Goddamn did I not expect that. So many moments I was literally laughing. Like, actually. Not a huff of air from my nose. Or a recognition of “oh yeah, that was a joke. Good job, funny man.” Like, actually had to stop cooking and set down the knife and laugh.
This is why ripping too hard on guys like this (or Bernie, or AOC) is so foolish: most people don't become leftists overnight. We should be constantly building and expanding the pipeline left, not blowing up the start of it once we're a little farther on the way ourselves.
We routinely recognize that prominent leftist figures can make major contributions in many areas while making major errors in others; they're "X% good/Y% bad" rather than all good or all bad. The same analysis should apply to figures who are useful for getting a ton of people started down the right path but drop the ball at some point.
(WPA-style poster titled "Building the Lib-to-Left Pipeline")