1. We can win.

Socialism is an electoral liability. That Bernie Sanders is a self-admitted socialist will swing votes, and it will swing them against him. There is literally no doubt in my mind that this is the case. There are Obama voters from 2008 and 2012 who will vote against Bernie Sanders if he is the nominee.

Will there be many? Probably. If the electorate is the same as the one in 2012, it would probably mean that he loses. But you know what I'm betting? I bet that there will be a lot of brand new voters going to the polls. People who have never voted a day in their lives, who have never cared about politics one bit, will vote. Bernie has a way of bringing enthusiasm that I've never seen before. Obama had the historicity of his race in his favor, but Bernie is the only politician you could ever hear and say, "Yep, this guy is telling the truth, or at least he believes he is." He's a politician you can trust. And trust is key to winning the hearts and minds of disaffected, unconnected people who have given up and accepted the futility of change.

There's an enthusiasm gap between Republicans and Democrats. One reason is that Democrats haven't been given a reason to vote beyond "Ew, icky Republicans". Look at the fundraising emails from the DNC. Do you see much positivity, or just a lot of "Oh, send us money because John Boehner won't like it"? We are a party without a cause. We saw this in 2014 when we gave Democrats absolutely no reason to vote, dancing around on our tip-toes to avoid offending racist southerners in Louisiana, North Carolina, Arkansas, and elsewhere. Look where that got us: We lost nine Senate seats, several governorships, and are now at our lowest numbers in the House since the 1920s!

But Bernie gives us a cause. Bernie can speak with passion, giving Democrats a reason to be Democrats for the first time in decades.

I believe Bernie will reverse the enthusiasm gap and bring a brand new coalition to the table, one that fully brings out young white liberals who are disenchanted with the political process and young minorities who believe the Democrats have largely abandoned them. Bernie will harvest the anger and excitement we felt for Occupy Wall Street before anarchists took it over and rendered it irrelevant.

If Occupy was the seed, Bernie is the fruit.

2. If we lose... the country still moves leftward.

Allow me to discuss the concept of the Overton Window. The Overton Window is the idea that the gulf between the two main parties must not be large. In other words, if one of the main political parties is far right, the other must be centrist to center-right. We see this here in America, where a far right party is one of the main parties, and a centrist party is the other; we also see it in Poland where a similar dynamic exists. The reverse is true as well: If a far left party is one of the main parties, then the other must be centrist to center-left. Just look at Norway or Sweden for an example of this, where far left socialists alternate power with "right wingers" who would be Democrats in America. There is no country where the far left and the far right can alternate in power. The people of a country are either left or right wing by varying shades of left and right.

The Overton Window of the 60s was oriented towards the left wing. We had an unabashedly liberal president and congress after 1964, and we passed landmark liberal legislation that has had enormous impact ever since. Then came the 80s, where the Overton Window shifted to the right. The Democrats were lost in the wilderness until Bill Clinton, a centrist, shifted the party to exist inside the Overton Window.

But as Occupy and the election of Obama showed, the Overton Window is ready to swing leftward again. Bernie Sanders will do that even if he loses. He will do something that hasn't been done since the 1920s:

He will make socialism mainstream.

3. If we lose... we're well positioned in 2018.

If there is a historical pattern that has existed in America since the dawn of our democracy, it's that the first midterm after a change of parties will almost always result in the incumbent president's party being soundly defeated. 2002 was a rare case where this didn't happen, and it didn't happen solely because of 9/11 and Bush's popularity at the time. Look back: 2010, 1994, 1990, 1982, 1978, 1970... these were all very good years for the party not in the White House.

Thus, if a Republican is elected over Bernie Sanders, 2018 will almost certainly be a Democratic wave year just in time for us to win very important governorships in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Florida, and other states with significant Republican gerrymanders in place. The governors of these states can veto Republican plans (or sign Democratic ones), allowing us to have a hand in drawing the congressional district maps after 2020. 2018 is the single most important election for the foreseeable future. It will also help us protect vulnerable red-state Democrats in states like Missouri, North Dakota, West Virginia, Montana, and Indiana, which would likely decide control of the Senate.

If we lose in 2016, we win in 2018, and therefore we win the House in 2022.

4. If we win... we can enact progressive legislation.

Imagine an America where Bernie Sanders is President of the United States.

...

You can go ahead and wipe the drool off your face, dear reader.

Imagine debates between Republicans and Bernie. Gone is the Obama-era talking point of taking a "scalpel" instead of a "hatchet" to the federal budget, a budget that has already been torn to shreds by Norquist-style "drown the government in a bathtub" economic policy. Instead, Bernie will advocate the largest expansion of government since FDR. And Bernie has never been much for compromise. If he wins, Republicans will play ball, or he will hold their feet to the fire.

Gone are the appointments of moderate Supreme Court justices. Instead, Bernie will appoint the most liberal justices in history, who will enshrine fairness into the interpretation of the law in a way that hasn't been seen since the courts of the 60s and 70s that guaranteed women's right of choice and gave us landmark civil rights decisions.

Gone is the right wing talking point about Obamacare being some liberal takeover of healthcare (God, if only). Instead, Bernie will normalize the existence of Obamacare by calling it too right-wing. And it is: Obamacare is inherently flawed. A modern single payer system is far preferable to Obamacare. It always has been, and it always will be.

There isn't a soul on this site who can complain about what Bernie would do if he were actually in office.

5. If we win... The Republican Party is dead.

Put simply:

If an old, white, Jewish socialist with mussed up hair who hails from a state with fewer people than the average congressional district can be elected President of the United States, the current Republican Party will never again be able to win the presidency. They would have to radically reform their party platform to match the new Overton Window. That, of course, is not possible so long as vile racists make up the core of their party. So long as the Republican Party is dominated by white southern conservatives, we will continue to win the presidency. In the future, the South will not be able to form the core of any political party's platform.

Bernie Sanders represents the end of the Confederacy as a viable political force.

6. If we win... we gain everything.

This is the last point I will make. If we win, we gain everything. If we lose, we will win other victories in the hearts and minds of America - and these victories will last for decades. If we win, Bernie is the fruit of Occupy. If we lose, Bernie's ideas will live on, taking root in the soil, and we will one day reap the harvest.

I'll close with this. Bernie is still not favored to win the primary. I'm sorry, but that's the reality we face right now. There are powerful forces that do not want a transformational candidate in the White House, and we are very weak. We have become a complacent people, a cynical people, people who no longer care enough to actualize our goals and our dreams. And if Hillary wins, we need to rally behind her and support her as the next best thing. If we lose, Bernie's ideas will live to fight another day. We'll rally behind a new candidate.

We'll keep fighting. We won't give up - because it's not Hillary's America we ultimately want. Hillary's America is a fine substitute for Jeb Bush's or Scott Walker's or Marco Rubio's America. It's a fine substitute even for Obama's America. But Bernie's America is the America of our dreams, and we will make it happen. Perhaps that day is now. Perhaps it's not.

The important thing is to try.