If I were worried that Clinton might lose, here’s what I would—and wouldn’t—do…

I’m on record as saying that Clinton is going to win big-time in November. I’ve believed that for months (even when I was rooting for Sanders, I believed Clinton could beat Trump and said so). The latest polls only confirm what we’ve seen, with a few exceptions, for a year now: in a match-up between Clinton and Trump, Clinton wins.

If, however, I were a big booster of Clinton and if I were at all worried that she wasn’t going to win in November, here’s what I’d be doing:

First, I’d get the hell off social media. This is the place where political persuasion goes to die. The whole point is argument and dissensus, conflict and opposition, often over ancillary matters that distract from the main point. Differences get heightened, misunderstandings mount, feelings get hurt: to paraphrase Adorno, it’s like psychoanalysis in reverse. Not a good place to build and bridge.

And then, if I lived in a safe state, I’d be accumulating lists of people to call in all the swing states; and if I lived in a swing state, I’d be organizing committees either in my neighborhood or town, or if that neighborhood or town were solidly in Clinton’s camp, I’d organize committees in the next town or neighborhood, committees that were trained and readied to make phone calls and knock on doors and hand out fliers and all the rest.

And then I’d spend every waking or at least spare minute of my life between now and November making sure that every potential Clinton voter that I or my committees could reach was converted into an absolutely solid and reliable vote for Clinton come November.

If I encountered anyone who I thought was gettable but who tried to distance themselves from me, I’d do everything I could to convince that person that we were in fact quite similar, that we shared the same values, and that whatever differences we had paled in comparison to our shared desire and need to elect Clinton and defeat Trump. I’d use all of my powers of charm (ahem) and guile and persuasion to soften that brittle opposition that so often gets created between people who are alike in so many ways but one. I’d avoid all the traps of needless and fruitless disagreement, constantly keeping my eye out for those oases of potential concord and consensus.

So if these people I was trying to reach tried to up the ideological octane of the conversation, just to create distance between us, I’d bring the conversation back down to the dull pragmatics of achieving our shared values. If they tried to invoke dull pragmatism, just to create distance between us, I’d bring us back up to the high plains of ideology. I would do absolutely everything I could, in other words, not to create a sense of division or opposition between us. If politics is the contest between friends and enemies, I’d say: let us be friends, let’s leave the enemies out there.

And if I were the shy, retiring type who couldn’t handle face-to-face or phone conversations, I’d try to use social media to that effect, knowing that that can often be a losing proposition.

And here’s what I’d not do: spend my time on social media or in person castigating every member of the left who is a potential Clinton voter but is skeptical or leaning toward Jill Stein or thinking about sitting this one out, castigating them as reckless, irresponsible, childish, purist, fanatical, immature, incompetent, cultish, blinkered fantasists of the revolution, and so on, and then deliver long, sonorous monologues—where I demonstrate zero desire to listen or understand, much less engage, with what the people I’m trying to persuade are thinking—about the need for a popular front that includes the very people I’ve just dismissed as childish and irresponsible.

Now the fact that some people who are pro-Clinton and say they’re terrified she might lose in November are not doing what I’m saying I would do if I were they, tells me one of the three things:

1) they don’t actually think Clinton is going to lose, they’re not even fearful that she may lose, in which case I wonder about all that high dudgeon and heavy breathing over the alleged irresponsibility and immaturity and recklessness and incompetence of those who are cool toward Clinton (but could warm or at least get a little less frosty to her);

2) they do fear that she may lose but they take greater pleasure in going after the Clinton skeptics on the left than they fear her losing in November, in which case I wonder about all that high dudgeon and heavy breathing over the alleged irresponsibility and immaturity and recklessness and incompetence of those who are cool toward Clinton (but could warm or at least get a little less frosty to her);

3) they don’t know what they’re doing politically, in which case I wonder about all that high dudgeon and heavy breathing over the alleged irresponsibility and immaturity and recklessness and incompetence of those who are cool toward Clinton (but could warm or at least get a little less frosty to her).

There’s actually a fourth option:

4) they don’t think they share any values with the Clinton skeptics on the left; they think those leftists actually believe in very different things.

In which case I wonder two further things:

5) do they think they need these voters, and if so, well, we come back to where we started;

6) do they think they don’t need these voters?

In which case we come back to (1), (2), (3), or:

7) they’re right.