. She lost anyway.