On Sandwiches, Salads, Rat Poison, and the 2016 Election

For everybody who still has the “Bernie or Bust” mentality, imagine this:

Imagine that you and your friends are trying to decide what kind of sandwich to get for lunch (for this admittedly tenuous metaphor to work, let’s pretend that you and your friends must all buy the same type of sandwich).

You’re hungry, but to be honest, you’re tired of sandwiches. You and your friends have been eating sandwiches for as long as you can remember, and you think it’s time for a change. Instead of a boring old sandwich, you suggest, how about a healthy, refreshing salad?

You really like the idea of having a salad for lunch, but unfortunately, it doesn’t really catch on with your friends. They aren’t ready for something so different from what they’re used to, and they’d rather stick to what they’re more familiar with: sandwiches. However, as you talk about salads more and more, they realize that they do like some aspects of the food, so in the end, they offer a compromise: a veggie wrap.

Now, a veggie wrap is not a salad. Sure, it incorporates many elements of a salad, but ultimately, it’s still a sandwich. You’re hesitant to agree to the veggie wrap because it’s not what you want and you’re still holding out hope that you might be able to get a salad, even though your friends have told you it’s not an option.

Next, let’s imagine that one of your friends sees that you’re bored of sandwiches, so they decide to make a revolutionary lunch suggestion of their own: rat poison. It’s different, exciting, and definitely not a sandwich. Many of your friends are disgusted and horrified by this suggestion, but, to your surprise, some of them are curious to try it. In the end, about half of your friends decide to go with the veggie wrap, while the other half want to try their luck with the rat poison.

By now, you’re frustrated, sad, and angry that none of your friends wanted salad. You feel like they’ve abandoned you by choosing the veggie wrap. But remember, you and all of your friends ultimately have to eat the same thing.

At this point, you have to make a decision. You could go with the veggie wrap, you could choose the rat poison, or, as a way of displaying your anger at the system, you could eat nothing at all.

Here’s the thing: at the end of the day, it doesn’t make sense to skip lunch just because you can’t have a salad. It doesn’t make sense for your friends and you to literally eat rat poison just because a veggie wrap wasn’t the lunch you originally wanted. Eventually, you have to realize that choosing the veggie wrap is the best possible option, even if it is just a boring old sandwich.

In case you don’t get it, let me cut out the metaphor and say what I want to say directly: I get that you are angry, sad, and frustrated that Bernie isn’t an option anymore. I understand that. But it doesn’t make sense to stay home and let Donald Trump, the human embodiment of rat poison, become president simply because you don’t like the options. Let’s not kid ourselves; a veggie wrap is not a salad and Hillary Clinton is not Bernie Sanders. She is an establishment politician. With that said, however, Clinton has adopted many of Bernie Sanders’ policies, from free higher education to campaign finance reform, and, obviously, she’s far more similar to him than Donald Trump.

TL;DR: If we can’t have a salad, Hillary Clinton is the veggie wrap this country needs.