In the wake of last week's New York primary, Hillary Clinton's path to securing the Democratic nomination for president seems increasingly clear. What is less certain is how the candidates, their campaigns, and their supporters will handle that looming outcome between now and the close of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on July 28. The stakes couldn't be higher. After all, the strategies and the tone that Sen. Bernie Sanders and Secretary Clinton adopt from here on out will help determine not just whether Democrats capture victories in the White House and Senate races they should win, but whether the groundwork for more progressive policies in Washington and the states will be laid for years to come.
Which is why I have a simple message for my friends in the Sanders and Clinton camps: #ImWithHer and I #FeelTheBern, but a plague on both your houses if either does anything to hurt Democrats' chances come November.
That plea isn't merely rooted in the belief that we have a unique opportunity to both build on the very real--and very hard-fought--progressive gains of the Obama presidency and to roll back a morally and ideologically bankrupt Republican Party (see Trump, Donald and Cruz, Ted). My electoral angst also comes from personal experience and lingering regret. During and after the 1984 primaries fiercely contested by Gary Hart and Walter Mondale for Democratic voters much more divided than those today, I was an uncompromising purist and a sore loser who sat on the sidelines when the outcome didn't go my way.

That history goes a long way in explaining my unease with the tenor of the race between the "idealistic" Sanders and the "pragmatic" Clinton.
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