Yglesias urges Democrats to support a corrupt Washington insider with an ends-justify-the-means attitude because he believes she’ll advance his preferred domestic agenda. “Committed Democrats and liberal-leaning interest groups are facing a reality in which any policy gains they achieve are going to come through the profligate use of executive authority, and Clinton is almost uniquely suited to deliver the goods,” he writes. “More than almost anyone else around, she knows where the levers of power lie, and she is comfortable pulling them, procedural niceties be damned.”

That sounds a lot like Dick Cheney, another longtime Washington insider who spent lots of time in the White House, learned how to manipulate the levers of power in unusual ways, and was comfortable doing so, procedural niceties be damned. Of course, Hillary Clinton has big policy disagreements with Dick Cheney. But as a United States senator, she joined him in favoring an Authorization for Use of Military Force that significantly expanded executive power; an outside-the-U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay; a preemptive war against Iraq; the Patriot Act, with its many civil-liberties abrogations; an expansive program of extra-legal, warrantless surveillance on tens of millions of innocent Americans; and the use of lethal drone strikes over civilian populations in Pakistan and Yemen.

If she’s elected president, progressives can expect a lot more ends-justifies-the means behavior that works out about as well as the war she urged in Libya despite the lack of Congressional approval. They can expect needless scandals, a hawkish approach to foreign policy, disdain for transparency in government, and civil-liberties abuses. And they can expect to be thrown policy bones here and there—at least enough to maintain the support of progressive wonks amid all the unprincipled abuses.