Hate him if you must – but love America more. It would be preferable if Donald Trump rode to victory on a wave of support for both the man and his policies. But a policy-based win will be sufficient.

This is the most important election since 1864 when Lincoln defeated George McClellan and an earlier generation of Democrats willing to make peace with the South without abolition. 2020 Democrats are willing heirs to this ignominy in standing for policies that will for a generation – perhaps forever – fundamentally change America.

Catastrophic change. Open borders; sanctuary cities; free college and health care for illegal immigrants; defunding the police; abolishing the Electoral College; neutering the Second Amendment; packing the Supreme Court; banning fossil fuels, and fanning the racial divide by supporting reparations and The 1619 Project. These are the policies of the progressive left led by Democratic U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who promises (in the words of progressive operative Norman Solomon) to push Joe Biden “in a more progressive direction” – an epic understatement. “Push” as in CRUSH. Progressives will “put the squeeze on Joe,” Eugene Daniels and Holly Otterbein wrote in Politico on Aug. 17, and plan “to give him hell the minute he sets foot in the White House,” warning that he and/or running mate Kamala Harris “might be challenged in the 2024 primaries if they’re not sufficiently progressive.” A declining Joe Biden will fold.

This is the Democratic Party that countenanced its candidates saying that America “was never that great.” The party of identity politics that judges people by skin color, not character. The party of permanent “resistance,” endless impeachment, an attempted deep state coup and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who ripped up Trump’s State of the Union Address behind his back on national television. The party that was silent during months of rioting in Democratic cities – until their polls dropped. Normally, such excesses would drive moderates into the Republican embrace. But Trump hatred threatens that dynamic.

It must not. Listen to Norwegian politician Christian Tybring-Gjedde, who nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize for engineering the recent Israel-United Arab Emirates-Bahrain accord: “You don’t ask for the personality … you ask for the performance.” Donald Trump has performed. The Tybring-Gjedde Nobel nomination is one of three Trump has received for Mideast agreements resulting from his hard-line Iran policy. Since Trump met with Kim Jung Un, North Korea has not conducted a single ICBM or nuclear test. Trump sent Ukraine anti-tank missiles after Obama sent blankets. He shamed NATO members into paying their fair share for defense. He replaced NAFTA with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which even Joe Biden admits is better for America. And he’s the first president to challenge China’s drive to world hegemony with an America First policy that has repatriated 500,000 manufacturing jobs – the keystone of arguably America’s best economy ever, pre-COVID, with record low unemployment for Blacks, Hispanics and women; wages up 3 percent; record high stock market; energy independence; household income highest ever; the poverty rate at an all-time low. All of this is at stake if Biden wins, because a victorious, leftist-dominated Democratic Party will – after ruining the economy – attack our constitutional order by ending the minority-protecting filibuster, packing the Supreme Court, admitting Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia as states to produce four more Democratic senators and putting on the table the entire progressive agenda. This is Bernie Sanders’ revolution. You say we will defeat them in four years and reclaim power – these people will not be easily moved. History’s greatest nation teeters on the knife’s edge between the return to greatness already underway under Donald Trump and a willful plunge into the progressive abyss – national suicide.

At such a moment, every clear-thinking patriot must cast a vote for American greatness without regard to the personal foibles of the president. Love him or hate him – and you can put me in the love him camp – we haven’t the luxury of self-indulgent moral preening when the barbarians are at the gate. If you want to feel good about yourself and virtue signal, adopt a dog.

Make America Great Again.