Beyond My Limited Comprehension
It is a puzzle to me how otherwise smart people can fail to see the threat that is Donald Trump in all its ugly glory...and fail to put all other disagreements aside until after we defeat this uniquely dangerous threat.

How do we explain to our grand children that we gave him the nuclear codes...after he told us he was eager to use nuclear weapons...because a highly qualified woman was not liberal enough for me?

Or because we were too distracted to take up the fight against Fox News and the far right campaign against her that has sowed the seeds of her trust problem...largely on the basis of untruths (though like any politician, she is not without sin)?

Or because we just cannot face the fact that Trump will win if we do not get off our couch and stand with the sober and the decent against him and Fox and Brietbart?

Why is it so difficult to come together to fight the most threatening enemy first and then, once we are back within the normal range we can return to other fights--important fights for sure, but none as important as defeating Donald Trump...and we lose each one of these other fights if he is elected.

My own policy preferences lead me to wish I could vote for Barack Obama or Michelle Obama or Paul Wellstone, but what these (and others) have in common is they are not one of the two remaining candidates who will become our next president.

Would it be better if we had a multiparty system? I agree, but we cannot let a desire for structural change to prevent us from operating intelligently within the structure we have today. As difficult as it must be, no good mother would send their young black boy out into the world without clear instructions on how to obey police officers, even as she might also be a leader in Mothers Against Police Harassment. 

"For it's precisely the pursuit of ideological purity, the rigid orthodoxy and the sheer predictability of our current political debate, that keeps us from finding new ways to meet the challenges we face as a country. It's what keeps us locked in "either/or" thinking: the notion that we can have only big government or no government; the assumption that we must either tolerate forty-six million without health insurance or embrace "socialized medicine". It is such doctrinaire thinking and stark partisanship that have turned Americans off of politics. ” Audacity of Hope

We all need to break out of tired trenches and soothing silos to engage with the conflicts we face, deploying the resources on hand, collaborating with those who hold competing or alternative perspectives. 

“...What's troubling is the gap between the magnitude of our challenges and the smallness of our politics--the ease with which we are distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our seeming inability to build a working consensus to tackle any big problem.... With the rest of the public, I had watched campaign culture metastasize throughout the body politic, as an entire industry of insult--both perpetual and somehow profitable--emerged to dominate cable television, talk radio...." Audacity of Hope