The question the article — and it is reporting, not an opinion piece — seeks to address is this:

What does it mean to cheer a person often described by pundits as having a “passion gap” compared with her rivals, to go bonkers for a detail-laden stump speech that crescendos on words such as prudent and percent of your income?

There are several anecdotes of voters on line for an event that are offered. The first is prefaced by noting a woman looking at a Trump supporter open carrying and yelling, who does not yell back.

“Trump’s angry; Bernie’s angry all the time,” said Smith, a retired elementary schoolteacher who said she was not angry other than whatever frustration she felt toward the other candidates and their followers, which she sublimated. “Just realistically, I think it’s not a matter of pumping the team up, it’s a matter of playing the game. You can’t have that kind of demeanor. I can’t imagine these men being in the room when some crisis really happens. Is emotion going to rule them, or are they going to have a level head and make calm decisions?”

After turning to another person in the line and offering his observations, the article offers this:

To her and others baking in the sun, this was in fact the paradox of being a Clinton supporter at a Clinton rally, the thing that no one seemed to understand. They were excited by her lack of excitability; thrilled by her boring wonkiness; enthusiastic not about the prospect of some dramatic change but about Clinton’s promise of dogged, small-bore pragmatism, a result of decades of government experience they considered a qualification rather than a liability. Theirs was the campaign that voters so often said they wanted — one of substance and detail, of practicality rather than dreamy idealism, of freedom through discipline.

thrilled by her boring wonkiness — for many of us someone who understands policy in detail, can talk about it and its implications, is important, because that is how real change gets started, and maintained. We LIKE that Clinton is willing to talk about the details of policy, including getting it enacted. That is the substance and detail that we actually find exciting. It is was makes us at least nod our heads if not more during debates.

One person waiting on the line rolled his eyes when a Sanders supporter car full of young people went by and the folks inside yelled out their support of their candidate. He talked about the kind of excitement that those supporting Clinton could feel — read these words:

Not the thrill of revolt and rage, he explained, but rather the joy of hearing a candidate speak in excruciating yet accurate detail about Head Start and Early Head Start, the federally funded programs to help low-income children prepare for kindergarten. “Like when she went to Flint,” Medina continued, referring to the Michigan city where possibly hundreds of children have been poisoned by toxins in the water supply. “She was strongly encouraging the government to put Head Start in place because she knows one of the requirements is annual lead screening.”

As I read these words, I think back to a Rolling Stone piece by William Greider during the 1992 campaign, where Bill Clinton brought up the Grameen Bank (later to win Mohammad Yunus the Nobel Peace Prize) and Greider’s being amazed. And yet, Bill almost certainly knew about that, about microfinancing, from his wife, who had already encountered it in her own work among poor minority folk (and here I also recall a savings and loan in Chicago, South Shore Bank, which engaged in some microfinancing).

Yes, I remember that competence was an insufficient argument for Michael Dukakis, but that is very much not why he lost to the first George Bush, and those who make that argument ignore his unwillingness to push back at inaccurate attacks, something I think Mrs. Clinton has long ago learned how to do — after all, she has been subject to inaccurate attacks for decades.

I am not going to go through the rest of the article, although I will encourage you to read it.

Perhaps one reason Clinton does so well among those of us who are older is because we have been through several attempts at revolutionary change, and as we age we want to see certain things established irrevocably, so that in the normal pendulum swings of American politics the advances made do not get undone.

Perhaps it is because one political party has, since Ronald Reagan, taken the approach that government is the problem (except insofar as it can be used to impose their values on others — some sense of liberty) rather than what we have known it to be: a primary mechanism for improving the lives of the American people.

Not all efforts have worked, and we can acknowledge that without abandoning the notion that government of the people, by the people, and for the people has a major role to play in providing a security for the people that goes far beyond merely military security. Just as we can and should acknowledge that not every attempt to provide that military security has worked and also may need to be examined. But NEITHER should be abandoned, nor denigrated.

As I have offered posts that include words of others — columnists, pundits, etc. — and as I have offered some of my own analysis on the state of the race, people often challenge me to explain my support of Clinton. Sometimes they will throw in my face a piece I wrote 8 some years ago. That is their right.

But it is also not relevant. I am different, in large part because of living with my wife’s cancer the past three years. I would also suggest that Clinton, with the additional experience of having worked so closely with the man against whom she contended 8 years ago, has demonstrated that she is different, of greater depth.

For me, there are multiple things that concern me. Key is a real understanding of the international situation, because if we do not properly address what we can, we will as a nation have neither the resources or attention necessary to address issues at home. There was no other candidate running in either party this cycle who has that in the depth that Secretary Clinton has.

Equally important is to understand how to advance our goals by small ball if necessary, rather than waiting for those few occasions where the big thing can be done. Yes, if we get lucky and also take back the House because Trump is the Republican candidate, it MAY be possible to achieve far greater change. But assuming the gerrymandering after the 2010 census and elections makes that highly unlikely, how can we best address an agenda that improves the lives of the most people? Here I think an intimate understanding of the details of policy matter, such as knowing about annual lead screening as a part of Head Start. And here let me note something about which I have remarked before: I have in my somewhat attenuated experience of teaching in inner city DC middle schools seen the impact of lead upon the students in my classrooms.

For my friends who are passionate Bernie supporters — I have no trouble with your passion, with your desire to see radical change. But please understand that for many of us who are Clinton supporters we are not willing to wait for a revolution, we want what change we can get now.

And if I may speak to young people: for many of us this is not for ourselves. Those of us in our 60s and older are unlikely to see the changes we can accomplish right now make a major difference in the rest of our lives. Those with progeny seek it for their children and grandchildren. For a childless couple like my wife and myself, we seek it for nieces and nephews, grandnieces and grandnephews, and for me as a teacher for the young people whose lives and future dominate my thinking because of all the time I spend interacting with them.

For Clinton supporters, I urge you not to attack or demean those who are passionate for Bernie, even if at times their rhetoric towards you and the candidate we favor is over the top.

For Bernie supporters, do yourselves a favor and stop demonizing those of us who strongly support Hillary as not being progressive or liberal, as tools of the establishment.

For each of us, we need always to remember that it is possible to disagree without being disagreeable, that reasonable people can come to different conclusions than do we without it meaning they are corrupt or hypocritical.

I am a Clinton supporter. I have as much passion to see her win as do those rallying for Bernie.

As the article that occasioned this post demonstrates, I am far from alone in the strength of that passion, which is why among Democrats Clinton has pretty consistently outperformed Sanders.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

And if we can, can we be civil and kind to one another?