I hesitate to make the argument that Hillary's values, record, and beliefs are ethically immaterial in this election because I happen to think she has great values (if you didn't realize all politicians have a public and a private position and for good reason: hello, tiny baby who was born yesterday, you can't vote anyway so your opinion doesn't matter), an awe-inspiring record of public service (typically people don't become public defenders and go to work for the Children's Defense Fund as part of a get-rich-quick scheme), and anyone who claims she doesn't "believe in anything" simply hasn't done their homework (although I assure you she has, and the extra credit, too). Her record of accomplishments genuinely speaks for itself if you bother to listen, and in any fair or sane world that should stand on its own merits. No, she is not perfect, but I challenge you to find any politician who has made as many lives materially better as she has (really the only metric that counts, and one at which Bernie, lovable and righteous as he is, falls woefully short), all the while living under more intense and largely unearned scrutiny than I think the rest of us can even begin to imagine.
If "she's not perfect" is indeed your best argument against voting for her, I further challenge you to examine why you thought that was a reasonable litmus test in the first place. If you're really, brutally honest with yourself, I don't think you'll like what you see. Call it the soft misogyny of impossible expectations.
But on this day, mere hours away from a potential President-elect Trump, the truth is none of that matters in the slightest. I've been traveling a lot in the last few months and as you might imagine have had a lot of conversations about the election with voting age millennials. Almost to a person, those a few years older than I am had at the very least registered to vote, informed themselves about the local issues and candidates that would also be on their ballot, and found their polling place and made arrangements to get there on Election Day – or, even better, had already voted by mail. I look at my Facebook feed and see friends old and new making calls and canvassing and knocking on doors and it fills me with pride and hope for my generation.
And yet – I am continually shocked by the amount of apathy and outright disdain for civic engagement I see among people my age. Too many are rebranding their ignorance as disillusionment. You have to earn the right to be jaded. I cannot count the number of times I have heard vague, ill-formed arguments that fall apart under even the slightest bit of scrutiny about the lesser of two evils still being evil and the importance of voting your conscience. When did we decide that merely participating in the political process was tantamount to selling your soul? Better yet: who told you elections were about you?
To those people, all I can do is repeat what others have been saying and writing and shouting for months and hope the message finally sinks in: protest votes and indifference are a privilege we, collectively, cannot afford. This is real. This is happening. Take a second and try to appreciate the magnitude of this moment. You may personally be fine living in President Trump's America (although I don't think anyone really has any clue just how awful that could be, as he seems to have a virtually limitless reservoir of awful at his disposal), but there are so, so many people whose lives will be made objectively and immeasurably worse.
That's really all that matters. That's what this comes down to. If you really, truly see Hillary as the lesser of two evils, then that is all the reason you need to vote for her. This is a binary decision, because either Hillary or Trump will most certainly be the next President; wouldn't you prefer a less evil President to a more evil one?
To all my friends who have volunteered and donated and driven across the country and slept in the backs of your cars – whether for the last two days or the last two years – you inspire me. This is history in the making. Let's do our generation proud. Let's go elect the first female President of the United States.