New Hampshire Democrats, let’s acknowledge an open secret. Your Republican friends are saying that while “she’s a socialist and a gun-grabber,” they would reluctantly vote for Tulsi Gabbard. If you’ve been to any Tulsi event in the last year, you’ve seen one person after another get up and say, “I never thought I’d vote Democrat, but I’d vote for you.”
We have a first-in-the-nation duty to ensure that the standard-bearer we pick is the one who can beat Donald Trump in November. That doesn’t happen by repeating “I can beat Trump” to the already converted. That happens by people who often vote Republican now voting Democrat.
We don’t say it in polite company, but in 2016 some people who usually vote Democrat voted for Trump. Whatever other skullduggery happened, those people’s votes are how Trump won.
Learn from history. Think strategically. Elect the person who will draw away the votes Trump got. Who knows, we might even get to end some wars in the bargain.
DENIS GODDARD
Hopkinton