Will there ever be a perfect candidate? Is it possible we will have some glowing Deity float down from the heavens on a fluffy white cloud surrounded by angels flinging gold coins and smelling of roses and whispering ‘FREE’. Someone we could all get behind, someone with no history, someone with no skeletons, someone with DNA to match this diverse nation who did not offend any of our sensibilities.
The Perfect Candidate, who we can fall all over ourselves in our rush to the polls. The Perfect Candidate who would pass all of our Purity tests. The Candidate with the most beautiful wife, two and half children, a dog and zero sins to their name.
The Perfect Candidate does not exist. There is not a human being alive today, nor will there ever be one who hasn’t collected some bumps and bruises and an imperfect track record. There will never be a candidate, especially one seeking the Presidency that will pass the unreasonable Purity Tests of the Democrats who align to their individual candidates to the detriment of all others. Let us consider the real issues and real outcomes for 2020. What do we really want?
- Beat current occupant of White House, Donald J. Trump
- Take back Senate
- Retain House
As an Independent Centrist who usually votes Democrat I am committed to voting a Blue ticket this year. Not just on a federal level but at the state and local level as well. I want to see the nation brought back together. I want to see us working together again as a single people, it has been too long that we have been divided. I want to see our government work. I want to see Justice began to work. I want to see our courts work. I want to see real work done for and by the people. Do I think this will happen overnight? No, of course not. What I believe is if we elect the right president and a Senate and House to back that President we can begin to make the nation whole by passing legislation and undoing a dysfunctional federal Courts filled with under qualified and unqualified judges.
I do not do Purity Tests. What I do is listen, I look at history but not just soundbites the full history. I look at everything, what a person has done and hasn’t done. What they have said and haven’t said. When they said it, what context they said it in. What have they written? Many candidates today have a written history, many have books and an on-line presence they cannot escape from either. Some of the candidates today have had decades of public presence, not just one or two, but three to five or even more. It is impossible not to build a portfolio of missteps and misjudgments during the course of a 
long life and those who wish to serve behind the Resolute Desk must be prepared to walk naked before the citizens of this land, we have no remorse and no shame in exposing our would be Presidents.
It wasn’t always this way, the Presidency of William Jefferson Clinton seems to have opened the door and now we have no shame in peering through the window of Presidents private lives, judging their personal predilections. We, as a nation seem to think it is our calling to judge whether a President is ‘Pure’ enough for us even while we ourselves would never meet this very same test. Just to bring this full circle, the party of family values and moral righteousness elected a President who is an anathema to all they stood for and yet claim he is God’s chosen.
So we stand at the abyss and stare down into the darkness and still instead of listening with open minds, we apply Purity Tests. We allow members of this broken party and non-members who have the audacity to run under the banner to tear down others in the name of their own desire to WIN. We watch idolaters and ideologues tear at others in base terms disallowing any view but their own from being heard, any question being asked, any challenge being made.
Does anyone remember 2016? I do.
Does anyone know how Donald J. Trump got elected? I do.
Don’t answer those questions with baseless bullshit about White Woman, Electoral College, Hillary won the popular vote or other nonsense. Let me give you the real answer.
Donald J. Trump is the President of the United States of America because Bernie Sanders was allowed to run on the Democratic Ticket and many of those who idolized him, followed him did one of three things:
- Stayed home
- Voted third party
- Voted for Trump
Why did they do this? Because they were convinced they were cheated, because Trump was the most like Bernie in his rhetoric and demeanor and because they were revengeful snots.
Purity Tests. Why they don’t work and how to overcome them.
First and foremost, participate. This means vote in the Primaries in your state and vote for the candidate that you believe best represents your interests and the interests in the nation. Vote for the candidate that you believe will put the nation back together. Vote for 
the candidate that will best influence the down ticket. Vote for the candidate that will put our alliances back together. Vote for the candidate that will represent the largest majority of the people in America, not just a small minority but all of us, keeping in mind there is not a single candidate standing before you without something to explain, without history, without skeletons.
My question to each of the candidates isn’t ever going to be are you Pure, it is going to be how are you going to remedy the sickness in this nation. What will you do to fix what is broken. Do you acknowledge that you might have contributed, what did you learn and what are you doing today based on what you learned?
People learn, people are not the same today they were yesterday, five years ago or a decade ago. Unless a person is a complete and utter moron with the emotional and intellectual capacity of a snake, they grow. I want to know how a person has grown in knowledge, compassion and emotional empathy. I will not hold yesterday against you if today your actions show you have made true changes. If the words you say and the actions you take are in accord, I am going to take you at your word and listen with the openness you deserve from me as a citizen.
Purity Tests are abhorrent and we need to stop, today. If we do not we can look forward to another four years of Donald J. Trump in the White House and this is something the nation will not survive.
QBG_Tilted Tiara 
Why was Bernie allowed to run in 2016? Apparently, because there was no purity test that required a candidate to be formally registered as the member of the Democratic party.
And I don’t think Bernie’s voters actually deserve all the blame for Clinton’s loss – from what I read, there were more former Clinton voters defecting from Obama in 2008 than Sanders voters defecting from Clinton in 2016. And even assuming that the number of Bernie voters not voting for Clinton was enough to swing the election, they were probably just one of several things that may have been enough to swing the 2016 election – like the 3rd parties, Russian interference, Comey’s investigations of Clinton’s emails, and so on.
There were many factors in 2016, Bernie was only one of them I agree. But one of them that mattered. This issue of Purity remains and is looming again in this year where every candidate is being scrutinized for wrongs they did going decades back and God help you if you cast a stone.
I think they should scrutinize the candidates for their past wrongs. It’s better to have all the skeletons out of the closet now than a couple of weeks before the election. I find it hard to believe that all Democratic candidates put together have as much baggage as Trump gathers in just one year.
LOL, you are right. All of them together would not equal the Trump carry on let alone his complete baggage. This is why my annoyance at the purity tests being imposed.
I voted Green Party in 2016 because I didn’t like either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. I really liked Bill “Who’s Your Daddy” Clinton, but I felt Hillary was a bad choice for the Democrats. After the Gary Hart fiasco in 1987, then-Sen. Barry Goldwater said, if we kicked out everyone in Washington who “screwed around” or got drunk at some point in their lives, “we wouldn’t have a government.” Indeed, there is no perfect candidate.
Until we have a viable third party, we will sometimes be stuck with the better of two evils. I think 2016 taught all of us a valuable lesson about conscious votes, don’t you?