Even though it has become clear to many ardent revolutionaries on both sides of the political aisle that Third Way types like Jon Cowan/David Brock and the DNC Superdelegates and other Party insiders don’t mind “losing” to Donald Trump, diehard Democrats would do almost anything not to let anyone from outside the Democratic Party win the White House. It’s a horserace for them. And their elitism is why they hate Bernie. That’s the reason they keep reminding us that he is not actually a Democrat. Many of them absolutely loathe his populism. Their class-based sense of entitlement runs very deep. Because of that, it will take the dynamite of Bernie or Else to drag them kicking and screaming to vote for him in the primaries. They currently insist that they will come around later rather than sooner — only after doing their damndest to get another anointed corporatist the Democratic nomination. They (falsely) believe that such a candidate will best protect their privilege. That’s why they mirror the Third Way sentiment that #anyonebutbernie should win the Democratic nomination, and why they say they will vote for “an existential threat to the future of the Democratic Party for the next generation” such as Bernie Sanders only if he first manages to win the Democratic nomination in spite of their best efforts to defeat him.

I know better. I know that they can be persuaded to come around sooner (for the individual primaries and caucuses) rather than later (only in the general election) and here’s how I know: Even though they hate to admit it, they already have done the math and realize that there are way too many hardcore anti-plutocrats who will not blink first. Even though corporatist/elitist Democrats will flat out deny it, they are too savvy not to realize the likelihood (practically guaranteed even at this point in the election cycle) that Sanders supporters AGAIN will refuse to unite behind a revolting neoliberal corporate crony candidate. Political neophytes are a different story. They don’t understand how the electoral college works. They don’t understand the key role of swing states. But the savvy armchair political quarterbacks know better. They likely have heard that 12% of Sanders voters in swing states voted directly for Trump in 2016 and that current polls show the likelihood that at least 20% of Sanders voters would do so again if faced with a corporate-sponsored candidate in the general election.

Even though it is painful to the segment of multigenerational Democrats who have never suffered the degradation of systemic bias, here’s why they must be confronted repeatedly with the facts. In my Twitter, Reddit, and FaceBook conversations, those who have had it spelled out for them now understand the inevitable. They just hate the message (and the messenger) with a passion. But their tribalism/classism/elitism will bring them around in the end as long as we revolutionaries are effectively able to demonstrate that, unless they blink first, four more years of Donald Trump is a foregone conclusion — we revolutionaries who know that privilege is the only reason for them to wave Donald Trump in our faces and attempt again to get us to follow them down an incrementalist path that leads only to more of the same status quo bullshit that has been relentlessly squeezing regular working-class Americans for the last 50 years or more. They absolutely will not be able to shove a neoliberal (cloaked or not) down our throats and if they truly wish not to “lose” to Donald Trump, they had better figure this out well in advance of next February when the primary process begins.