There is no better place to start than the bad news.

Bernie Sanders had a bad night last night. Of course, it doesn’t mean we stop campaigning or that we write premature obituaries. It does, however, give us a chance to take stock of where we are, what the last five years have taught us, and what might happen after July, regardless of the outcome.

The bad news is that the Democratic Party isn’t going anywhere. The belief that Joe Biden’s nomination portends the imminent collapse of the party should be rejected. Some on the Left are insisting a crushing defeat by Donald Trump would mean the party’s disintegration. This misunderstands American parties and their resilience. The Democratic Party is the oldest party in the world — it has survived the Civil War, decades of political wilderness, two World Wars, and twenty-three presidential defeats (more than any other party), and it still commands about 12 million more members than the Republican Party and regularly wins the popular vote in national elections. Consider also that these four years out of power have only strengthened the party’s fundraising operations, with the DCCC (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) raking in more than $12.1 million in January, smashing its previous record.

To put this in perspective, Bernie Sanders has won around 5 million votes in the primary thus far — no mean feat, but only a fraction of those voters would ever consider “leaving” the Democratic Party and voting for a third party. Yet even if all of them did, it would mean the Democrats would still have 7 million more members than the Republicans.

The truth is, unfortunately, the Democratic Party can make do without its left flank, and they would happily see the Bernie supporters exit so they can continue to consolidate their upper-middle-class constituency. Biden’s strong success among suburban voters reinforces the notion among party elites that — like the 2018 midterms — they can shuffle in white-collar professionals to replace disaffected blue-collar workers.

Could we have prevented this? What went wrong? I think most of Sanders’s current struggles are owed to structural factors beyond his (or anyone’s) control. The Democratic establishment learned the lesson of the 2016 Republican primary and succeeded in getting candidates to drop out and coalesce around Biden in remarkable speed right before Super Tuesday.

In other words, in five years, we’ve moved forward fifty.

The move gave Biden an unprecedented level of “earned” media, with Uncle Joe carrying an estimated $70 million in completely positive television coverage on every major news network in the country.

To put that in perspective, Mike Bloomberg’s media-driven campaign spent over $200 million in advertisements since November. Biden captured 35 percent of that total in just two days.

Second, the party’s relentless “Stop Bernie” campaign did hurt him in areas where state parties still command votes. Jim Clyburn’s Biden endorsements proved that the establishment still has legitimacy in the South, and it is enough to hurt insurgent candidates.

Third, it is an incumbent election year, which means a few things. First, incumbents win elections. Since 1900, fourteen presidents have sought reelection, and only four have lost (I don’t count Gerald Ford, because he didn’t win an election to begin with). And since the neoliberal age, only one has lost his reelection bid. So again, even if the Democrats lose badly, it likely means they won’t reflect too much on why they lost — after all, the party elites would prefer being the opposition party to Trump over being the governing party under Bernie.

But what’s also important here is that, because incumbents win elections so frequently, many working-class voters just stay home in these elections. The pattern of political life for most young workers has suggested that — barring a major recession or war — the sitting president will get reelected.

Bernie Sanders’s bet on new and infrequent working-class voters may have been made more difficult by voters thinking that the reelection of the incumbent is inevitable. In fact, Bernie’s army never showed up. The campaign’s heavy focus on turning out the youth vote proved ill-conceived, with youth turnout dipping below 2016 levels.

Sanders’s strategy to overwhelm the electorate with a voter surge failed. Instead of Bernie’s mobilized base flooding the polls, it was Biden who rode the turnout wave. There was a genuine voter surge on Super Tuesday, and it’s likely there was one last night as well, but that surge was not driven by workers or young people. Instead, it was driven by upper-middle-class moderates (the very group that already dominates Democratic primary elections).

Indeed, nowhere was this voter surge greater than in Fairfax County itself, with Virginia posting a nearly 70 percent increase over 2016 Democratic primary turnout where over 51 percent of voters had at least a bachelor’s degree.

Of course, defeat is demoralizing. The Brahminization of the primary system, the increasing challenge of mobilizing working-class voters, the toxicity of the Democratic Party “brand,” and the overwhelming influence of money and media in elections can make it seem like there is no path forward for the Left. That frustration will play out in the weeks and months ahead. There will be lots of finger-pointing and finger-wagging among our corner of the political world; there will be myriad diagnoses of Sanders’s current weakness; words like “racist,” “sexist,” and “xenophobic” will be thrown around a lot.

And, of course, there will be some wacky proposals that promise us a shortcut to power. Sectarians will encourage everyone to funnel their rage into ill-fated third-party efforts, and some will demand an insurrection at the Democratic National Convention. Chaos on the Left will unfold as the Democratic Party marches blissfully into a general election they will likely lose — and Sanders supporters will almost certainly get blamed for that loss. Not much will come from any of that, save for a few new social media brands and a lot of bad press.

Many readers of this magazine were politicized in 2016, and most of their political lives have been wrapped up in Bernie Sanders’s political fortunes. It might feel like a lifetime of work has been wasted on the one chance we had to win. That’s to be expected, but it’s also a hyperbolic reaction. The truth is that the Left loses much more than we win. Yet, despite our challenges, I’m confident that the road ahead of us provides ample opportunities to build on what we have learned.