Opinion

Clinton is the best choice for Democrats

Hillary Clinton is far better prepared to be president than her Democratic opponent. Hillary Clinton is far better prepared to be president than her Democratic opponent. Photo: Jim Cole /Associated Press Photo: Jim Cole /Associated Press Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Clinton is the best choice for Democrats 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

The race for the Democratic presidential nomination is between a candidate who wants to ignite a revolution and another who promises a push for progressive incrementalism.

Choosing the former may be enticing to some, but the latter is far more preferable if you are interested in what is far more doable. That difference alone makes Hillary Clinton the best choice for president in the Democratic primary, but she is far better prepared for the job as well.

It is not that the problems Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders outlines aren’t real — former U.S. Sen. and Secretary of State Clinton broadly agrees on many of these problems. And it’s not that many of the nation’s ills couldn’t benefit from dramatic reform. It’s that Sanders’ solutions — a single-payer health system and free college, for instance — have no chance to gain traction in what is still going to be a deeply divided Congress after November.

Clinton has been dogged by her choice to use a private email server while she was secretary of state. And the GOP field has also tried to yoke her with the deaths that occurred at Benghazi while she served in President Barack Obama’s Cabinet.

The first, in the absence of action by the Justice Department, is a case of isolated bad judgment. And the charges in the second haven’t stuck through several congressional and other inquiries simply because this was a tragedy that would have unfolded as it did whoever was president or whoever was secretary of state. There was no dereliction of duty. The most current House inquiry was revealed as a political inquisition designed to damage Clinton in the presidential race.

And we see attempts — principally by Donald Trump — to link Clinton to her husband’s sexual scandals as way off-base. Sexist, even. She was a victim here, not the perpetrator.

But most important, as first lady, a U.S. senator from New York and secretary of state, Clinton has demonstrated a broader sense of proportion, pragmatism and accomplishment than has Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist.

Moreover, all the key issues Sanders says require remedy, from income inequality to Wall Street abuses, are those that Clinton would also target. It is largely a matter of fantasy versus reality.

Though, on guns, she has a far better record.

As secretary of state, Clinton was a superstar, the tragedy of Benghazi notwithstanding. Yes, as a U.S. senator, she erred in voting for the war in Iraq that President George W. Bush launched. But she wouldn’t be alone in having been fooled, and she has acknowledged the mistake since. And as secretary of state, she helped Obama chart a foreign policy course weighted more properly toward diplomacy than military might, while talking about gender equality and other human rights around the world.

Her service as U.S. senator and secretary of state — and the many hits she has taken simply because she bears the name Clinton — have forged a steely and calm approach that makes her more presidential than Sanders.

Sanders has struck a chord among progressives. Without his presence, Clinton would have probably been campaigning as the presumptive centrist(ish) nominee and as the antidote to some of the craziness spouted on the GOP side.

Clinton’s nomination by Democrats would say much about how far the country has come on gender, but ultimately she is simply the better candidate — by far — in the Democratic race.

We recommend Clinton for her party’s nomination.