Despite what a lot of campaign trail journalism would have you believe, the 2016 Democratic primary contest isn’t about Bernie bros battling women voters allergic to mansplaining. Women — especially but not exclusively young women — are feeling the Bern, and plenty of bros are campaigning hard for Hillary.

Nor is this primary as simple as idealism versus pragmatism or political revolution versus getting things done. It’s about how we see ourselves and what we’re projecting onto the two Democratic contenders. A candidate who is pragmatic is apparently one who supports ideas and institutions the mainstream is comfortable with, while “idealistic” is now a catch-all term of opprobrium rather than an adjective applied to someone with a strong, passionate vision of how the world should be.

Clinton supporters want to make a virtue of their pragmatism. Even those who supported Obama in 2008 now see themselves as this election’s wise elder stateswomen. They’ve been around long enough to understand that calls for revolution sound inspiring but come to nothing in the end. Sure, they’re progressives but the kind who want to get things done. They’re not cool college kids; they’re tired, hardworking, uncool adults. In the words of Slate’s Michelle Goldberg — a Clinton supporter — “to defend Clinton is to defend middle age itself.”

Other Clinton supporters aren’t quite minivan-and-soccer-league-ready. Unwilling to cede “cool” to Sanders, they claim to be this year’s real radicals. What could be more radical, they ask, than putting a woman in the White House? Jill Filipovic recently argued in The New York Times that radicalism doesn’t belong exclusively to Sanders supporters. It can also be expressed by some women in their 30s who, angered by experience with workplace sexism that college-age women can only dread, are drawn to Clinton as “someone who shares both their political views and their experiences.”

But there’s no evidence that Clinton’s experience as a woman has distinguished her record on women’s issues. As Filipovic concedes, Sanders also supports paid leave and universal pre-K. Not mentioned in her piece is that he also supports closing the gender wage gap or that the specific policies he favors to address these issues are arguably more robust than those favored by Clinton.

Sanders is being branded this primary’s wild-eyed idealist. Many Clinton supporters have expressed sportsmanlike appreciation for his bracing oratory, crediting him with pushing their candidate to the left. But Clinton, too, gives inspiring speeches and possesses a clear vision of how the world should work. In this sense, she is also an idealist. She is idealistic on the subject of women’s and children’s rights, and her remarks and actions with respect to the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, appear genuine and heartfelt. She also idealizes the use of U.S. military power, compromise and working within the system.

Many of her convictions appear to be sincere, especially when it comes to the use of military force. But the fact remains that, whether out of pragmatism or idealism, she espouses the wrong ideals. In the 1990s she chose getting health care done over getting it right and, given that the original goal was universal coverage, failed on both counts. In 2005, The New York Times characterized her attempt to sell an ambitious plan to “a public with no appetite for radical change” as the “major mistake” of her time as first lady, noting that she has since “stuck to … more modest initiatives.” In other words, she learned to trade in the critical goal of universal health care for the more achievable — and, according to Clinton supporters, more realistic — satisfaction of tinkering around the edges of a system that works well for insurance companies and badly for everyone else.