The Berners who spent 12 months talking about her like she was the anti-Christ and then pretending she and Trump were no different have a lot to answer for.
There's a big difference. Big. Huge.
I fully support the idea of third-party options. I understand the desire to vote one's conscience (though I don't really like the implication that comes along with that sentiment that anyone who voted for Hillary was somehow betraying their progressive ideals, because that's not true).
But people voted for Nader, too, as well as Perot, hell, for a time there was actually talk of that McMillian guy in Utah possibly beating Trump and Clinton...
...and guess what, third party voters STILL didn't get what they wanted in the end. Those third party votes haven't led to some transformation in our electoral process, all they do is leave people who supported either major party candidate pissed off, and in the end, one of the major candidates that third party voters didn't want still winds up winning anyway. They've put in their protest vote. That's it. That's all they've achieved.
If people are serious about wanting more options in an election, they need to do more than simply just put down a third party vote in a presidential election, because it's going to take a lot more than that to make that happen. And hold the major party candidates accountable for what they promise they'll do, too, while they're running.
And if you want to vote your conscience, fine...but there may come a time when you may not be able to do that. There may come a day when even the third party candidates don't appeal to you, and at some point, pragmatism may have to come into play. I find it exceedingly hard to believe that any liberals/progressives out there who weren't enthused about Clinton couldn't find at least ONE area of common ground with her, ONE possible stance of hers that would make them go, "Oh, she supports that, too? Okay, well, that's a good sign."
Like I've said before, in 2008, Dennis Kucinich was the politician I felt was closest to representing my views. He was coming out in support of same-sex marriage while other Democratic candidates were still hedging and dancing around the issue.
But when he didn't make it through the primaries, I went with Obama as my next choice, because even though, at the time, he wasn't completely on board with that particular issue, he still supported a hell of a lot more rights for gay people than the Republicans did, he still had a lot of other stances that I agreed with, and therefore, he got my vote.
And look what became legal under his presidency. Look who came out in support of transgender rights when the whole bathroom debate was going on. For all people on the left know, Clinton could've been a pleasant surprise to them in many ways.
But now we'll never be able to find out if that would've been the case.