If you can set aside identity politics and look at the big picture, it’s clear that the best thing that could possibly happen to America would be Hillary Clinton losing, and specifically losing because too many progressives voted for Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

No, this is not some right-wing shill post, and I assure you that if I ever opened an elevator to find Donald Trump I would shriek like I just saw an evil clown covered in pit vipers and run away so fast I’d lose a shoe. But if Jill Stein helps him win the election in November, I will most certainly sleep better at night, and I’ll tell you why.

The Democratic primaries were rigged. If there was somehow ever any doubt in your mind that this is true, you should know that the DNC’s own lawyers just admitted that it was, trying to argue that the class-action lawsuit against the governing body of the primary elections should be thrown out because everyone already knew that they were rigging the game for Hillary anyway. So if you’re still somehow in denial about the rigged primaries, just be aware that even the DNC thinks you’re a fool.

With Sheer Impunity DNC Lawyers Shamelessly Admit Political Bosses Rigged The Primary Against Bernie Sanders! https://t.co/xvSE0B6okT pic.twitter.com/GysJgFYlXW — gab.ai/Tiago???? (@Tiago_R_Vale) September 24, 2016

So that happened. We know this, and it can’t be denied. And if Hillary Clinton wins in 2016, we may be absolutely certain that it will keep happening. There’ll be no reason for it not to. Progressives will have sent the elites of the Democratic Party the unequivocal message that we’ll still cave and support them even if they forcefully install a neoliberal warmongering corporate crony as their nominee right in front of our faces, because we don’t want a Republican picking any SCOTUS justices.

If we allow this to become the new normal, we will see Hillary rule for eight years, using back room deals and the might of the U.S. military to help metastasize the cancer of the neoliberal agenda across the planet, then we’ll watch helplessly as she hands her crown to the next neoliberal stooge in line just like Obama’s fixing to do right now. And so on and so forth.

Before we go any further, if you’re not intimately familiar with the term “neoliberalism,” please take some time to google it and research it right now, because it refers to a phenomenon that affects you personally. I’ll wait.

Okay, great! Now that we’re all on the same page, you can see how the Clintons and their goons are dedicated to bringing us more deeply into all the sickest aspects of what most Democrats think of as the Republican platform: war; corporatism; tax breaks and political leverage for the one percent; secret, exploitative trade deals; and greater and greater wealth inequality. And so you can see why so many Republicans are now supporting Hillary over Donald; she’s one of them, he’s not. You can also understand why they fought so hard to stack the deck against Bernie Sanders, who would have brought that entire agenda crumbling to the ground.

Another side effect of electing Hillary Clinton will be a growing backlash against the oppression and exploitation inherent in the neoliberal agenda. That’s exactly where the support for Trump is coming from right now, and it will only continue to grow under another Clinton administration.

Who do you think is supporting Donald? It’s not the Bushes and the Koch brothers; no, it’s by and large the poor and the disenfranchised who’ve been exploited and degraded by the status quo. Why do you think it’s so easy for comedy shows to go to a Trump rally and find people for liberals to laugh at? It’s not America’s winners struggling to explain to a smug Daily Show host why Obama was responsible for 9/11, it’s the poor, the uneducated, and the marginalized, who may not be the brightest bulbs. But it doesn’t take a genius to know when the system’s screwing you over. And they’re angry about it.

If Donald Trump becomes president, this new breed of Republican will not mix well with the old guard. No, sir. For all the hatred and demagoguery, the real thing Democrats and Republicans alike fear from Trump isn’t deportations and a wall, it’s upsetting their cozy streamline of power. As Chris Hayes recently pointed out, four years of Trump in the White House could very well bring about the collapse of the Republican Party, which would of course be delightful.

So if Hillary wins, we get not just more rigged primaries and more neoliberalism on the left, but more and more extremist backlash against it on the right, which will allow for a very yucky overall movement to the right in the long term, since the Democrats will always be able to point to the extreme backlash against them as evidence that progressives should support them. If Donald Trump wins, we get a disruption of those neoliberal policies, the cessation of the hateful and demagogic pushback against them, and the possible collapse of the GOP. And if Donald Trump wins because many progressives voted for Jill Stein instead of Hillary Clinton, the Dems get the message, and we get a real Democratic primary in 2020, where we can elect a real progressive who’ll make real changes, easily defeat President Trump, and help make things better not just for progressives, but for the poor and marginalized all over America, Trump supporters included.

And if the Democrats won’t let us, we’ll create a party that will. Either way we force the Dems into evolve-or-die time.

Thanks for reading.

[Featured Image by Alicia Ewen/KX News/AP Images]