I agree with every word of Wendy Kaminer's essay, but I still haven't been driven into the arms of Grampa Lewis.
What's in HRC's favor? On most important questions, she is, God help us, a few notches more humane than Mayor Guiliani, and as Nathan Newman correctly argues, those marginal distinctions ought to be taken seriously. In particular, if she wins a tight race with heavy labor support, she's likely to vote decently on wage, immigration, and workplace-safety issues.
The question is whether labor (and other elements of the left that get on board her campaign) would have the guts/moxie/intelligence to press that advantage -- to build street-level social movements that might actually put some heat on HRC and other elected officials.
As far as I'm concerned, that question -- creating activism with teeth -- precedes any debate about electoral strategy. If I were in NYC this month, I'd be back on the picket lines with the greengrocer workers' campaign on the Lower East Side, not selling tickets to the Hillary banquet or petitioning for Al Lewis and the Greens.
Having said that, the left obviously needs to take electoral politics seriously. (The greengrocer workers' campaign has gotten crucial aid from members of city council, esp. a few who are tight with the WFP.) Building a serious left within the Dem Party and building a serious left third party are both hellishly difficult projects, and I think that the WFP's inside/outside strategy, if done correctly, might manage to avoid the worst pitfalls of both.
The WFP's endorsement of Hillary is, I think, a tolerable choice for the party in its infancy. If Hillary does indeed win a tight race (I'm pessimistic) and the WFP's line provides the margin, that will give the far more clout with every elected Dem in the state, and will make living-wage organizing that much easier.
If the WFP manages to grow and mature, I assume that it will gradually develop the capacity to threaten the HRCs of the future with real pressure from the left -- eventually by running its own left candidates and refusing to cross-endorse the worst Dems.
But right now the WFP is a long way from having that capacity, and if it wants to go through this HRC exercise as a means of building (and demonstrating) its muscle -- well, as I said, I'm willing to hold my nose.