Absolutist positions inspire more emotion, more passion, than nuanced, moderate, or pragmatic positions do. It's easier to get excited about medicare for all, without greed driven insurance companies than it is to get excited about shifting the window to the left

by expanding health care coverage so more people can get better health care for less out of pocket costs. But it's easier to get things done when you're willing to move slowly.

There has always been a generational divide between the absolutists and the pragmatists.

Whether it's cynicism, selling out, or the experience of seeing pushes for far left policies spark a backlash that moved the window in the wrong direction, older voters tend to be more moderate.

My parents and their generation were all in for McGovern in 1972.

He lost in one of the worst electoral wipeouts in history, to Richard Nixon. And then we watched in horror as the Reagan years wiped out the progressive tax rates that built the middle class - not to mention the degrading of civil rights, voting rights, and a return of

American imperialism that still poisons parts of the world today.

You don't have to get excited about the nuanced, moderate positions of Joe Biden. But a vote for Biden does not preclude progress on the issues you care most about the way that another 4 years of Trump would.

If it helps, think of it as a vote to stall the swing away from M4A, student debt relief, corporate taxation, and other issues that you care about. Personally, I think it's more than that - I think it's a vote to move the window further left, but at the very least it's a vote

to stop the bleeding.

To the 90% of so of Bernie's supporters that were not tweeting out snakes and rats, I feel your pain. Today is not the day to ask you to abandon your passion. I wish we could wait. But then I look around the same room I've been stuck in for a month

and I'm tired. I'm tired of the daily rallies masquerading as press conferences that spread false and sometimes dangerous misinformation. I'm tired of the corruption on an industrial scale. I'm tired of the constant attacks on the media, health care professionals, scientists,

military officers who are trying to protect their troops, voting rights, civil rights, and democratic traditions.

So I am asking. I'm asking even though in the past I've had some harsh things to say about Sanders and his supporters. I'm asking even though I now today you

need to take a minute to come to terms with it. I'm asking because we need you to work with us to put an end to Trumpism. And you need us to help pass a more progressive agenda, even if we aren't ready to move quite as fast.

This is about more than Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. It's about the Court. It's about the Senate. It's about expanding a Democratic majority in the House so that we can afford to push for more progressive candidates in the future without risking everything.

Progress often comes slowly, if it comes at all.