It’s an unfortunate fact of American politics that it is dominated by a two-party system, and that likewise, alternative parties are afforded hardly any airtime on well-established media outlets.

Bernie Sanders decided to run as a Democrat because that was the only way he’d be able to generate enough momentum for his ideas to break them out of the margins and into the public consciousness.

Sanders was successful in that mission.

While the media never quite softened up to the idea of a Sanders presidency, which no doubt influenced the older electorate that largely propped up Joe Biden’s campaign, it has been forced to recognize that, by and large, Americans are ready for policies such as Medicare for All, free tuition at public colleges and universities, and a comprehensive climate plan capable of meeting America’s 21st century environmental needs.

As a fierce Sanders supporter since 2016, I’ve also felt the pain of disappointment that he did not go further in taking on an establishment that never wanted him or his supporters, and whose leading candidates have painted us out as expendable before turning their rhetoric around and demanding our vote in the general election, right before blaming us for their loss.

At least, that’s what happened with Hillary Clinton. When it comes to Joe Biden, we still haven’t seen what chance — if any — he’ll stand against Donald Trump.

As much as I would have liked to see Bernie Sanders take the gloves off, there was nothing he could have done. To say that he was caught in between a rock and a hard place would be a radical understatement.

Pundits have never stopped blaming Ralph Nader for giving the presidency to Bush in the hotly contested 2000 election, and what that means is that die-hard partisans have blamed the Green Party — for nearly two decades now — for everything from costing the Democrats an election to being the sole reason America became involved in two disastrous, overseas wars that still haven’t come to an end.

I don’t believe in playing that kind of electoral, blame-shifting game anymore. The fault is on the candidates themselves for failing to have a platform that inspires people to get out and vote for them.

I don’t even blame supporters of Donald Trump for being in the mess that we are in. Trump is a symptom of a systematic, American disease that has been allowed to fester for far too long. He’s the open wound atop a culture in the grip of a deep political and economic pain, in which the voices of the dispossessed working-class have gone unheard for decades.

That they voted for someone that Bernie Sanders believes to be “the most dangerous president in modern history,” isn’t even their fault.

Trump promised solutions to their pain, however deceitful he may have been with those promises, whereas Democrats pulled up their noses and sneered, telling everyone else to settle down because the elites have it handled.

They didn’t. They were as clueless as anyone else.

Nevertheless, Bernie Sanders is not a stupid man. He knows that if he challenged the Democratic establishment too hard, they’d scapegoat him for their abysmal electoral performances and work to marginalize his supporters both within the party and in the media, much as they already have.

By suspending his campaign and endorsing Joe Biden early, Bernie Sanders did the only sane, rational thing he could do as a man in his position. He has guaranteed progressives a booming microphone moving forward and sapped the wind out of the argument that Sanders — and the movement around him — is to blame if Biden cannot perform against Trump in November.

If he had continued to go on the attack, he’d have been accused — however wrongly — of being the reason that Democrats didn’t have the momentum they needed to defeat Trump, should they lose.

That is something I hope eases the minds of progressives who are disappointed with the outcome of events.

Not only did Sanders promise to back the eventual Democratic nominee during both races, he has also done everything he can to maneuver the movement through a hostile media environment that hated our ideas and our enthusiasm, and perhaps most of all, our willingness to call out their bullshit.

By running for the nomination twice, Sanders helped progressives make inroads into a crystallized party that was reluctant to change, and he allowed the anti-establishment counterpart of his political movement to flower: a slew of progressive media outlets that will go on to challenge mainstream networks for years to come, helping to break America out of a restrictive political discourse that manufactures our consent for candidates like Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

For those who are reeling at the thought of Bernie supporting Biden, think about the alternative: a future in which Sanders toughens up and remains on the attack, and then gets blamed when things go horribly wrong in November.

Sanders has always cared about the American people more than his ego. That is the essence of the Not Me, Us mantra.

Knowing full well that a progressive policy vision is the best way to tackle America’s growing inequalities, Sanders had to use his bid for the nomination not just to take a crack at the presidency, but perhaps more importantly, make sure talk of progressive policies wouldn’t disappear anytime in the near future.

Progressives can rest assured that he has won that victory. To use his own words, we have won the “ideological battle.”

What is undeniable, for anyone paying attention, is that Sanders has inspired millions of people in the nation to never sit down, shut up, and accept the options presented by political and media authorities. His ideas have spread like wildfire, and that fire will continue to grow.

The 2020 election may be a disappointing repeat of the lesser of two evils conundrum, but maybe that’s because our political establishment has always lagged behind the true visionaries, who lead change from the ground up, rather than the top down.

Sanders is one of those visionaries. Furthermore, he has inspired millions more to believe in the power of their political voice and their ability to create change.

At this point, it’s only a matter of time before the ideological victory he has won in the public discourse turns into large and small scale political victories across the nation.

I suspect he won’t be going away anytime soon, regardless of the result in November. He has always said he’d become the “organizer in chief” should he become the president.

Well, he doesn’t need to be in the Oval Office to fulfill that function. Bernie Sanders is essentially America’s public trust fund.

Not only can he raise a tremendous amount of money for grassroots level causes, he can also swing a bright social media spotlight onto America’s vulnerable working-class.

So, cheer up, fellow Bernie supporters.

The political revolution has only just begun.