See the Bernie & Hillary edition.

AAAAND we’re already mad at Doug Jones.  Instead of, rightly, being mad at the assignment editors who are out there asking every conservative Dem to take impeachment off the table like it’s 2005.

Look, the point for anyone who lived in Alabama was not to be represented by a Bible-banging pedophiliac, and for anyone who doesn’t live in Alabama the point of Doug Jones was to elect a Democrat, full stop. Doug Jones is almost not the point at all. The point is a Democratic Senate, a Democratic House, a Democratic White House, Democratic state houses because goddamn, have you seen the world right now?

Blah blah blah Jill Stein blah. People I know and love are suffering and will suffer while we fantasize about having more than two parties, about not having to choose between the arsonists and the (dumb, underfunded, likely corrupt) fire brigade. Me and mine would like the fires out.

Does anyone who’s still pounding on the purity drum really think we’d be worse off with a Congress that could stop this tax obscenity, that could hold the line on Roe, that could actually confirm a Supreme Court nominee from a Democratic president? I get that we all want everybody banging  the impeachment drum at all times, I am as in love with Kirsten Gillibrand First of Her Name as any of you, but elect enough Democrats and the individual weaknesses of this that or the other one don’t matter no more.

Doug Jones in his seat now and for the foreseeable future is not about Doug Jones, it is about the seat. The problem with conservative Democrats isn’t that they’re awful, it’s that the slim margin of control one party usually holds gives shitass attention-whore conservative Democrats outsize power. Had Democrats held the Senate by double digits Joe Lieberman would just be some asshole footnote instead of a whole asshole chapter.

So we can all sit around getting mad and disappointed at Doug Jones or we can make sure the fact that he’s 85 percent of the way there is enough to make a real difference, by electing a shitload more people who are 90 percent and 95 percent and 100 percent there.

A.