Still, Sanders has fallen far behind Clinton’s commanding delegate lead, and the probability that he can catch up is extremely low. “Bye bye, Bernie: The Democratic race is all but over,” The Washington Post declared on Wednesday. At some point, the Sanders campaign will have to contemplate what happens if the uphill fight can’t be won.

It is difficult to say how much staying power the movement Sanders has worked to build will have. The senator’s ability to achieve his political objectives over the long-term could hinge on the way the campaign is run from here on out as well as what comes next. The more money and grassroots enthusiasm Sanders taps into now, the easier it will be for the senator and his allies to sustain a progressive network of support that remains active and relevant after the dust settles on the presidential election. Matthew Yglesias makes the case at Vox that Sanders should look beyond the election, arguing, “Sanders’s best play now is to try to consider how to create an institutional and financial infrastructure that will carry forward into the future so that other politicians can stand on his shoulders rather than needing to reinvent the wheel.”

There is precedent for channeling grassroots enthusiasm ginned up on the campaign trail into political institutions. Sanders’s fellow Vermonter Howard Dean, who tapped into populist sentiment during his unsuccessful 2004 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, founded Democracy for America, a progressive political organization that helped lead the ultimately futile effort to draft progressive icon Elizabeth Warren into the 2016 presidential race. There’s also Organizing for Action, a group that The Washington Post once described as “a nonprofit group that grew out of Obama’s campaign machine” and that has subsequently worked to support the president’s agenda.

The idea that support for Sanders could translate into something more lasting than a presidential campaign appears to already be on the minds of some Democratic operatives. National Journal reports, “Some Democrats [have] suggested Sanders could be even more influential after the convention by creating an advocacy group modeled on Democracy for America.” Still, it could be quite a challenge for the Sanders campaign to retool, especially if it lacks deep ties to the Democratic establishment that could prove useful in providing institutional knowledge and support for such an effort. The idea of a formal organization promoting the senator’s fiery brand of progressive politics or Sanders as a political powerbroker for the Democratic Party also seems at odds with, and potentially damaging to, the popular image of Sanders as an outsider.

In the meantime, Sanders faces plenty of risk by remaining in the race. His influence beyond the election depends, in part, on how much goodwill he can amass and maintain. If the campaign pursues any strategy, issue, or even tone that rubs supporters the wrong way, it could erode any advantage to sticking out the primary election. In recent weeks, the campaign has been more forceful in drawing a contrast with Clinton, which could prove grating to Sanders supporters who are more interested in his positive “A Future to Believe In” message than in seeing him go after Clinton. That could hurt Sanders’s brand and Clinton’s general-election prospects by lending an air of legitimacy to similar Republican attacks against her.