What then? The odds that a Sanders victory would lead to a Democratic House or a majority of more than one in the Senate are very slim. House districts have grown in partisan tilt; there is no room at all for a Democratic landslide, and not much for significant gains. Democrats have a real chance, if they win the White House, to pick up the four seats needed to recapture a majority, but it would be a very heavy lift to shift that number to seven, eight, or 10. So Sanders, like Obama, would face a divided government. It would be a very different situation than Obama encountered when he first entered the White House, and more like what he faced after the first, disastrous midterm election in 2010. Sanders has made it clear that he would have an extraordinarily ambitious agenda, including Medicare for all, reinstatement of Glass-Steagall, free college for all, and sweeping campaign-finance reform just to start with, along with stiff tax increases to pay for it.

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So all of Sanders’s initiatives would start as non-starters. Here, his theory of election and governance comes into play. He would go to the public, a public disgusted with Washington and its corrupt ties to the billionaire class and to business, and force members of Congress to their knees, shifting the debate and the agenda his way.

Sanders as president would be left with two main options: reduce his goals to aim for more incremental progress, or adopt a defensive approach to keep Obama’s policies from being rolled back—exactly what he has condemned in Hillary Clinton’s approach to governance. And while Sanders has been a more effective lawmaker than Cruz (or Rubio, for that matter, as demonstrated by Rick Santorum’s embarrassing failure on Morning Joe to find one accomplishment for his endorsee) there is little evidence that he has or could build the kinds of relationships with other members of Congress, or find ways to move the now humongous boulder up the hill (or Hill) of a thoroughly dysfunctional governing process. And, of course, he would face the deep disappointment of the activists he has inspired.

Could Clinton do better? Yes. First, she has an entirely realistic understanding of where American politics are, something she would carry into the White House on the first day. Progress can be made, on health delivery, financial regulation, the tax system, energy and infrastructure, but it will be a series of incremental steps, a tenth or a quarter of a loaf at a time. Second, in her time in the Senate she showed an impressive ability to build relationships with her Republican colleagues; many of them privately praise her even as they will do their duty and condemn her through the campaign. And she knows enough about the executive branch to use its tools effectively early on to protect the Obama legacy and extend it a bit further. Some progressives, like Bill Press, have expressed disappointment with Obama’s failure to further their agenda; to one who has watched the lawmaking process up close and personal for more than four decades, his ability to move the ball in the face of challenges from his own party and Republicans, and in the face of huge headwinds from the conservative wind machine, has been extraordinarily impressive.

It just seems to me that political compromise never turns out to be compromise, per se, so much as a kind of ceasefire that allows one side to consolidate power and prepare for an offensive later to take what is left.

It seems dishonest, to me, to call it compromise, when neither side intends to let things sit as they are forever.