It’s barely been two days and I’m already near my breaking point.

My feed consists entirely of incisive and insightful articles about what went wrong combined with friends and strangers who are shocked, or stunned, or gobsmacked, or devastated that this happened. I understand and relate. But I can save you a lot of time. I can plainly and accurately describe what went wrong and why you are surprised.

Here it is. Are you ready?

You didn’t help.

That probably sounds really condescending and accusatory. I don’t want it to sound that way, so I’ll use a hyper-simple example to illustrate what I mean.

The circle is everyone in your family who wants coffee:

This circle is how many people in your family made coffee:

In a nutshell, that’s why we lost. It’s not complicated and it’s not surprising; it just seems that way because most people didn’t know what was happening inside the campaign day-to-day.

It’s hard to believe we didn’t have enough people making coffee. We all saw Bernie’s rallies and the massive crowds. All those people were helping… weren’t they?

Yes, but there’s helping, and then there’s helping.

If you helped by giving money instead of volunteering, it’s great you did that but we would have won if you gave money and also volunteered.

If you helped by spreading awareness with posts and tweets, then you spent time amusing yourself instead of spending that time volunteering.

If you helped by engaging in online debates, then you spent your energy on likely trolls instead of using it volunteering.

If you helped by planning rallies and marches, what we needed was several hours of volunteering first, then planning your rally or march.

If you helped by attending a rally or march and then went home, then you spent your time having fun instead of volunteering.

If you helped by voting, that’s great but that’s just not enough anymore.

If you helped by organizing a flash mob or making candles or painting a picture or recording a song or praying or waving overpass signs, then you spent your time and energy on that instead of volunteering.

What does “volunteering” mean? Here’s a good rule of thumb: if someone tells you what they do for a campaign and you think, “THAT doesn’t sound fun…” then it’s probably volunteering. If you think, “I’d hate doing that”, then it’s probably something critical we need to win.

The tricky part is that we genuinely needed money and posts and debates and marches and rallies. But we had an embarrassment of riches there; way more than we needed. What we were screaming and crying and begging for was more people to do the work necessary to guarantee victory.

Writing all that makes me sound like an utter asshole. That scares me because I have friends who will read this and think I’m talking about them. I don’t want anyone to feel that way. I think we just have to be honest with ourselves, or we’ll keep losing. Right now we have a brief window of time where people are so upset by the election they might be open to a message like this, even if it stings. If I sound shaming or blaming, then I apologize; that’s not my intent, and it’s counterproductive. But the shitty, painful, sad truth is that we lost, in large part, because not enough people volunteered. Why they didn’t help doesn’t make a difference now. But it will next time.

Let me say I wholeheartedly sympathize. I don’t like volunteering myself. I’m busy and I like my free time. It sucks that this level of involvement is needed. It sucks that people are so busy with their jobs and their spouses and their children, so busy just trying to survive, that volunteering feels impossible. And nobody needs yet another part-time job, an unpaid one no less, to add to their obligations and worries and stresses. Can’t a person have a few hours of rest and relaxation? Is that too much to ask?

No, it’s not too much to ask. We’re only human.

But we MUST get more people to participate, in a genuinely productive and meaningful way, or we are doomed. It sucks and I hate it and I’m sorry to say it to you and it’s unfair. But like my sister says, “It is what it is.” We needed you. You, the person whose eyeballs are reading this, yes you. And us needing you has not ended. We need you again and we need you right now. More than we ever did before.

I love this movement and I love our values. I am boundlessly grateful for every single person who contributed in every way they could. It was incredible. We were incredible together. We kicked ass. We just needed more people kicking.

If you have to stay up late to help, make some coffee. Yourself.