Dear Progressives, Please Stop the Hand-Wringing Over Joe Biden

Democrats of all stripes should learn to stop worrying and learn to love the nominee.

Sometimes, it seems to me that the American left has some sort of death drive, some innate determination to sabotage its own efforts to make the United States into a better, more just, more equitable place for everyone. While this was incredibly clear in 2016, when a certain segment of the American left (~cough~ The Green Party ~cough~) thought it was a good idea to spend their energy tearing down Hillary Clinton, I’ve also seen it begin to emerge in this year’s election, particularly once it became clear that Joe Biden was going to be the nominee.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve perused Facebook and seen some variant of the following: “Well, Joe Biden wasn’t my first choice of a candidate — hell, he wasn’t even my seventh choice — but you can bet your ass I’ll be voting for him in November!”

I absolutely hate when people do that.

Let me explain why.

For one thing, consider the structure of the above sentiment. It privileges the fact that the speaker didn’t want Joe Biden to win the nomination. Not just that: they were adamantly opposed to it. While this might seem like a nice bit of…