Little Rock  The latest average of all outstanding polls considering a two-way race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton for the first time shows that Trump has edged ahead of Clinton by a fraction of one-percent. Yes, there are many months to go before the election and polls will go up and down, but the consolidation of support around Trump is disturbing. Worse news indicates that with almost 70% of the November electorate likely to be white, Hillary’s support there is dropping like a rock. She’s now down to 33% support from white voters, and that’s men and women, brothers and sisters. Barack Obama in the 2012 election, a hater magnet for white voters like no others, polled 39% by comparison. We’ve got trouble in River City!

I’m not going to apologize for rooting for Trump to get the Republican nomination. I still think he is the best representative of everything that is most frightening at the confluence of all of the fringes of the right as they come together in elephantine proportions in that party. I still stand by the fact that the Cruz-Rubio-Bush-Etc group was even more rightwing and scary. I also still think that Trump is the best contrasting candidate for Hillary Clinton, giving her the best chance of mobilizing her potential base to win. Nonetheless, it’s like the NBA finals. It doesn’t matter what the record might have been in the preliminaries, she still has to get out there and beat him to claim the presidency, and she has not gotten her game together yet on her own.

Unfortunately, that is likely to mean that she can’t win without a full-court press from progressives as we hold our noses and cover our eyes at her neo-liberalism, war mongering, Wall Street ties, and myopic sense of self-entitlement. I’ve read a number of well written, thoughtful essays of advice for Sanders now that everyone in the country, but the Senator himself, seems to understand that he cannot and will not win the nomination, so he’s paying attention to no advice whatsoever, no matter how friendly or supportive. The papers and pundits are throwing bricks at his window trying to claim that he’s made his point, now he needs to move over, but every sign from inside the campaign is that he’s not hearing any of it and is still obsessed with every delegate. I get that. For sure, fight down to the last vote. Why listen to a bunch of self-serving advice from folks on the sidelines?

But, geez, man, help make a plan for tomorrow after the primaries are over to make all of this matter and help all of us join to move the base that’s now been built to a place to win in November and build a permanent fighting machine for progressives. You have demands, make them to the Clinton campaign. Have a say on the vice-presidential candidate, the potential president for the future, and make sure they are “one of our people.” Negotiate a role for your people and techniques in the structure of the party’s campaign from June to November. Agree to carry your weight until then, whether you go your own way or help build a new party or whatever once the election is over.

So, sure, Clinton is about as capable of change and listening to other voices as Sanders is being criticized for now, but with the election potentially hanging in the balance, there’s leverage there and opportunities that can now be seized. It’s time for all hands to get on board before Hillary sinks the ship, and Trump rides us all down to Davy Jones’ locker.