I originally wrote this essay as a Facebook post, but am posting it on DailyKos after the wide attention it has received and at the urging of my dad (and DK staffer), Greg Dworkin:
As a Bernie voter myself, I'll give my peers out there a few weeks to be mad. Then I'm going to tell them to get over it.
Bernie supporters: we didn't get what we wanted. It's important to be mature enough to understand that doesn't mean the apocalypse. And a higher quantity of people than us - true liberals and true progressives who believe everything we do - wanted Hillary.
Yes, super delegates (party elites) were clearly on Hillary's team, and yes the system was set up in a rigged way in order to favor a candidate approved by those elites. However, the math fact is she was going to win anyway, even without super delegates, and last night she clinched the majority of pledged delegates (representing popular vote) too. The system obviously needs to be changed, but even if it was perfect this year Hillary still would have won.
In a primary, diehard supporters of any candidate are often in disbelief that fellow party members (or ideological allies) could possibly support someone else. Even given how biased the process was, it's the height of immaturity to believe that, if only the process were different, you would have gotten what you wanted. It's a similar mythology to the way both parties talk about how "most Americans" are REALLY on their side, and if only those voices were heard, their side would always win - the implication being no candidate ever loses because of their own faults or failures, and it's always because of low turnout or a rigged system.
Hillary Clinton has been denied legitimacy for decades by her opponents on the right, and I think the temptation among Bernie supporters to do the same this time shows how effective that propaganda has been. Sure, she's an establishment big-wig with a bajillion connections and a lot of rich donors, and you can believe (as I do) that a person in that position is not likely to be particularly effective at reform in the face of crises.
But the idea that she's corrupt and a liar is something that has saturated our minds not because it's true, but because Republicans have been trying to get people to believe it's true for a long, long time. Without that messaging machine, nobody would believe that about Hillary - one is the direct cause of the other. I'm not even going to delve into the obvious sexism that coats the way her accomplishments are constantly dismissed or consciously obscured by (mostly) fake scandals.
We need to understand a candidate's flaws for what they are, not continuously convince ourselves they're the scum of the Earth because our guy didn't win.
Except Trump. He's the scum of the Earth. And, in a two-party system, not voting for Hillary directly helps him. Since stopping Trump is my top concern, I believe every Bernie supporter has the responsibility to vote for Hillary in the fall.
Sure, be mad at me for saying that. I'll take all the abuse. Nobody likes being told what to do, or that they need to be soldiers for someone they don't like. But the flawed nature of our democracy means I feel like I'm quite literally left with no choice in the matter. To throw a tantrum or stay home accomplishes nothing and does not continue any sort of struggle.