My personal experience is that there are plenty of people on the right or center-right who despise centrist Democrats moreso than they do progressives. Like, my parents are conservative Catholics who would never dream of saying a kind word about someone like Clinton, Biden, Pelosi, or Schumer, but with Sanders they said things like, "I disagree with him on abortion but I do think he's trying to help the country." Even my brother, who watches shit like OAN, criticized him for "not actually being that different from the rest of them." The mainstream, centrist wing of the party is a known quantity and they hate their guts, they don't agree with or trust progressives, but if they had to pick they'd rather roll the dice.

People think of politics as being a linear spectrum of left-right but for most people it's more complex than that. Some people are able to see people like Schumer for the slimeball that he is, but for whatever reason they might have a blind spot for the other side's flaws.

No idea how relevant that is to your father-in-law but I'd wonder if he even knows anything about Van Hollen other than that his name isn't Chuck Schumer.

Here is a clip posted by Forbes which has his full, unedited answer to the question, from a few months ago.

This is pure theater, unenforceable, and it wouldn't hold up in court for a second. You can't just add "no takebacksies!" to a law and make it permanent.

Most people rejected his message. They hated WoodScientist because he told the truth.

To be honest, I think there's a serious possibility, if a president attempted to dismantle the "national security" apparatus, the NSA would stage a false flag attack themselves to discredit them and protect their positions. Even if the president had hard evidence that they had done so, it's doubtful that Americans would believe it or care. There'd be back to back media coverage talking about how the move puts Americans at risk and warning of an attack, then an attack happens, people's minds would be made up in an instant, and any pushback would be seen as both treasonous and blindly loyal to the president.

Look at the Cold War and how many times the CIA manipulated elections or overthrew democratically elected leaders, just for the sake of bananas being a little cheaper from a minor country half the world away. Do people really think they didn't have contingencies in place for the possibility of a socialist president being elected, or just one who interfered with their aims? Why? Did they just have so much respect for democracy? Or did they somehow lack the capability to interfere, when they so easily did so abroad? And if they had contingencies then, what happened when to actually break that power?

The last time a president really acted against the aims of the intelligence community was when JFK fired Alan Dulles, months before he was assassinated. Dulles somehow ended up on the investigative committee into the assassination. Whether he was behind it or not, he was treated as above suspicion despite having the clearest motive.

Even if you somehow avoid getting assassinated and stop them from orchestrating a false flag, it's likely they have connections in the media they can use against you. Try to suppress that, and you're an evil authoritarian tankie. Basically any tool that the president, or that any head of state around the world, can use to survive when US spies are trying to get rid of them, is "authoritarian," which in turn can be used to justify acting against them more openly.

As far as I can tell Van Hollen is a decent choice from what's realistic at the moment. He supports M4A and at least stopping "offensive" aid to Israel. The biggest criticism I could find is just that he's deep enough in the machine to not be fully trusted, but that also means he has the experience to make the case of being qualified for the role. He's a compromise candidate between the left and right wings of the party, which is preferable to Schumer and the most that can be realistically achieved right now.

Anything short of that shows they aren’t serious about wanting to fix the damage they helped cause.

Serious? Since when do they even have a pretense of wanting to fix that damage?

Vegetables don't exist.

Through taxes, obviously.

Don't act like it's impossible. In the USSR, rent amounted to about 3% of people's incomes. This was true even relatively early on. And even Ancient Rome had a grain dole.

It's amazing that anyone could look at the level of productivity we have today in comparison to history and think that such things are impossible.

It’s really strange, we pay these people to act as our representatives full time

The amount you pay them in taxes is pocket change compared to what they get from the ruling class to not do that.

Yeah, this is part of why I've been saying that it's a silly and naive fantasy to think Trump would ever see significant legal consequences for his actions. Has been since day 1.

The Democrats' mandate, especially Democrats like Hamilton who won in a red state, is to end the war and lower gas prices. Trump did plenty of corrupt and illegal shit in his first term, Kansas still voted for him overwhelmingly three times. It's not the voters' priority. And the reason they can't "do both at the same time" is because it's not a question of having the "time" to do it, but having the political will. Hamilton would presumably like to have a chance a reelection, and going hard after Republicans is not going to appeal to Kansas voters. And you don't just need people like Hamilton, you'd need Republicans to defect and turn against their own party.

This isn't the first time it's played out this way, and I can only hope that this latest example helps people to see the system more clearly for what it is.

3. Should socialists support bourgeois-led national liberation movements?

A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism flows fairly naturally from the previous point.

In the previous text, Lenin argues that those who refuse to call for revolutionary actions against their own governments in WWI, but rather called for "neither victory nor defeat" were essentially taking the same stance as "the defense of the fatherland," and accepting the framing that fighting the war was necessary to protect the nation, to guard against defeat. After this critique, Kievsky argued that the same logic should apply to bourgeois-led national liberation movements, that to support them is to support "the defense of the fatherland."

Lenin repudiates this misunderstanding. The problem with "the defense of the fatherland" slogan is not that it is always wrong to "defend the fatherland," but rather that WWI was not actually about defending the fatherland, rather, it was about the control of various colonies. Therefore, while it is unjustifiable to adopt a position of "the defense of the fatherland" in WWI, this does not mean that we must always reject any course of action that happens to defend somebody's fatherland.

With this misunderstanding cleared up, Lenin presents the method by which we should understand conflicts: by viewing them as a continuation of policy, and by looking, on a case-by-case basis, at what dispute prior to the conflict led to the war. This does not mean looking at "who started it," as he says in Socialism and War (cited in this text):

For example, if tomorrow, Morocco were to declare war on France, India on England, Persia or China on Russia, and so forth, those would be "just," "defensive" wars, irrespective of who attacked first; and every Socialist would sympathize with the victory of the oppressed, dependent, unequal states against the oppressing, slaveowning, predatory "great" powers.

Instead of looking at conflicts in terms of who's the aggressor and who's the defender, we should look at things in terms of class, and in terms of oppressor and oppressed. Imperialist powers do not have the right to defend their sovereignty; after all, if they did, then revolution would be unjustified.

From chapter 5 of the same work:

Here, Lenin makes a remarkable point. He argues that real international solidarity requires unity of action, but not necessarily unity of rhetoric. Specifically, in the case of Norway seeking independence from Sweden, he argues that Swedish socialists, those of the oppressor nation, were correct in giving unconditional support to Norway's right to secede, that, if they had been critical of the movement and imposed conditions, then they would have been chauvinists. On the other hand, Norwegian socialists were correct to be critical and skeptical of the movement, on the basis that it was a bourgeois-led movement.

One way to think of this is two people bumping into each other on the street. If they both apologize, then there's no conflict, even though they're taking different stances on who's at fault. On the other hand, if they try to arrive at a unified line on whose fault it really was, then there may be more conflict.

Lenin notes, here and in many other works, that there should be no inherent preference for large or small nations, for breaking apart or coming together, but that such questions should be considered in terms of how to best unite the proletariat and advance socialist goals. Secession movements can be used by the bourgeoisie to "drive a wedge" between people, however, this wedge only becomes stronger when such movements are opposed by the dominant group. You might say, "if you love someone, let them free," the hope being that they will choose voluntarily to remain united.

Later, from the same chapter:

Here, Lenin provides one more condition for supporting a national liberation movement: it must not be a struggle "of the reactionary classes against imperialism and capitalism." This phrasing can generate confusion, as imperialism and capitalism are often thought of as being reactionary. But he provides the context that "capitalism is progressive compared with feudalism," meaning, the "reactionary classes" he's discussing are classes which aim to return to a feudal system, such as the aristocracy, as distinct from the bourgeoisie.

To sum up, when looking at secession or an imperfect national liberation movement, or whether a nation should be defended, we should consider the following questions:

A. Is the conflict actually about national liberation, or it really about something else?

B. Will it start WWIII?

C. Is the movement not merely flawed, but reactionary, even relative to capitalism?

D. Am I in a position to critique the movement, without engaging in chauvinism?

2. Should socialists support the "lesser evil" or "underdog" in geopolitical affairs?

Lenin writes in Socialism and War:

Here, Lenin rejects the argument that Germany should be supported in it's fight against Britain and France, regardless of the fact that Germany possessed fewer colonies than the others, because Germany was not fighting to free those colonies but rather to claim them for itself.

I have sometimes seen similar "lesser evil" arguments used to argue in favor of Russia in the modern day. But it should be understood that this particular line is inconsistent with Lenin's stances. Yes, we can today see how much of the world is dominated by the US and NATO as compared to Russia, but if (mind the if) it is conceded that Russia is fighting merely to acquire resource colonies for itself, then it would be in a similar position to Germany in WWI, and should not be supported, critically or otherwise, from a Leninist perspective.

However, we must also look at (what I consider to be one of his best and most important works) The Defeat of One's Own Government in the Imperialist War:

Here, Lenin once again rejects the idea of supporting the "lesser evil" by rejecting Trotsky's framing of his position in that way. Rather, Lenin calls for the proletariat of all belligerent countries to conduct revolutionary actions against their own governments.

Lenin concedes the fact that such revolutionary actions will benefit Germany, but this is merely a side effect. To view the conflict merely in terms of which nation comes out ahead is to engage in "the political methodology of social-patriotism." Rather, we should consider class struggle to be the foremost and most important conflict, and the conflict between the imperialist powers to be bourgeois infighting, in which whoever comes out on top is not all that important. To avoid and denounce revolutionary action out of concern of giving Germany an advantage is not remaining neutral, rather, it is taking the side of Russia, and saying that we must be so invested in Russia's victory that we must put aside our own priorities and form a class truce to protect it.

But Lenin makes a very a clear distinction between taking actions that may benefit Germany, and being ambivalent to who wins, compared to actually supporting Germany, critically or otherwise. He points out the example of the Paris Commune, which weakened France in a war against Germany, but was then attacked by Germany and defeated. While both were fighting the French state, neither set aside class conflict in order to do so. To look at the Paris Commune as being merely "fifth columnists" of Germany would be plainly ridiculous, rather, it was its own side.