In a town hall-style interview with Chuck Todd yesterday, Bernie Sanders said that he ran for president as a Democrat in order to receive media coverage, telling Todd, “In terms of media coverage, you have to run within the Democratic Party” because anchors like Todd, “would not have me on his program” if he had run as an independent.

Sanders’s status as an independent who caucuses with Senate Democrats has been the subject of subtle digs throughout the campaign, first from Martin O’Malley and then from Hillary Clinton, both of whom have suggested that Sanders doesn’t deserve votes in the Democratic Primary because, well, he isn’t really a Democrat.

As Politico has previously reported, Sanders initially wanted to run as an independent, but was persuaded by his advisors to run as a Democrat instead.

News of Sanders’s calculation has produced some quick takes that are, for lack of a better word, bad:

I don’t buy the @BernieSanders argument that as an independent, he wouldn’t get media coverage. If he had this kind of support, he’d get it. — Jamil Smith (@JamilSmith) March 15, 2016

.@BernieSanders admitting he ran as a D only for media exposure shows he is a political calculating fraud. — Brad Woodhouse (@woodhouseb) March 15, 2016

“If he had this kind of support, he’d get [media coverage]” is a completely circular argument. The only reason Sanders has this kind of support, and the only reason we’ve been able to measure it, is because Sanders chose to run in the Democratic primary. If Sanders had run as an independent, he would not have been included in Democratic debates and town halls. He would not have been on Democratic ballots, which means he would not have beaten Hillary Clinton in a handful of states — a primary driver of media coverage. Perhaps most importantly, he would not have been included in Democratic primary polling, which is the only way we were able to tell pre-February that his large crowd sizes were anything other than a lefty version of Ron Paul’s “revolution.”

Loyal, partisan Democrats don’t have to like it, but the simple fact is that running within the two-party system is, with strikingly few exceptions, the only way to get taken seriously as a presidential candidate. The media, perhaps with good reason, covers candidates they think have a chance of winning. Independent candidates have no such chance, so if you want to be part of the national conversation, you have to run with a consonant next to your name. If you run as an independent, the sheer futility of your campaign means that no one has to take you seriously.

To rephrase Jamil Smith’s point, if he was correct, Sanders would have followed his advice. But he isn’t, so Sanders didn’t.

As for Woodhouse’s charge of “fraud,” well, lol. Was Sanders’s choice a political calculation? Absolutely. Was it fraudulent? Hardly. Woodhouse would have us believe that Sanders’s desire to be covered by the media betrays a lack of principle on his part. To the contrary, it was the best way to state his principles in front of the widest audience possible! Nevertheless, Woodhouse, who works for the Clinton-aligned super PAC, Correct the Record, has spent the morning insisting that if Sanders were a real democratic socialist, he should have run as a Democratic Socialist. Why, Woodhouse asks rhetorically, didn’t he?

The answer is really simple: media coverage.

Furthermore, it’s worth remembering that when Sanders was considering entering this race, no one — I’d bet not even Sanders himself — thought he had a chance of winning anywhere outside of Vermont and maybe New Hampshire. He was best understood as a protest candidate — a vehicle for voters frustrated with the Democratic Party’s economic centrism to vent a little before casting their ballots for Hillary Clinton in November. If Sanders was lucky, he’d do well enough to force Clinton to move a bit in his direction on an issue here or there.

However, it just so happens that there are a whole lot of those voters currently under the umbrella of the Democratic Party, and Sanders stumbled upon them. These are voters who, in a proportional representation system, would be casting their ballots for the Greens or the Social Democrats, but since they’re stuck in a majoritarian system they are forced to vote for the left-er of the two parties if they hope to gain representation. They would never be able to support Sanders as an independent, because it would amount to de-facto support for the Republican nominee. But they sure as hell can support him in a primary.

Bernie Sanders is running as a Democrat even though he isn’t a “real” Democrat? Great. There are plenty of voters out there who vote Democratic even though they would, if given the choice, identify with a party to the Democrats’ left. Our majoritarian system demands calculations like these — both from our voters and our candidates. It isn’t “fraud” to play the hand you’re dealt.