The other night, my friend Will told me, “You’ve really been coming out strong for Bernie Sanders recently!” That surprised me because I feel more and more stuck in the middle. I have substantive problems with Clinton on policy. And I have real concerns about Bernie Sanders’ general election chances. This isn’t, of course, a brand new thing. I’ve been grappling with the question for some time. Back in September, I wrote, What Risk Is Bernie Sanders Worth? I wrote then, “If I think that Hillary Clinton has a 55% chance of winning the general election and Bernie Sanders has a 45% chance, then there is no question: I’ll go with Bernie. If Bernie has a 10% chance, I’ll go with Hillary.”

The funny thing is, at the last Democratic debate, I got a sense that Sanders himself is a little concerned that he might win the primary. All throughout this campaign, I’ve thought that Sanders was the real deal — that he wasn’t an issue candidate, but someone who really thought he could win the presidency. Now I don’t know. But it could be that I’m projecting. If Bernie is a real threat to Hillary, I need to get very serious about both of their general election chances.

But let’s not kid ourselves. Playing the electability game is foolish. In 2004, as a party, we chose Kerry over Dean because he was more electable. But knowing what I now know about political science, Dean was clearly our best chance of winning the presidency. The only way that we could have won that election was by making it about the Iraq War, and that was something that Kerry just couldn’t do. I do think that under normal circumstances, Clinton has the better general election chances. But if the economy starts to crumble, Sanders will likely be the only chance the Democrats have.

Bernie Sanders’ General Election Chances

One concern about Sanders that I’ve had for some time now is that if the economy continues to improve, the Republicans might be smart and make the election about foreign policy and terrorism. Now, as was fully on display at Saturday’s GOP debate: the Republicans have the problem of not actually wanting to do anything different than the Democrats; they just want to talk tough. But that could be enough to convince the electorate. In the end, it is all about perceptions anyway. But the Republicans couldn’t do that if Clinton were the candidate. So I tend to think that even a major domestic terrorist attack would benefit Clinton.

Last week, Max Fisher wrote a very good article, Why I’m Not Writing Off Bernie Sanders on Foreign Policy. Basically, he said that foreign policy was really all a game. There are certain advisers that presidents have, and this is how foreign policy is determined. The media are caught up in Sanders going through a certain political theater where he shows that he understands foreign policy and he knows who the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-stan-stan is. Sanders is instead focused on the economy, which is why I love him. But it also hurts his general election chances.

My second concern comes from an article by Jeff Stein, We Asked 6 Political Scientists if Bernie Sanders Would Have a Shot in a General Election. It’s an actual article genre at Vox, with articles like, “We Asked 6 Zoologists What the Giraffe’s Most Distinctive Feature Is.” But they are useful. And the consensus was that Bernie could win under the right circumstances. Much of it is just conventional wisdom and I don’t buy into it. I continue to wonder about one bit of political science that no one seems to understand: why does the electorate get more liberal when a conservative is in the White House and vise versa. And if that’s the case, why do most presidents win re-election?

But Seth Masket said something that concerned me. He said that Sanders’ more liberal positions would probably cost him 2 to 3 percentage points in the general election. Now, maybe I’m just letting my natural affinity for math sway me — he used numbers! But he put it into a context that I know very well and believe in very strongly, “It’s not as big an effect as flipping a growing economy to one in recession. It’s more like flipping a growing economy to a stalled one.” Ouch.

If true, that makes Bernie Sanders’ general election chances more like the 10% case than the 45% case. And that frightens me. A Republican president would be a catastrophe. I keep thinking, “The electorate has to wake up eventually! They can’t keep voting for the same failed promises and utter incompetence!” But all evidence says that they can.

Meanwhile, I will continue to accumulate information about Bernie Sanders’ general election chances.

I wish politics were more kind and honest. But I hardly expect it. What I would hope is that at least the “liberal” party could have a presidential primary in which we didn’t get lost in fantasy. I’m not talking about Sanders’ proposals, which are fantastic to one degree or another. I’m talking about pretending to be outraged because you’ve chosen to read a bit of data in a way that will allow you to be outraged. I am, of course, talking about what Washington Blade reported over the weekend, Clinton Surrogates Pounce on Sanders Over ’82 Marriage Resolution. Is this what the Democratic primary has come to?

I am trying to be very even-handed in this Democratic primary, and this afternoon, you will see an article I’ve written that is very critical of Sanders’ chances in a general election. But this story is just ridiculous. Back in 1982, while Sanders was mayor of Burlington, he signed a document for “We Believe in Marriage Week.” The third part of it says that marriage “should be viewed as a lifelong commitment between husband and wife filled with mutual respect and open, honest communications.” Aha, say the Clinton surrogates! Christine Quinn tweeted, “@BernieSanders says he pure on #lgbt.Cites 80’s Pride March-omits yr before as Mayor he signed reso affirming marriage ONLY btw man/woman??”

Really?! I don’t read it that way. This sounds so much like most of what you find in So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed? When I wrote about that book (and elsewhere), I noted that most of the cases of outrage were just people insisting upon seeing a statement or tweet in the worst possible light. In those cases, it is just people who so want to feel superior and love the rush that outrage brings with it. Here it is just a political game.

Note that same sex marriage was not always a gay rights issue. There was a strong contingent of the LGBT community that was distinctly uninterested in the matter. But regardless, does anyone anywhere think that such a milquetoast resolution in 1982 would have explicitly included same sex marriage? The first state to allow same sex marriage was Massachusetts in 2003. And regardless, not explicitly including same sex marriage is not the same as excluding it. Quinn’s statement is factually wrong. You could say that it “only affirmed marriage,” but you can’t say it the other way around. And that is the point: to make it sound like Sanders signed something like DOMA.

Does This Help Clinton in Democratic Primary?!

In addition to all of this, I really wonder how this all helps Clinton in the Democratic primary. After all, it is Clinton who is worse on this issue. It was her husband who signed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. (And who is, right on cue, doing his crazy husband act.) Sanders voted against it. Clinton was still in favor of it in 2000 when she ran for Senate. She didn’t come out in favor of same sex marriage until 2013, which is, let me see now, after my 80 year old father did. And for the record, I was ranting rather loudly back in the early 1990s about the lack of same sex marriage being an explicit form of government oppression. Still, I don’t care one way or another about when either of these candidates came around.

Let’s face it: they both exist in different political environments. Sanders has been in a smaller league where it was easier to be bold. But he didn’t have to be bold, and he should be given credit. Clinton has been in the major league for decades, and her positions indicate that: from the Iraq War to same sex marriage. But I think she too needs to be given credit, because if she had acted as Sanders, she wouldn’t have been a player; she would have been like Eleanor Roosevelt: beloved by liberals, but sidelined.

Just the same, this attack on Sanders is nonsense. This is exactly the kind of thing that I did not want to see in this Democratic primary. It’s not even submental. It’s too practiced for that. It’s demagoguery of the most facile kind.

As most of you know, I have a PhD in physics. And I know a lot of stuff about arcane topics. But I did not major in economics. I didn’t even minor in economics. I just took one stupid course! I really enjoyed it. The subject was fascinating and I had a great teacher. Still, I write about economics. But I probably shouldn’t. After all, according to Hale Stewart, “Econ isn’t something you can teach yourself.”

If this is the case, why should anyone read about economics from writers like, oh, I don’t know, Hale Stewart? I mean, if econ isn’t something you can teach yourself, what is the point? If a stack of good books on the subject isn’t going to help you, how are some articles at Business Insider written by lawyer?

This is all a response to an article at The Bonddad Blog, where Hale Stewart recently wrote, Ed Morrissey Should Really Stop Writing About Economics. According to him, having some kind of formal education is very important. (For the record, my self-study of physics before I became a formal student was probably the best part of my education. But that’s just physics, not a real subject like economics!)

Don’t get me wrong, I’m with Hale Stewart: Ed Morrissey really should stop writing about economics. But Stewart’s argument is elitist nonsense. I would have let it go if it hadn’t been for the second part of his article.

Hale Stewart Should Stop Writing About Labor Force Participation

Stewart complained that Morrissey is constantly talking about labor force participation. This is a very interesting issue. You see, since about 2000, the fraction of people in the labor force (employed or seeking employment) has dropped — precipitously. And that has many people concerned. Stewart does a good job of going over the demographic factors that explain most of this: retiring baby boomers and fewer students working. But that still leaves us with a problem.

If we look at prime age workers (people between the ages of 25 to 54), these demographic factors don’t apply. And Hale Stewart grudgingly admits, “There is a percentage of people ages 24-54 (the prime working age) that have left the labor force.” That’s actually a highly deceptive statement. It implies that there is 1% or one percentage point. Instead, if we look at civilian employment, it is well over two percentage points since the financial crisis, and well over three since the high tech boom of the late 1990s.

But not to worry! Hale Stewart wipes that all a way with a wave of his callous and elitist hand:

Oh, well! Why didn’t he just say that to start with! There’s a reason these people are unemployed, so we can just abandon these people. But there’s one little problem with this theory. Globalization didn’t suddenly get worse after the financial crisis. There are very real reasons for not being impressed with the current economy, as discussed by Kevin Cashman, Prime-Age Workers Left the Labor Force During the Recession And the Recovery.

It amazes me how elites like Hale Stewart can be so cavalier about what’s going on with less educated workers. But it is hardly new. The argument that Stewart is implicitly making is the skills gap: these people just don’t have the skills for the modern economy! That’s an easy argument to make when you don’t hang out with those blue collar workers who are having a rough time of it.

I would prefer that Ed Morrissey go away too. He’s a hack, as I discussed in, Conservatives Will Never Get Over Obamacare. But his problem is not that he didn’t minor in economics. And on the labor force participation rate, he’s right. The big problem with him is that if there were a Republican in the White House, he wouldn’t be making this argument. Instead, he’d be making Hale Stewart’s argument: low skilled workers are out of a job; so what?!

Paul Krugman provided this fine pie chart that shows who exactly is paying taxes on long term capital gains. The reason it is important is because Marco Rubio wants to eliminate this tax. Up until now, this idea has been extreme even for Republicans. And you can see why: over half of benefits from Marco Rubio’s tax cut would go to the top 0.1% — the people in the top 1/1000th of the income distribution. And if you look at the whole of the top 1%, that’s almost 80% of where all the benefits go.

Still, I find the graph a tad bit deceptive, because people tend to assume that “everyone else” is somewhat equitable. I’m not suggesting that Krugman means to imply this. He’s making a different point anyway. I just know how non-mathematical people think about this kind of stuff. Something that Krugman has written about over the years is that inequality is kind of like a fractal. (Actually, I believe that’s my analogy, not his.) It doesn’t matter where you are in the income scale, the people above you are a lot more rich than you are. It’s such that people barely in the top 1% often think of themselves as poor because they are around people who are so much more wealthy. And so on until you get to Bill Gates, who when asked if he was rich said only, “Well, I’m certainly not middle class.” (Or something like that.)

The data for this graph comes from the Tax Policy Center. And if you look at the top 5%, you get 92.3%. The top 10%? 95.4%. And the top 20% — the upper class? 97.5%. So 97.5% of Marco Rubio’s tax cut on long term capital gains would go to the upper class and only the upper class. Pretty amazing, huh?

So let’s talk about what these high incomes mean. In order to just make it into the top 10%, you would be making over $115,000 per year. To just make it into the top 1%, you need to be making more than $400,000. I can’t find data on the top 0.1%, but we are talking millions per year. So these are not people who are struggling. They are not the people who need helping and they are not the “job creators” who will start hiring if only they had just a bit more money.

But it’s worse than even that. There’s 2.5% left over for the bottom 80%. Is it shared even somewhat equally? Of course not!

The upper middle class gets most of the remaining: 1.9%. The middle class gets almost all of the rest: 0.6%. The lower-middle class get the final 0.1%. The lower class — those in the bottom 20% — get nothing at all. Of course, you can depend upon the Republicans finding some middle class person who gets all their income from long-term capital gains and dividends, and making a commercial where they talk about how much better their lives will be. Meanwhile, millions more children will go to bed each night hungry. But that won’t be mentioned.

Income inequality is a virus that is killing our democracy. And it does those who have excessive money no good. As Henry George noted long ago, “Man is the only animal whose desires increase as they are fed; the only animal that is never satisfied.” I don’t think this is a natural state, but rather the result of a civilization that has no values beyond that of commerce. And people like Marco Rubio think this is just great. The next time he mentions God, remember what he really worships.

There are substantive policy issues regarding the Bernie Sanders policy proposals. The main one that concerns me is Sanders’ healthcare plan.

Now, in a way, it doesn’t matter. We all know that nothing big is going to happen on the left anytime soon. If anything big happens, it will be on the right. If the economy tanks and Republicans take control of Washington, it will be very bad. I fully expect them to repeal Obamacare. And maybe I will have to go down to Mexico, where I could now certainly support myself and get low cost health and dental care.

But this is what’s so frustrating about dealing with this election on the Democratic side. The same people who claim that the Bernie Sanders’ policy proposals are unrealistic are also busy saying that we can’t afford them or that the numbers don’t add up. Still, it does matter to me that politicians that I support have policy proposals that make sense.

I think that Jonathan Chait lays out some valid concerns in his recent article, Bernie Sanders’ Healthcare Plan Does Not Add Up. But just the same, he is playing the “big numbers” game on everyone and I don’t appreciate that.

Chait referenced a study by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, and he claimed Sanders’ healthcare plan “would still fall several trillion dollars short of covering its expenses.” Well, that makes it sound worse than it is. They claim $3 trillion over ten years. Given the total cost of the plan (roughly $15 trillion), that would be a shortfall of roughly 20%. That’s substantial, but that’s nothing compared to, say, Mitt Romney’s tax plan that was nothing but fairy dust.

So the truth is that Sanders’ healthcare plan could be fixed, assuming that this study is correct. I would like to see the Sanders campaign respond to these questions with more than denial. But you can see why it doesn’t. Chait’s article is a great example of this. Half of the article is taken up with Kenneth Thorpe’s analysis that the Sander campaign rightly calls a “complete hatchet job.” It claims that the proposal would cost $14 trillion more than Sanders claims. Thorpe’s claims have been called into question. Jonathan Cohn noted that, “Thorpe’s analysis is as subject to scrutiny and second-guessing as anybody’s.” And David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler provided a thorough refutation of it, On Kenneth Thorpe’s Analysis of Senator Sanders’ Single-Payer Reform Plan.

The real question we have to ask here is whether we actually want to have a policy discussion. I do! But I certainly don’t think that Jonathan Chait does. I think Chait just wants to snipe in a partisan way — that it’s all politics and no policy. Similarly, in The New Yorker, Alexandra Schwartz wrote, Should Millennials Get Over Bernie Sanders? That one was answered by Dean Baker, New Yorker Joins Open Season on Bernie Sanders.

The truth is that no one really wants to talk about Sanders’ healthcare plan or any of this stuff. The media certainly doesn’t. And by that, I’m not even talking about people like Chait who do care about policy when it suits them. But we have a media infrastructure that will not allow candidates to act in reasonable ways and alter their plans. Would it be seen as acceptable for him to alter it? I don’t think so. And I’m not exactly sure what the point would be, given that even if the Democrats were swept into office, the plan would be the starting point of a negotiation.

I watched the vast majority of the New Hampshire debate last night on MSNBC. I was on twitter and had a nice time chatting with Elizabeth, but overall, I wasn’t too pleased. It wasn’t the candidates. Like all the Democratic debates, this one put the Republicans to shame. Bernie and Hillary talk about actual stuff — policy. I wasn’t too thrilled about a lot of the rancor at the beginning, but I guess that’s to be expected. Given what it was (a political debate), the candidates were very well behaved and even went out of their way to say how much they admired each other.

What bothered me were the people on Twitter who were following the New Hampshire debate. They do not share the candidates mutual admiration. I was amazed at the display of closed mindedness. Bernie Sanders’ supporters thought that everything Hillary Clinton said was proof that she was just a fraud. Hillary Clinton supporters thought that everything Bernie Sanders said proved that he was an unserious interloper. There was real hatred for these two candidates by the other side. And I understand having strong feelings. Can we all agree that both these candidates are actually pretty similar? That even John Kasich (by far the most reasonable Republican candidate) would be a catastrophe compared to either Clinton or Sanders?

I like to think in terms of psychology. But most people tend to imagine people they don’t know as being psychopaths. That guy who cut you off in traffic isn’t just in a big rush or having a bad day; no, he’s just driving around everywhere trying to mess with people because he’s evil. It’s a thing we never do to ourselves. When we cut someone off, we know it was usually a mistake, or if we were being rude, it was wrong and not something we go out of our way to do. People have reasons for doing things.

As you should all know, I continue to be a strong Sanders supporter. And I’ll admit: it isn’t just the policies. He reminds me of the old bumper sticker, “If you aren’t outraged; you aren’t paying attention!” But this narrative among a lot of Bernie Sanders supporters that Hillary Clinton is just this corporate tool is all wrong and was on full display during the New Hampshire debate. There was one particularly good example on the other side. One Clinton supporter asked if Sanders respected Obama so much, why did he called for president to be primaried in 2012. I responded that it was to make him a better candidate. She scoffed at this notion. But I know it’s true. I was around. I called for the same thing. A lot of people did, and it was all for that reason. But no, to some Clinton supporters, that can’t be true because Sanders just wants to destroy the Democratic Party or something.

Throughout the debate, I thought that both candidates had strong moments. As I wrote yesterday, I have been disappointed in Sanders for his attacks on Clinton’s purity. I think that got itself worked out last night, and Clinton definitely had him on the ropes regarding that. On the other hand, I thought Clinton went low when she quoted the obviously wrong Kenneth Thorpe financial analysis of Sanders’ healthcare plan. (I have an article about it this afternoon; I wrote it days ago, but it kept getting pushed off.)

The main thing is that I thought both Hillary and Bernie made good points throughout the New Hampshire debate. It reminded me of 2008 when the Democratic Party had three really good candidates. (Obviously, Edwards would have been a disaster because of his affair, which I believe would have come out before the election; but I’m talking policy here.) And there was one moment when I got a flow of tweets from Clinton supporters saying, “I’m with Bernie on this one.” It was the death penalty. We Democrats really don’t like it!

It’s funny to me, because I think Clinton is flat out lying on the issue. I don’t believe for a moment that she actually supports the death penalty. But the truth is that it is very popular in this country. And I don’t begrudge her or any other candidate their little compromises. Certainly Sanders has them too. Despite what some would claim, he is not pure as the driven snow either.

But as Democrats, we really ought to feel good about having these two excellent candidates. We can have heated discussions about which one is better. I don’t buy into the idealist vs pragmatist narrative, but that’s an argument that can be had. I’m going to try to stay out of those arguments, because I feel like I’ve been neck deep in them recently. But if Sanders wins, the Democratic Party needs to get on board with him. And if Clinton wins, Sanders voters need to already understand that Clinton is a real liberal and absolutely deserving of our full-throttled support.

Afterword: New Hampshire Debate

Full disclosure: during the course of the debate, I did drink an entire 12 oz bottle of Lagunitas Brown Shugga’. Even though I try to have a drink every night, I’m still a lightweight. And that particular beer has a 9.8% alcohol content. So after the debate I passed out for an hour and a half. But I felt like I was following everything…

I have a certain fascination with Kenneth Dahlberg. He raised money for Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign and was a critical player in the Watergate scandal. After the break-in was discovered, investigators found that a $25,000 check from Dahlberg had been deposited in the bank account of one of the burglars. As is documented (apparently quite accurately) in probably the most exciting scene in the film All the President’s Men, Dahlberg simply gave the check (a bundle of smaller donations) to Maurice Stans, the head of finance for Nixon’s Committee for the Re-Election of the President (CRP, which everyone who didn’t like Nixon called “creep”).

Maurice Stans was an interesting character. He was Secretary of Commerce from the beginning of 1969 to the beginning of 1972, when he stepped down to help out on Nixon’s campaign. He was basically an accountant. He had worked in the Eisenhower administration. Now he claimed throughout his very long and pampered life that he didn’t know where the money was going. But I find this hard to believe. CRP had a huge slush fund. Nixon had a million dollars in the White House safe. Now if I had been chair of finance for CRP, I think you could rightly believe that I had no idea because I’m clueless. But Stans was an accountant. As it is, it seems that everyone at the Washington CRP office knew something was going on, even if they didn’t know what.

Regardless, Stans was indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice, but never convicted. He pleaded guilty to reporting violations of the Federal Election Campaign Act and had to pay a small (for him) fine. And that was the end of that.

So here is Dahlberg, who is a Republican at a time when it didn’t mean you were a horrible or just deeply ignorant person, who is helping to get his party’s president re-elected. It’s a patriotic act. He believes in the Republican agenda. He isn’t doing it for his direct personal benefit. He’s being a good citizen. And he finds himself in the middle of a criminal conspiracy. It’s just amazing.

Of course, Dahlberg was never indicted or anything. I think that everyone knew all along that he didn’t know what was going on. But it’s kind of interesting that CRP would not deposit the donation into its slush fund and rather just sign over a campaign check to a criminal. This could have been done because they thought Dahlberg was a patsy. But I suspect they did it out of a combination of hubris and incompetence. As Deep Throat says in the film, “Forget the myths the media has created about the White House. The truth is, these are not very bright guys.” (Remember during the George W Bush administration how everyone talked about how brilliant Karl Rove was, but he turned out to be a mediocrity, just like them all.)

What I found interesting was that Kenneth Dahlberg was a World War II hero. He was a fighter pilot in Europe and was credited with 15 aerial victories. In the course of all of that, he was shot down three times himself. He got a ridiculous number of metals, including the Distinguished Service Cross, the second-highest award the army gives out. He had a very eventful war. He was also a very successful businessman — one who actually made things (in particular, hearing aids).

I think it all fits a certain kind of profile of a man who, though very much not like me, was a decent man — trying to do what was right.

Afterword: Theoretical Kenneth Dahlberg

Beliefs are cultural. I think Kenneth Dahlberg was a good and noble man in terms of his business dealings and his politics. He was 55 in 1972, so I think he was, if anything, naive. But if he had been born 40 years later, he would be the same kind of outsourcing, “greed is good,” “demagogue everything for the sake of my tax cuts” jerk that is the Republican Party today. But as the man he was in his own time, he was good — even a hero.

Tomorrow, I will publish an article on how not to attack Bernie Sanders, Who Cares About Bernie Sanders’ Healthcare Plan? Today, I’m going to discuss the right way to attack Bernie Sanders.

Brian Buetler wrote a really good article this morning, Bernie Sanders Will Be Unelectable If He Keeps This Up. And it gets at a really important point about the Sanders campaign. One thing I’ve liked about the Democratic campaign thus far has been the mutual respect that the two main candidates have shown, and how it has been all a question about the best way to achieve our shared liberal goals.

Let’s not forget that the most important liberal policies are widely shared. When it comes to economic matters, people are for a far more fair system than we now have. And when it comes to reproductive rights, people come down firmly on the pro-choice side. (This is often obscured because the anti-choice movement is good pushing the discussion to the edges of the issue: intact dilation and extraction and fetal tissue.) These are not just things that Democrats agree on; they are things that Republicans largely agree on — especially on the economic side.

So the greatest mistake we can make is to turn this into a primary about purity. Screw purity! A huge issue for me is the minimum wage. Sanders is pushing for a $15 minimum wage. Clinton is pushing for a $12 minimum wage. These are not ideological positions. I’m with Bernie: $15 is what we should be going for. It represents a living wage. But $12 is a worthy goal too. And for people working minimum wage in California (where it is, high by American standards at $10 per hour), $12 would be a very big deal. My concern is that asking for $12 does not get you to $12. But regardless, the issue is not ideological.

And this is especially true when there is a large and growing movement in the Republican Party that we should have no minimum wage at all. Based upon their very primitive libertarian thinking with their Frédéric Bastiat thought experiments, all our unemployment problems would go away if only people could take jobs for a buck fifty a day. So it’s really important that we not lose perspective here.

I don’t like to see tweets like this from the Sanders campaign yesterday:

You can be a moderate. You can be a progressive. But you cannot be a moderate and a progressive.

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) February 3, 2016

It was followed up with a series of even worse tweets of the form, “Most progressives I know don’t…” This was responded to cogently by Alex Katz, “Most progressives I know supported the Brady Bill and common sense gun control. Not #BernieSanders.” Now it just so happens that I care far more about economics because I believe economic inequality kills far more people than guns or cars or anything else you can mention. But this is madness to claim that the progressive issues I care most about are what make me pure while I apologize away my heresies.

Brian Beutler’s article is not really meant to attack Bernie Sanders. For one thing, I think he’s highly sympathetic towards Sanders. But he’s providing some excellent reminder to the Sanders campaign that this is not how you win primaries — not to mention general elections.

Recap: How to Attack Bernie Sanders

We know how not to attack Bernie Sanders. Jonathan Chait and Paul Krugman have shown us the way to their eternal shame. But Beutler summarized David Roberts’ criticisms:

I would add to this that I do think it is a problem for the Democratic Party to not nominate a woman. The last time we nominated a woman, it was Geraldine Ferraro, 32 years ago — for vice-president. This too concerns me.

None of this means that I now support Hillary Clinton for president. I wear my Bernie Sanders shirt proudly. I will almost certainly proudly cast my vote for Sanders on 7 June (after the primary is effectively over). But I don’t want to see this turn into a purity contest. I’ve written before, Yes, Hillary Clinton Is a Real Liberal. Now let’s get back to the real substantive campaign that we have thus far had.