I know Warren wasn’t perfect, but neither were the other candidates, and she seemed willing to learn from her mistakes. She showed measured kindness and justified rage in her town halls and on the debate stage. She wasn’t promising a revolution the way Sanders was, but in my mind, voting for a competent, radical woman was the revolution. To my husband, though, her qualifications were not enough, and most voters seemed to agree.

My husband and I started dating just before the 2012 election. After the results of that election came in, he texted me that yes, it was great that we got four more years of Barack Obama, but what he’d really be excited for was to vote for President Warren one day. I reminded him of this recently, and he maintains that he would’ve liked to see her in the White House. But when we had the chance to choose, I saw him vote for strategy over idealism, a decision I suspect many felt forced to make after Warren went from front-runner to underdog. After a few tearful conversations in the week leading up to Super Tuesday, I could not make my husband understand what seemed so monumental to me about Warren’s campaign. To him, what was important was avoiding a contested convention, and he told me he saw his vote for Sanders as one against Biden, the more moderate establishment candidate. “And Bernie is one of the good guys,” he said. “But he doesn’t get as much done as Liz,” I replied weakly.