The Nation: Why Progressives Should Vote for Hillary Clinton
I'm posting the end of the article rather than the beginning. It starts with a few paragraphs about how horrible Trump is.
https://www.thenation.com/article/why-progressives-should-vote-for-hillary-clinton/
What about Jill Stein? In Europe, the Greens have emerged as an effective voice—and conscience—for the environmental left. We would still like to see Stein and Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson included in the presidential debates, and we respect the challenge that both have raised to a frequently dysfunctional two-party system. But we cannot agree with Johnson’s penchant for privatization and survival-of-the-fittest economics. And while we share many of the views that Stein has advanced, her cause has not been helped by the Green Party’s reluctance, or inability, to seek, share, and build power, with all the messy compromise this often entails. Instead of the patient—and Sisyphean—task of building an authentic grassroots alternative, the Greens offer a top-down vehicle for protest.
If this were an ordinary election, there would be little reason to depart from the practice of strategic voting, which requires only swing-state voters to choose between the lesser of two evils. But 2016 is not an ordinary election. We know that some readers will find it hard to vote for Clinton; we ask them to think again. Not just about forgoing the advances that a Clinton administration could achieve if progressives were empowered: stopping the Trans-Pacific Partnership; overturning Citizens United; debt-free college; a path to citizenship for immigrants; paid family leave; the biggest investment in jobs since World War II; and an administration that looks like America today. But also to reconsider the balance between expressing their own disgust and diminishing the size of Trump’s repudiation.
Without question, a Trump victory would represent much more than a temporary setback. At best, it would throw movements that have made enormous strides in the past year on the defensive. At worst, that tremendous reservoir of movement energy might well dissipate—or evaporate in the heat of despair, amid recriminations about opportunities missed. And for millennial voters, many of whom were inspired by Sanders to engage electoral politics for the first time, a Trump presidency would spell a generation of ecological and economic ruin. We cannot risk that fate.
Over the past eight years, progressives have learned the hard way that voting for hope and change doesn’t always deliver hope or change. So while voting for Clinton may be necessary, it is hardly sufficient. Clinton now stands with progressives on a host of issues, from health care to climate change. On criminal justice and trade policy, she’s moved left even when that involved renouncing her husband’s legacy. On foreign policy, we still have much work to do. All the more reason, then, to stay mobilized. For progressives, a Clinton victory should be cause for organization, not celebration. Unless we stay right on top of her administration—watching, protesting, demanding—she may abandon her newfound progressive positions. What we don’t know—and won’t ever know, unless she’s elected—is how far we might push her. As Frederick Douglass noted, “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” How much might an administration that relies on our votes, but is far from certain of getting them,
accomplish at our demand? There is only one result in November that will give us the chance to find out.
