That ques­tion may be espe­cial­ly instruc­tive for union mem­bers and sup­port­ers who saw him as the most pro-labor major can­di­date in ages. Even if Sanders is nev­er a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date again, what could labor polit­i­cal strate­gists learn from his cam­paign that might strength­en their hand in the next round?

If the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion is not suf­fi­cient­ly amus­ing in its own right — fol­low­ing a week of Repub­li­cans wracked by self-cen­tered dis­sent and absen­teeism, pla­gia­rism from Michelle Oba­ma and the specter of Lucifer guid­ing Hillary Clin­ton — you can enliv­en the evenings with an edu­ca­tion­al game: What would these con­ven­tions be like if Bernie Sanders were the Demo­c­ra­t­ic candidate?

After all, he was one of the most pro-union and pro­gres­sive mem­bers of Con­gress. And, despite his lack of wide­spread pub­lic recog­ni­tion, he ran a very strong cam­paign against one of the best-known women in the world and the dar­ling of both par­ty insid­ers and wealthy contributors.

More­over, Sanders did it by mobi­liz­ing small con­trib­u­tors and grass­roots activists, bring­ing move­ment meth­ods to an elec­toral cam­paign. He told sup­port­ers that real change came from their orga­niz­ing and force­ful­ly press­ing their demands, not sim­ply trust­ing lead­ers or emu­lat­ing Repub­li­can fundrais­ing and hop­ing that it would not result in Repub­li­can-like poli­cies. Label­ing his pro­gram as social­ist did not seem to hurt Sanders much and even helped him with a remark­ably large num­ber of vot­ers, espe­cial­ly the younger ones.

Although there are prob­lems com­par­ing results that lump pri­ma­ry and gen­er­al elec­tion votes togeth­er, it’s still remark­able that Sanders received more than 13 mil­lion votes in the pri­maries — the most won in terms of either per­cent­age or absolute num­bers by any social­ist in Amer­i­can history.

His cam­paign sug­gests that more pro­gres­sives, even iden­ti­fy­ing as social­ists, could run for offices and win, not by hid­ing their views but by clear­ly artic­u­lat­ing them.

Sanders pro­vid­ed a coher­ent, per­sua­sive account of what had gone wrong in recent decades for the vast major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans, as the pow­er and wealth of the top 1 per­cent grew enor­mous­ly. He described con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­ca in terms of a polit­i­cal class con­flict cen­tered on a clash between the nar­row elite and an alliance of work­ing class and mid­dle class vot­ers on eco­nom­ic as well as social issues.

He also appealed to vot­ers at all lev­els of edu­ca­tion, pro­vid­ing an effec­tive chal­lenge to the right-wing ​“pop­ulism” that Don­ald Trump seems to be using so effec­tive­ly to pull increas­ing num­bers of white, work­ing class vot­ers — even union mem­bers — away from the Democrats.

“The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty would be well advised to lis­ten to the Bernie Sanders’ cam­paign,” said Unit­ed Steel­work­ers Inter­na­tion­al Pres­i­dent Leo Gerard.

Ger­ard admires Sanders’ straight­for­ward talk about socialism.

“Bernie’s agen­da is a vision that could cre­ate a bet­ter Amer­i­ca,” he said. ​“One of my crit­i­cisms of the labor move­ment is that we take on one fight at a time, not com­pre­hen­sive issues.”

Change from within

Sanders tried to demon­strate how a com­bi­na­tion of poli­cies he advo­cat­ed and pop­u­lar engage­ment could solve prob­lems peo­ple read­i­ly rec­og­nize. By doing so with­in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, his pro­pos­als more read­i­ly gained some legit­i­ma­cy or seemed safer to many voters.

Although Sanders had stead­fast­ly refused to run as a Demo­c­rat through­out his career, he cau­cused with them for pur­pos­es of orga­niz­ing House affairs and for­mu­lat­ing Con­gres­sion­al Pro­gres­sive Cau­cus strat­e­gy. Now, iron­i­cal­ly, he came close to demon­strat­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ties for social­ists to win through Demo­c­ra­t­ic primaries.

But, espe­cial­ly if self-iden­ti­fied social­ists or pro­gres­sives make up only a minor­i­ty in a mass, mod­er­ate­ly social demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty (like the Democ­rats), they need an orga­ni­za­tion of their own with­in the par­ty. Such a group might resem­ble a social­ist ver­sion of the lib­er­al Amer­i­cans for Demo­c­ra­t­ic Action that was a strong influ­ence in the years after World War II, or demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist Michael Harrington’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic Agen­da, which start­ed in 1976. It could oper­ate when need­ed out­side of Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty stric­tures to mobi­lize sup­port for left-wing strategies.

In recent decades, there have been chal­lengers to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic estab­lish­ment with dif­fer­ent approach­es and dif­fer­ent orga­ni­za­tion­al lega­cies: Think of the var­i­ous cam­paigns out­side the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty by Ralph Nad­er and Bar­ry Com­mon­er in pro­gres­sive third par­ties, or the mav­er­ick third-par­ty effort of busi­ness­man Ross Per­ot that crit­i­cized trade agree­ments like NAF­TA in ways that appealed to ele­ments of both par­ties, or Rev. Jesse Jackson’s cam­paigns for pres­i­dent with­in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party.

The Green Par­ty, which can typ­i­cal­ly count on about 1 per­cent of pres­i­den­tial votes, sup­port­ed Nad­er, but the vehi­cle for Com­mon­er — the Cit­i­zens Par­ty — soon fad­ed, as did Perot’s par­ty after a sec­ond failed bid. Jack­son nev­er devot­ed the ener­gy to make his Nation­al Rain­bow Coali­tion into a strong orga­ni­za­tion either with­in or out­side the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, but it pro­vid­ed him a nation­al platform.

Although most of these attempts did not suc­ceed in cre­at­ing vital orga­ni­za­tions, Howard Dean’s brief pri­ma­ry cam­paign did much bet­ter with the still ongo­ing, inter­nal, pro­gres­sive group, Democ­ra­cy for America.

The strongest of the alter­na­tive par­ty orga­ni­za­tions is the Work­ing Fam­i­lies Par­ty, which start­ed in and is still strongest in New York. A pro­po­nent of the so-called fusion strat­e­gy, the Work­ing Fam­i­lies Par­ty has its own line on the bal­lot but in prac­tice main­ly endors­es Democ­rats who are rel­a­tive­ly pro­gres­sive and pro-labor. It has spread to a total of 13 states, but its influ­ence is gen­er­al­ly great­est at the low­est ranks on the ballot.

Only time will tell how Sanders’ group will fare.

He announced recent­ly that he plans to launch an orga­ni­za­tion — Our Rev­o­lu­tion — that would help recruit, train, and raise funds for can­di­dates. About 24,000 indi­vid­u­als have already con­tact­ed the cam­paign about run­ning for office or help­ing oth­ers, accord­ing to USA Today, many at the state and local lev­els, where Democ­rats have lost ground.

‘ Bernie gave voice to millions’

Labor for Bernie, Sanders’ inde­pen­dent union sup­port­ers, was mod­er­ate in size but active and dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly influ­en­tial, tip­ping the bal­ance in some pri­maries, such as Wash­ing­ton state, sup­port­ers say. Six nation­al unions (Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers of Amer­i­ca, Nation­al Nurs­es Unit­ed, Amal­ga­mat­ed Tran­sit Union, Inter­na­tion­al Long­shore and Ware­house Union, Unit­ed Elec­tri­cal Work­ers and the Amer­i­can Postal Work­ers Union) belonged to the group, plus 107 local unions and tens of thou­sands of individuals.

Now it is shut­ting down, says vol­un­teer orga­niz­er Rand Wil­son, but the group could still serve as a base for future orga­niz­ing. By pro­mot­ing Sanders’ ideas, it helped make more class con­scious polit­i­cal dis­cus­sion pos­si­ble with­in union ranks.

Most Labor for Bernie mem­bers are like­ly to agree with Wil­son that despite its small base, the orga­ni­za­tion gave a hint at what’s possible.

“Labor had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to get behind a seri­ous can­di­date for the work­ing class,” he says, ​“and you can see what more could have hap­pened if Bernie had been endorsed (by the broad­er labor movement).”

“When peo­ple say Bernie can’t win,” says for­mer CWA Pres­i­dent Lar­ry Cohen, a senior advi­sor to Sanders, ​“they mean the work­ing class can’t win. But he showed the work­ing class can win. The only rea­son he lost was because of the establishment.”

Cohen has come to a dra­mat­ic con­clu­sion about tra­di­tion­al labor move­ment pol­i­cy: After decades of tak­ing seri­ous­ly the idea that labor unions should try to reach com­mon agree­ment on polit­i­cal issues, he has decid­ed that if unions find bet­ter strate­gic part­ners out­side the labor move­ment on a par­tic­u­lar issue, they should pro­ceed on the basis of their analy­sis of what is need­ed, not hold back and wait for labor uni­ty. Too often, he says, a par­tic­u­lar union’s polit­i­cal stance may reflect a pri­vate employer’s growth plans, not the gen­er­al good for work­ing people.

Fol­low­ing this strat­e­gy, ​“on the pick­et line there would be uni­ty, and every­one would stand with a union on strike,” he says, ​“but not nec­es­sar­i­ly focus on uni­ty about polit­i­cal strategy.”

RoseAnn DeMoro, exec­u­tive direc­tor of NNU and a vig­or­ous advo­cate for Sanders, says the labor move­ment now sees itself as non-partisan.

“My advice is we should see our­selves as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the work­ing class — not the exec­u­tive class, not the neo-lib­er­als,” she says.

DeMoro said the Democ­rats reject­ed (or in some cas­es, such as tuition-free col­lege for all, watered down) Sanders’ lead­ing pro­pos­als, such as expand­ed Medicare and Social Secu­ri­ty, a ban on frack­ing and a ​“Robin Hood” tax, which is a tax on finan­cial transactions.

In any case, she says, even the com­pro­mise 2016 Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty plat­form is not bind­ing on candidates.

“Assum­ing the Democ­rats win,” she said, ​“we have essen­tial­ly nego­ti­at­ed down from our prin­ci­ples in advance — basi­cal­ly nego­ti­at­ing with our­selves. If we bar­gained our con­tracts that way, the nurs­es would fire us.”

“Labor is out of touch with its base,” DeMoro says. ​“Mem­bers are where Bernie was. Labor should have lis­tened to Bernie.”

Ran­di Wein­garten, pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of Teach­ers, the first union to endorse Clin­ton, believes that Sanders had a pos­i­tive influ­ence on the debate that result­ed in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty adopt­ing what she, unlike DeMoro, describes as ​“a plat­form that’s the most pro­gres­sive in history.”

“Bernie gave voice to mil­lions who feel left out or left behind, espe­cial­ly young peo­ple,” she said, ​“but he cer­tain­ly is not the only one who spoke truth to power.

“This is the first gen­er­a­tion in our his­to­ry that might be worse off than the gen­er­a­tion before. And rather than being mired in frus­tra­tion, Bernie inspired them to act. And that’s been a great gift to all of us,” said Weingarten.

Bob Mas­ter, polit­i­cal direc­tor for CWA in New York and co-chair of the Work­ing Fam­i­lies Par­ty, saw some of the same inspi­ra­tion but also some disappointments.

He was not sur­prised at the upwelling of union mem­ber sup­port for ​“a new brand of rad­i­cal oppo­si­tion­al pol­i­tics,” nor at the lack of such enthu­si­asm from many labor lead­ers for ​“the first politi­cian in many years who so clear­ly artic­u­lat­ed a class-based attack on the pre­vail­ing order.”

It was impor­tant, Mas­ter argues, that Sanders linked his var­ied reforms togeth­er as rep­re­sent­ing ​“social­ism,” thus ​“open(ing) the social and polit­i­cal imag­i­na­tion to dreams of real alternatives.

“This ide­o­log­i­cal reori­en­ta­tion is far more impor­tant to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of reviv­ing the labor move­ment than most labor lead­ers would acknowl­edge,” said Master.

“How much more seis­mic would his cam­paign have been if even a hand­ful of oth­er major unions had joined the cause, cre­at­ing greater cred­i­bil­i­ty, pro­vid­ing addi­tion­al resources, and per­haps help­ing to estab­lish, most impor­tant­ly, more organ­ic con­nec­tions to work­ers of color?”

How much more indeed?