If there’s one thing Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign has taught us it’s to view every depraved moral nadir as a challenge, not a destination. You think this is bad? Wait for the tangy mouth garbage he’s got stewing for tomorrow. Then forget about it instantly – everyone else will! I heard state department employees sometimes email each other!!!

Just this week we’ve seen Trump metabolise the Chelsea bombing into an incoherent anti-Clinton smear before the shrapnel had even settled. I’ve listened to my Muslim friends express their fear of leaving the house after Monday’s unconscionably irresponsible emergency alert, the kind of histrionic racial profiling Trump vows to amplify. We’ve read up on Trump’s alignment with an anti-abortion extremist group, and his avowal to “get very tough” on “thing[s]” apparently including freedom of expression. We’ve clocked Trump’s pin-drop silence on the shooting deaths of Terence Crutcher and Tyre King, though – don’t worry – over the summer he promised to make the streets safer … for police. Trump “joked” (again!) about the assassination of Hillary Clinton. His son compared refugees, who are human beings who need our asylum to live, to Skittles, which are sweets.

It was a panoply of potentially career-ending gaffes extruded, clumped, scooped and forgotten in a single week – AKA business as usual in proto-Trump America. Baffled disgust turned to abject terror (in my circles, at least) when new poll numbers saw Trump climb to 42%.

So, yesterday (like most days in these, surely, the end times), I wrote some snotty doom and gloom about Trump on Facebook and, to my surprise, was gently scolded by a friend. “Hating Trump isn’t enough,” she said, “just like hating W wasn’t enough in 2004. We have to talk about Hillary.” I was defensive for a second – I do talk about Hillary! – but couldn’t quibble with her point. It’s easy and fun (and compulsory for responsible human beings) to despise Trump, but treating Clinton like a barely-better-than-a-literal-white-supremacist cipher does her – and our future as a non-blown-up planet – no favours. Yes, Trump is an objectively, dangerously horrendous candidate. But we have to start acknowledging that even if we scrubbed Trump from this universe altogether (buy my fan fiction!), Clinton would still be an excellent one.

I cannot wait to vote for Hillary Clinton, but not just because I want to see Donald Trump fail and cry.

Clinton is pro-choice. This means she does not want to force anyone to give birth to their rapist’s child, or carry a dead foetus inside of their body for 20 weeks, or derail their future because sex is great and everyone has it and accidents happen, or otherwise be a nonconsensual incubator of any kind. Clinton wants to make it harder, not easier, to buy guns. She believes in eliminating loopholes and expanding background checks on gun sales. She does not think domestic abusers should own guns, which is good, because abused women are five times more likely to be murdered if their abusive partner owns a gun. She would prefer your children not to get shot in schools or shopping malls or nightclubs. I agree.

Clinton believes in guaranteed paid family leave, because fathers are parents too, and mothers shouldn’t have to choose between career stagnation and going back to work while their episiotomy stitches are still oozing.

Clinton wants to tax rich people more than poor people, which is a sentence that no one should have to type ever again.

Clinton’s platform addresses mass incarceration, the school-to-prison pipeline, climate change, violence against trans women of colour, the systemic neglect of veterans, mental health stigma, voting rights, student loan debt, public education and affordable health care. Clinton is the candidate whose views best represent my own.

Whether or not you feel comfortable with every decision and position in Clinton’s past (I do not), she is qualified for this job. She is a shrewd, savvy, tough politician.

Clinton has weathered intrusive, insulting, gendered smear campaigns – cookies, Benghazi, emails and pneumonia – with a grace rivalled only by Obama’s unflappable handling of birthers. She swam through tar every single day of her career and still surpassed male opponents who swam through water. She has been scrutinised in bad faith and beyond all reason for her entire campaign (and decades prior), and Republicans have still had to manufacture baroque, toothless scandals out of dust motes. Yet, somehow, 42% of my country apparently believes that Donald Trump is more qualified to address foreign policy and “safety” than an actual seasoned diplomat. Do you guys think “secretary of state” is the kind of secretary who gets the president coffee? Is that the confusion?

We cannot excise sexism from this election (and here I am talking predominantly to white dudes – the group most disproportionately supporting Trump – who just have a vague “feeling” that they don’t like Clinton). You might not overtly hate women. You might be a fantastic boyfriend, husband, brother or son. You might not beat women or harass them or even objectify them or belittle them. But do you trust them? Do you hire them? Do you hire them for management positions? You’re building a house. Do you prefer a male contractor or a female contractor? You’re having open heart surgery tomorrow. Do you want a male surgeon or a female surgeon? If your gut says “man”, you have some introspection to do.

So let’s try again: you’re voting for a president soon. Do you want a graduate of Yale law school who served eight years as a US senator and four as secretary of state? Or a racist landlord who moonlights as a tie salesman?

I cannot wait to vote for Hillary Clinton.