It sucks liv­ing through a pan­dem­ic, espe­cial­ly a crim­i­nal­ly mis­man­aged one. It also sucks to live through an epochal polit­i­cal mis­take. Should the stars have aligned dif­fer­ent­ly, Bernie Sanders might have been pres­i­dent. It would have been amaz­ing for a vari­ety of rea­sons. A Sanders vic­to­ry, for exam­ple, would have total­ly upend­ed the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party’s nar­ra­tive that it is the Repub­li­cans who stand in the way of pro­gres­sive and humane social pol­i­cy. Cen­trists Democ­rats want to play ​“resis­tance” to Don­ald Trump, not a prin­ci­pled left wing, and many of them are no doubt breath­ing a big sigh of relief.

Sanders’ cam­paign was remark­able, in part, because he was try­ing to do two things at once: win the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­na­tion and strength­en social move­ments. Left­ists have long talked about inside and out­side strate­gies as though they were in oppo­si­tion, but the Sanders cam­paign made the argu­ment that they can and must be unit­ed, dif­fi­cult though this process may be. The ener­gy and rad­i­cal­ism of the streets needs to be brought to bear on elec­toral pol­i­tics and into the halls of pow­er. That remains the nee­dle the Left has to thread.

I’m pret­ty sure his­to­ri­ans will look back kind­ly on Sanders. He is the rare hon­est pub­lic ser­vant, and one who ran a cam­paign cen­ter­ing human dig­ni­ty. While self-brand­ed as ​“rad­i­cal,” in real­i­ty his pro­pos­als were mere­ly aligned with Euro­pean social democ­ra­cy. But giv­en decades of anti-gov­ern­ment pro­pa­gan­da and neolib­er­al eco­nom­ic doc­trine, that align­ment alone was trans­for­ma­tive. Sanders has done more than any­one else to pop­u­lar­ize poli­cies includ­ing uni­ver­sal health­care, a liv­ing wage, stu­dent debt can­cel­la­tion cou­pled with free col­lege, a wealth tax, work­place democ­ra­cy and a Green New Deal. This has put the Left on stronger foot­ing than it has ever been in my life­time, even if we are not yet where we want to be.

In its own bizarre way, the cur­rent pan­dem­ic has only bol­stered Sanders’ case. The virtue of his core propo­si­tion — that work­ing Amer­i­cans deserve an equi­table and func­tion­ing wel­fare state — is becom­ing more appar­ent by the day. Real­i­ty has endorsed Bernie Sanders, as Keean­ga-Yamaht­ta Tay­lor has argued, though sad­ly the endorse­ment came a cou­ple months too late. His slo­gan — ​“Not me, us,” — rings even more true in a peri­od of pathogen-induced social dis­tanc­ing. We are only as safe from dis­ease as our most vul­ner­a­ble neigh­bors and even those who are priv­i­leged enough to shel­ter in place are depen­dent on front­line work­ers for their sur­vival. Our inter­de­pen­dence is undeniable.

If the tim­ing had been bet­ter, COVID-19 might have strength­ened Sanders’ hand at the bal­lot box. Instead, it dis­rupt­ed and delayed pri­maries across the coun­try, putting vot­ers in a ter­ri­ble bind — go to the polls and risk catch­ing (or unwit­ting­ly spread­ing) a dead­ly ill­ness, or don’t vote at all. (Last year I put out a book called Democ­ra­cy May Not Exist, but We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone—I had no idea how deeply the title would even­tu­al­ly resonate.)

In the end, Sanders did the hon­or­able thing by bow­ing out and spar­ing vot­ers such an ago­niz­ing choice. The fact that he was forced to make that deci­sion is an indict­ment of our bro­ken sys­tem, which claims to enable ​“one per­son, one vote” while sup­press­ing vot­er turnout at every oppor­tu­ni­ty. Our country’s long lines at polling sta­tions, espe­cial­ly in poor and racial­ly diverse com­mu­ni­ties, have long been sym­bols of injus­tice. Now they take on a new, ghast­ly hue. This elec­tion cycle needs to push left­ists to engage in vot­ing issues and push the con­ver­sa­tion beyond stan­dard lib­er­al talk­ing points like vot­ing-by-mail, auto­mat­ic vot­er reg­is­tra­tion and an end to ger­ry­man­der­ing. We need to talk about safe and secure online vot­ing, turn­ing elec­tion day into elec­tion month, and more sys­temic reforms includ­ing ranked choice vot­ing, mak­ing vot­ing manda­to­ry (as it is in many oth­er devel­oped coun­tries) and exper­i­ment­ing with the use of sor­ti­tion (ran­dom selec­tion of polit­i­cal offi­cials) and cit­i­zens’ assem­blies.

Sanders’ big gam­ble was to bank on a boost in turnout among so-called ​“low propen­si­ty” vot­ers — the folks who tend to stay home at elec­tion time. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, though he earned the over­whelm­ing sup­port of young and diverse vot­ers, this wager didn’t pay off the way many of us hoped. We need to reflect on why this strat­e­gy failed while also tak­ing stock of the chal­lenges ahead. In the com­ing months, elec­toral par­tic­i­pa­tion is like­ly to be even low­er than the typ­i­cal­ly abysmal rates — some­thing that suits pow­er­ful incum­bents just fine.

It’s tempt­ing to give up on elec­toral pol­i­tics, but that would be the wrong move and would play into the hands of those (Repub­li­can and Demo­c­rat) eager to see the Left dis­en­gage. The Left needs to con­tin­ue its quest for polit­i­cal pow­er, build­ing on the exam­ple of bold fight­ers like Sen­a­tor Sanders, Con­gress­women Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashi­da Tlaib, as well as local politi­cians such as Durham, North Carolina’s Jil­lian John­son and Seattle’s Kshama Sawant. In the com­ing months we can still get behind inspir­ing can­di­dates like Nikil Saval who is run­ning for state leg­is­la­ture in Penn­syl­va­nia, Cori Bush who is run­ning for the U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives in Mis­souri, Jabari Brisport for New York’s state sen­ate and Sandy Nurse for city coun­cil in New York City. We need these folks to win now more than ever.

Beat­ing Don­ald Trump is, of course, imper­a­tive. But that doesn’t mean we need to treat Joe Biden with kid gloves. He must make con­ces­sions to the Left and earn our votes. An emerg­ing coali­tion of young move­ment lead­ers are already mak­ing demands on the Biden cam­paign, insist­ing that he adopt a range of pro­gres­sive pol­i­cy posi­tions that mat­ter to the younger gen­er­a­tion. Their ini­tia­tive deserves sup­port. The Debt Col­lec­tive, a union for debtors I helped found, will also be push­ing him to com­mit to can­cel­ing all stu­dent debt — a move that makes even more fis­cal sense giv­en the eco­nom­ic dis­as­ter unfold­ing around us. Biden is already mak­ing over­tures in this direc­tion, but has fur­ther to go and must be pres­sured.

Impor­tant as it may be, mak­ing demands of Biden is low hang­ing fruit. The real take­away from this pri­ma­ry is that we need to get orga­nized. Our poli­cies may be broad­ly pop­u­lar, but it doesn’t add up to much if we aren’t act­ing col­lec­tive­ly and strate­gi­cal­ly. As long­time activist Yotam Marom recent­ly wrote, ​“There is no skip­ping ahead. Elec­tions are not how our peo­ple will take pow­er. They will be, when we are strong enough, the expres­sion of the pow­er we have already taken.”

What does that mean in prac­tice? It means we need to band togeth­er around our com­mon inter­ests so we can inter­rupt busi­ness as usu­al and demand con­ces­sions. Join or start a union. Find a local Sun­rise hub. Start or sup­port a rent strike in your city. Sign up for the ongo­ing stu­dent debt strike. Log on to a local Indi­vis­i­ble meet­ing. Start pay­ing dues to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ists of Amer­i­ca or the Debt Col­lec­tive. Run for office. As the bril­liant labor orga­niz­er Jane McAlevey always says, there are no short­cuts to build­ing pow­er for reg­u­lar peo­ple. This is nit­ty grit­ty work that has to be done rela­tion­ship by rela­tion­ship, day by day.

Like so many oth­ers, I didn’t just want Sanders to ​“change the dis­course” or ​“win the ide­o­log­i­cal war.” I want­ed him to win the elec­tion. But I also knew it was an incred­i­ble long­shot. We’ve made progress, even if we haven’t reached our goal. The fact that his cam­paign got as far as it did sig­nals a mas­sive sea change. A demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist can win mil­lions of votes in Amer­i­ca. A decade ago I nev­er would have believed such a thing to be pos­si­ble, and that’s our new foun­da­tion to build from.

His­to­ry will look back kind­ly on Sanders. The ques­tion is how gen­er­a­tions to come will look back on the rest of us — the ​“us” of the Sanders campaign’s rous­ing slo­gan. Let’s make the future proud.

Views expressed are the author’s. As a 501©3 non­prof­it, In These Times does not sup­port or oppose any can­di­date for polit­i­cal office.