Two months after Bernie Sanders suspended his campaign for the Democratic nomination, the debate about why he lost and what it means for the American left continues, among those that argue that he catered too much or too little to liberal suburbia; strayed too far from or not far enough from identity politics; battled the Democratic establishment too vociferously or not vociferously enough.

While the country is rocked by mass protests against police murders, and the COVID-19 pandemic continues to ravage the country, hitting working-class people and people of color the hardest, the stakes of building an effective Left couldn’t be higher. Having lost the one candidate who will actually speak to these issues is a tremendous loss. But keeping our sights on building a mass base is all the more critical, and possible, today.

Paul Heideman and I argued in a previous article that the structural obstacles that stood between Sanders and the presidency far outweighed the impact of particular campaign tactics. The Left, no doubt, has a lot to learn about navigating the electoral arena and using it not only as a platform for elevating democratic-socialist ideals but as a means of winning political power. But lest we think that it’s somehow just the “myopia of the activist Left” that’s hobbled our efforts, the mainstream and liberal wings of the Democratic Party have littered modern American history with considerable electoral failures and a near desert of policy reforms. This should probably inspire a bit of humility from Bernie’s liberal critics. Socialists didn’t come out on top this time around, but liberals, on the whole, have also been losing for a long time.