But that doesn’t mean the 74-year-old socialist-lite should get out. He’s done a real service, for the party he only recently joined, and for the country. Clinton is a far better candidate because of him. More than that, the Democratic Party is paying attention to the angry millions in the margins, those who may be tempted by the demagogue who wants to make America white again. Thank Sanders for that.

And because of Sanders, millennial voters who flocked to Barack Obama but have a meh feeling about another Clinton are back in the arena. This generation will determine who is the next president. They’ve been whacked by student loans, a humiliating recession, the hangover of a disastrous war. They’re trying to find their way in an economy that is more unequal now than at any time since the 1920s. Sanders has organized them, thrilled them with ideas once considered radical, and done it all without personally insulting his rival.

Because of Sanders, the word “socialist” is no longer toxic in the United States. I have many problems with socialism, not the least of which is that it’s generally been a failure wherever it’s been broadly applied. But capitalism has its cruel excesses, its many failures as well. Why has the average low-wage worker been left behind in this nation of hypercapitalism?

One reason is those “disastrous trade deals,” as Sanders calls them. And because of him, Clinton has now hedged her support for the latest of these trade agreements, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, one that she helped negotiate. The next president has to listen less to the corporations that drive these deals, and more to the people who are their victims.