We have certain principles that are very aspirational, along with other principles that are very immediate.
I agree, for example, that inclusiveness and equality are important, critical principles. But does that mean that, unless we can achieve full inclusiveness and full equality in every way, in this moment, we should not select an option that gets us at least part way there?
Do we allow a candidate who will deeply damage people to win because we refuse to vote for a candidate who we think is not as progressive as we want them to be? In my view, refusing to vote for that candidate is not standing on principle. It's allowing an abstract notion of perfection to stand in the way of actual progress.
Many people have a revisionist view of the civil rights struggle, thinking that Dr. King, Thurgood Marshall, and other civil rights leaders refused to compromise when in reality, the struggle was all about compromise in order to make baby steps toward progress.
For example, did you know that the Montgomery Bus Boycott didn't fully desegregate the city buses? It resulted in a compromise version of segregation whereby whites would still sit in the front and blacks would still sit in the back. White riders would continue to fill up the bus from front to back and blacks would fill up from back to front. The change was that blacks would no longer have to give up their seats to white riders. Instead, when the black section filled up, blacks could then sit in the front white section, as long as there were seats available and when the white section filled up, whites could sit in the black section.
Certainly, some purists of today would insist that such a compromise was a sellout of "principles"- that unless full desegregation occurred, the boycott should continue. But the organizers saw this as a major victory and knew that incremental change was more important than waiting out for a revolution. And they were right - just as they expected, it was not long before the buses became completely desegregated.
The idea that anyone believes that "standing on principle" meant not voting for the only candidate who could have stopped Donald Trump and that the pain, suffering and damage that results to people is a price we must pay (or actually, THEY must pay, since the people taking this stand aren't really paying any serious personal price) in order to eventually achieve some principle is absolutely despicable to me.
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