Stop apologizing for winning.
In 2008 I sympathized with Hillary supporters until the path to the nomination was clear. At that point their cries for validation were no longer the responsibility of the party. I like most people, embraced Obama and rightly criticized Hillary supporters for trying to make his win about their hurt feelings. As if they were children, who needed to be taught that sometimes you don’t get what you want.
The voting age is 18, so all these people are adults. Stop placating them. Stop trying to convince them. Being adult is about looking the reality in front of you and choosing the best path forward. That is their responsibility, not yours. Their hurt feelings don’t supersede a hard fought victory by an extraordinary woman. It also shouldn’t lessen your enthusiasm about the fight we are about to win. Either they will be down in the foxholes with us, or they will be on the couch complaining about the way things should have gone. There is no compulsory voting in this country. People willingly disenfranchise themselves in every election. We fight without them every election. Instead of focusing on them, focus on the men and women beside you in the trenches.
We know what we are about, and we have made extraordinary progress over the last 8 years. If instead of being judged against some utopia, we look at where we were after president Howdy Doody left office, we are on the path to a better America. Through hard fought incremental progress, we have pulled ourselves up from the brink of collapse.
Our progress has been so great, that the other side has been distilled down into its most base form. In Donald Trump we see the GOP presenting an unapologetic push for an America, which is sexist, racist and xenophobic. An America based on the notion of white male entitlement. An America that shields itself from a changing world, and retracts against the challenges of this young century.
We are on the right side of history. Our coalition is broad. We don’t represent the thin slivers of ideology being pushed onto a political system frozen in ideological purity. More uncompromising purity is not the solution, and never is. We don’t need to tear down America, we need to fix it. We need to continue the path we started 8 years ago.
If we roll up our sleeves, we are presented with a rare opportunity this fall. We are facing a a political opposition collapsing under its own weight. A coalition suffering the gravitational implosion of a generation of purity seekers. If anyone on the left touts the merits of rigid ideology, point to that singularity and the resulting black hole, which is Donald Trump, and say “Is that what you want for our party?”