I've noted previously that I'm skeptical of Hillary Clinton as a progressive. In the six months since I wrote that, four other people threw their hats into the ring as candidates for the Democratic Party nomination including Bernie Sanders. Presently, Bernie is my preferred candidate as he best represents me on the issues I care about. Everywhere I look he continues to lead the pack as a progressive, liberal or whatever label you choose to apply.
What I care about the most is not who slept with whom, what scandals may surround a politician or what dirt can be dug up on someone. No one is perfect, so I have to make allowances for the fact that my candidates won't be as well. If their misbehavior is relevant to the issues they claim to value then certainly I'm willing to cluck my tongue over the Family Values candidate caught having multiple affairs. On the other hand, if you spent years trying to dig up dirt on someone but investigations keep finding no wrongdoing then it's clear that what you're doing is engaging in a witch hunt. The email scandal is settled. All that remains is where Clinton stands on the issues.
Hillary Clinton on the issues is where I'm both surprised and not surprised. In both her voting record and her campaign platforms Hillary comes across very solidly as a liberal. In fact, when you compare her to Bernie she's closer to his position than any other Democratic candidate including Martin O'Malley and Jim Webb. I'm not going to bother with former Republican governor Lincoln Chaffee because he's not even on the radar. The only place where Hillary doesn't shine as a liberal is on military and foreign policy where she's one of the most hawkish candidates around.
There are, of course, still problems. First and foremost there's a strong movement for Anybody But Hillary which is popular among both Republicans and Democrats. Yes, Democrats. Do you think the Clintons could suffer through two decades of scandals and not have that taint stick in people's minds? She's untrusted because of her corporate connections, her history with Wall Street, her war-mongering, allegations of corruption and criminal behavior and so on and so forth. Clinton opponents have thrown everything at her in the hopes that something would stick, and for some people that's enough to bias their thinking. As I observed previously some of it is deserved, such as her relationship with special interests, but in this campaign she's come out with some credible proposals to combat those interests (author's note: this link is best viewed in privacy/incognito mode). People are still skeptical of her apparent change of heart on issues like Wall Street regulation and trade deals, and they should be. But the problem runs so deep that there are committed progressives who would normally vote for a Democratic nominee have pledged to vote third party rather than for Hillary Clinton.
The phrase for this is the Nirvana fallacy or "making best the enemy of good." So while I would rather see Bernie Sanders take the Democratic nomination and become the next President of the United States, I won't reject Hillary Clinton as the candidate who next best represents my interests. She promises to be more of a liberal and less of a centrist than Barack Obama has been, and that's still progress to me.
Sometimes our conclusions aren't justified, like assuming that the vague shape we perceive in the bush is a predator which prompts us to run away. Such assumptions were helpful when predators were a constant threat, but better knowledge is more helpful. Waiting to confirm whether or not that shape is what we suspect it might be could result in an easy meal for a predator, but it could also reveal that it was just our imagination playing tricks and enable us to get at the berries in the bush. Our survival is better served when our conclusions are informed by knowledge. Running away on faith (or conversely pursuing the berries on faith) doesn't serve us nearly as well, it's hit-or-miss.
If you consistently visit a casino because you have faith that eventually your luck is going to favor you and grant you a massive jackpot, you're likely to lose everything. If you close your eyes while crossing a busy street using faith to guide your steps you're likely to create an accident. People who reject medical care for serious illness like cancer tend to die quickly and painfully compared to those who follow a doctor's advice. And yet people continue to uphold faith as the gold standard of behavior, trying to muster 
Unrequited love frequently depends on faith, but genuine love requires nothing of the sort. When someone loves me I can see it in their behavior toward me. When I love someone I don't expect them to rely on faith to know it, I assume the responsibility of demonstrating my love for them through word and deed.