I'm an expat. I live in Germany most of the year. Every year for more than three weeks in August, I travel to the US to visit family and friends. I've just spent a wonderful, relaxing three weeks in the beautiful state of Colorado. I have a generous amount of paid vacation time, mandated by the German government (something Bernie supports, but Hillary is silent on).

By now most of us are familiar with what Sanders means when he calls himself a 'democratic socialist'. He insists that the US, one of the wealthiest nations in the world, can afford to provide its workers with paid vacation time, with universal health care, with a free college education (again, something Hillary does not support). He knows that we have the wealth to improve our nation's infrastructure--every time I return to the US, I'm horrified by how dilapidated this country has become. The position of many Hillary supporters is that (some of) these things are pie-in-the sky dreaming, unrealistic, and unattainable in the US. There is indeed some truth to this--Republicans are committed to obstructing social progress.

But this attitude reflects just how far we have fallen, how far right our discourse has gone, how deeply disconnected we are from the rest of the world, particularly northern Europeans, who view the US with a combination of horror, disgust (at our foreign policy), and at times, sympathy. They fundamentally do not understand how we still do not have single-payer health care, strong public education that is state subsidized from preschool through specialty training or university education and beyond, unemployment benefits, job-placement and paid retraining services, paid parental leave, generous pensions, and more (much more!).

I am not suggesting that Hillary opposes all these things, though she is conspicuously silent on many of them. What I AM suggesting is that none of these systems in northern Europe happened by accident. They did not magically appear. They were meticulously planned and executed--and what have they delivered to their people? A balance of regulated capitalism, universal social welfare, political democracy, and the highest levels of gender and economic equality on the planet.

My point here is that we will never get there if we don't plan it, and if we don't demand it. And we will certainly NEVER get there by supporting a candidate that is silent on what should be viewed as basic workers and human rights. I'm not even getting into foreign policy or Wall Street--again, no need to get into Hillary's relationship with Wall Street--we know what it is. But it should be obvious to all that without a fundamental change of the role of Wall Street and corporate power in our nation, none of the social values our party should support will be realized.

So when you tell me that these "socialist" values are not realistic, and that most Americans won't vote for them, I'll tell you that the only way to bring this country back from the abyss the right has taken us is to fight for these values and support the candidates that best represent them. The choice is obvious.