Editor:

On March 1, voters in Colorado, 11 other states and American Samoa will cast votes in the Super Tuesday primaries for presidential candidates. With over 1,000 delegates up for grabs for democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, March 1 has the potential to effectively determine the Democratic nominee for president.

I’m a young college graduate living in Denver, and my apartment is just a few blocks from the Bernie Sanders mural in Capitol Hill. I am in the center of Sanders’ key voter demographic. Nevertheless, I am not a supporter of Bernie Sanders’ campaign for president.

Despite his earnest progressivism and appealingly candid demeanor, I will break with my voting block by casting a vote for Hillary Clinton, the harder-to-love, moderate political veteran in the race.

I’m not voting with Hillary Clinton because I agree with her on the issues. In fact, I’m a big fan of the Sanders doctrine: fix an unfair economic system, fully engage with climate change, commit to social equality for everyone in America. Call out the special interests with oversized influence in our nation. For myself and many other young people, these aren’t radical ideas. For us, it would be radical to oppose equality, justice, and the idea that every child growing up in the United States should have the same potential to turn hard work into success. For youth in America, Europe, and a large portion of the rest of the world, the Sanders doctrine is just common sense.

For the majority of Americans, however, Sanders’ ideas are radically and unacceptably socialist.

This is why I am not a Sanders supporter: at the end of the day, no matter whom we elect to the presidency, their accomplishments will be limited by their ability to cooperate with Congress and maintain popularity with the public. Since Sanders’ policies are anathemas to the political ideologies of most Americans and, by extension, the elected officials chosen to represent them, Sanders’ ideas have nearly zero potential for implementation if he becomes president.

To believe in Sanders as a genuine potential president is to endorse a fiction: that electing him president would bring about the policy points that constitute his stump speech. It will not.

America, God love it, does not have a particularly powerful executive. Barack Obama inspired me and my peers eight years ago with grandiose and powerfully delivered messages of change. He subsequently illustrated the folly of believing that a youthful and enthusiastic Leader of the Free World can overpower the established order of American governance. Obama faced enormous opposition in Congress on efforts to fulfill even his smallest campaign promises.

A president cannot bring about change that is not supported by Congress and the courts, and Sanders is poised to face far greater opposition in Congress than even Barack Obama.

Clinton is far from a perfect candidate. But at this point she is the only candidate with a strong chance to win who doesn’t support building a giant and expensive wall between the United States and Mexico. She is by far the most experienced candidate. She knows Washington, has decent relationships with Congress, and she has at least decided that semi-progressive stances are the most politically advantageous for her to campaign on in this election.

Unlike Sanders, she has the potential to hash out moderate deals with Congress that will hopefully secure slow, moderate progress for our nation.

Robert Nowell

Denver