by John Walters

So yesterday afternoon I tuned in, briefly, to MSNBC (guilty) to watch Nicolle Wallace. She seems cool and has some common sense and isn’t hard on the eyes (I called her as a future MSNBC host back when she was just a guest analyst four years ago). And you know, Wallace worked for Bush 43: she’s a Republican. Or at least she was.

Anyway, she had on some Politico writer from New Hampshire who seemed awfully young and awfully milquetoast. And when she asked him about Mike Bloomberg this writer, who might as well have had “WILLIAMSBURG MILLENNIAL” tattooed on his forehead, opined that he could not see any path with the Democrats for the former Republican billionaire to win the Democratic nomination. I don’t think it’s unfair to say that this writer probably identifies as a “Bernie Bro.”

Now, it’s fine if you’re a Bernie Bro. Or if you’re warrin’ for Warren. Or if you happen to love Amy Klobuchar or Andrew Yang’s $1,000-a-month plan or Mayo Pete (great line, SNL). By the way, has anyone ever noticed how similar Pete Buttigieg and Boston Celtics coach Brad Stevens are? Both Hoosier natives, both precocious jump-to-the-front-of-the-line types, both analytical whiz-kid types, both speak in tempered tones, both have brown hair and look as if they just stepped out of the Eisenhower era, both are preternaturally successful and yet not take-it-all-the-way-home successful…

Anyway, I don’t really care which candidate you like. Even Bloomberg. But that’s not the point. What’s funny, and also sad, to me, is this dopey mood I see all over Twitter and with this Politico writer which is basically, Man, if my progressive candidate isn’t nominated this whole thing is gonna go down in flames.

No, dude. Just no.

After the Politico writer, who probably isn’t even 35 yet, spoke (via remote), Wallace returned to three guests in the studio. All older. All who seem to have lived lives more real than this young man (two of the three were black women). And all three almost chortled and you know the women wanted to say, “Child, please.” Or something like that.

Instead what they said to this young idealist was this, and I paraphrase, “Get over yourselves. What makes Bloomberg or Klobuchar or Warren worth nominating is that these people are fighters. They will fight the incumbent with everything they’ve got.”

While someone like Bernie is going to push his radical agenda and hope everyone hops on board, a pragmatist like Bloomberg is going to keep his eye on the ball: and that means doing the only thing that matters in November. Beating Donald Trump.

Which is not to say that people shouldn’t support Bernie. Go ahead and do so if you want. But for goodness sakes, man (and all Democrat zealots, of which I am not), do not take your eyes off the ball: Beating Donald Trump is the only thing that matters.

So no matter who wins in New Hampshire tonight, and going forward, it’s totally cool to stan for whichever candidate you like. But after the dust settles, no matter who it is, and hopefully it will have been a fair fight this time (we’re looking at you, DNC from 2016), that’s the candidate you support. There has never been a more important election in your lifetime. There will likely never be. There’s only one thing that matters: defeating Trump in November.

Get over your flaccid idealism. Your hope of health care for all and/or free college education. And those are other topics for another day. But none of that matters. The only thing that matters is beating Donald Trump. So it doesn’t matter who the candidate is.

Unless it’s Tom Steyer. And then we’re truly f****d.

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