Democrats are terrified of another four years of Trump. It’s a dangerous kind of fear. It’s the kind of fear that leads to bad decisions based on making what appears to be the safe and rational choice. After months of flirting with a large field of candidates that represented the diversity that the party gives so much lip service to, voters decided to play it safe. They chose an establishment old white man to take on socialist old white man so that he can go on to do battle with the Republican old white man this fall.

In other words, both Klobuchar and Buttigieg were coaxed into ending their campaigns by party leaders in order to consolidate the moderate vote behind Biden and counter the excitement of those that feel the Bern. It worked. Moderate voters lined up behind Biden, turning the Democratic Primary into a two-way race with Sanders. Now, I’ll tell you why this “safe” choice is a bad one.

There is a saying in American politics that has a lot of truth in it. It goes, “Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line.” When Trump won the 2016 primary, political pundits and hopeful Democrats naively mused that many Republicans wouldn’t be able to hold their noses and vote for this man. A divided Republican Party plus the votes of a unified Democratic Party would assure a win for Hillary. No way. Despite some noisy Never Trumpers, most Republicans fell in line and voted with their party. What a bunch of sheep, you might think. Sure, but they are sheep who win. Sheep who get power and shape the country as they see fit.

Democrats, on the other hand, often can’t be bothered to get out of bed to vote for someone they aren’t enthusiastic about. Buttigieg was absolutely correct when he reminded Democrats that they do best with transformational candidates. Think about Obama, Clinton, Carter and Kennedy. Then think about Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Al Gore, Michael Dukakis and Walter Mondale. While Hillary was indeed transformational as the first female candidate for a major party, like the rest of these guys, she was a safe, rational choice, someone with the experience and know-how to do a good job running the country.

But as Democrats have learned over and over that serious and experienced competence doesn’t win elections. Democrats want to have their hearts set aflutter rather than get down to the business of electing a president who will serve their interests.

And here lies one of Trump’s superpowers: he incarnates the stuff of Democratic nightmares and in turn, they are turning themselves inside out trying to use their primary votes to game the general election. Don’t get me wrong, electability matters when choosing a candidate. But it’s a dangerous trap. If Democrats just voted for who excites them the most, then we would most likely have the candidate most likely to beat Trump. Instead, too many voters fancy themselves CNN talking heads, predicting who might be the suburban or midwestern favorite and of course, who can win back working-class voters. The problem is, even most professional pundits aren’t very good at this.

Worse, in interviews with voters all over the country, you hear them talk about the same dilemma: should they vote with their heads or their hearts? Given that they are democrats, the answer is ridiculously easy, they should vote with their hearts. After all, November comes soon, and Democrats can’t win unless everyone has the proper motivation to fill out and mail that ballot or take the time to go to their polling place. It seems so little to ask in order to rid the world of Trump, but we just can’t count on Democrats to make the effort if the candidate doesn’t make their hearts beat just a little faster.

But voters got spooked and decided that they’d feel safer with a candidate who looks like the ones than we’ve been electing for the past 243 years. This attitude particularly writes off women because, as the faulty logic goes, Hillary lost. And forget taking a chance on someone young or of color. And a democratic socialist is equally out of the question no matter how much he excites his base of loyal voters. It’s now Biden’s race to lose.

This op-ed was published in Spanish in El Español.