After Hillary Clinton won four out of five states in Tuesday’s primary, Bernie Sanders issued a quasi-concession statement and announced the layoff of hundreds of staffers. It appeared he had recognized the obvious: Barring force majeure, Clinton will be the Democratic nominee. Sanders will—and should—stay in the race, and he has announced his intention to “fight for a progressive party platform” in Philadelphia. Sanders may not have won the war, but the support he’s attracted and mobilized is very important nonetheless, for a simple reason: Coalitions influence and shape the people who lead them. An old associate of Hillary Clinton’s recently provided an excellent illustration.

Last week, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe announced that voting rights will be restored for convicted felons who are no longer in prison. If his executive order is upheld, this will enfranchise more than 200,000 citizens of the state who have paid their debt to society and deserve a voice in their state government. It’s a bold, progressive action, exactly the kind of policy core Democratic voters are coming to expect from their leaders.

Before assuming office, McAuliffe seemed like the ultimate political hack.

This major progressive reform didn’t come out entirely of the blue, either. On his first day in office, McAuliffe signed an executive order banning discrimination against state employees based on sexual orientation. In an action that foreshadowed his enfranchisement of felons, McAuliffe removed questions about criminal history from government job applications. He has been limited by a Republican-controlled legislature—his valiant fight to accept the Medicaid expansion ultimately failed—but he’s been a solidly progressive governor.

What’s interesting about this is that before assuming office, McAuliffe seemed like the ultimate political hack. The Clinton crony and prodigious fundraiser seemed worth voting for only because the Republicans were running the odious former state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli against him. As New York’s Jon Chait put it at the time, “McAuliffe is the Democrat Democrats have been dying to vote against, except they can’t, because he’s running against a falling-off-the-right-edge-of-the-map Republican.” And yet, he’s been a good Democratic governor—not a hero by any means, but you won’t find enfranchising former felons in the DLC risk-aversion playbook either.

Skeptics might say that the order was just a cynical attempt to expand the potential Democratic electorate in a swing state. But this would be unfair. Many important progressive achievements, up to and including the Emancipation Proclamation, were also politically expedient. If expanding the electorate helps your party, there’s nothing wrong with that! More to the point, there are many potentially politically expedient initiatives—such as expanding Social Security and substantially increasing the minimum wage—that elite Democrats have nonetheless failed to embrace. Showing that these ideas have a real constituency is one reason Sanders’s run has been so valuable.