1/ Long thread about Sanders, Biden, and how to think about where we are. I'm not sure it all hangs together. So the race for the Democratic nominee is over.

2/ I feel sorry for Sanders in the way that one feels sorry for those who come to craft a good and honorable goal for one's life and fail to realize it.

3/ But, of course, I mostly feel sorry for us because the vision he painted was expansive and a great many of us would have benefited from its realization.

4/ I put to the side whether he would have been successful in realizing that vision, since there was no way of knowing that unless he was able to have a go at it. Biden is now the presumptive nominee.

5/ Those of us who are democrats and/or who believe in retrieving us from this nightmare we are now in would do well to support him as well. I insist on this point against those who are interested in remaking the terrible events of 2016, swapping out Clinton for Biden

6/ It was a terrible idea not to support Clinton in 2016 and it would be a terrible idea not to support Biden in the Fall. And, as some of you know, I have no aversion to shaming folks, especially if it is a healthy form of shame.

7/ I say this as someone who thinks there are deep problems with Biden's politics. I also say this as someone who believes that his politics is far removed from the progressive vision of Sanders. But I remain absolutely unconvinced by those who think that somehow they…

8/ …compromise their political and moral commitments by voting for Biden, when not to do so is to help someone whose political and moral commitments contain absolutely no elements of a progressive vision on which to stand to secure more of a progressive vision.

9/ That is what we want. This implies that there are progressive elements to Biden's vision, what he says about two-year colleges, what he says about min.

10/ wage, what he says about student debt relief, what he says about eliminating private prison, etc. Not enough....of course not. But features that allow progressives to hold his feet to the fire, a set of commitments to which he can be made to be answerable.

11/ What of the worry over compromise? My rule of thumb is to see formal American politics as the kind of social practice that often must be dragged kicking and screaming into a just future.

12/ The bulk of our political advances, as far as I can tell, have emanated in the streets and have been transformed into the power of bodily movement and voice to pressure power-holders.

13/ This means insisting on the integrity of one's ethical and political vision, but recognizing that the process of politics is not a one and done process, but an iterative process. Going back again and again, securing more and more. This is why we must always look suspiciously

14/ …(even if affectionately) on politicians, always believing that there is more you (the politician) can secure if you push this way rather than that, if you leverage this rather than that, if you insist at this moment rather than hold back.

15/ This returns me to Sanders' decision to end his campaign and his speech. Sanders speech was a wonderful defense of the necessity of endurance founded on hope in a better tomorrow. Those

16/ who see Sanders failure as the failure of a progressive agenda are looking at the matter from the wrong end. We

17/ ought to see Sanders long-campaign as unleashing progressive aspirations, as pulling together the fragments of an American society that does not yet exist, and showing us what it would mean to live in that American society rather than the one we do occupy. In

18/ this he reminds me of the American pragmatists: "The authority of an ideal over choice and conduct is the authority of an ideal, not of a fact, of a truth guaranteed to intellect." This

19/ is why Sanders insist on the necessity of believing that our community can be more than what it is. Belief is a necessary, even if not the sufficient step in making that belief come true. Sanders: "If we don’t believe that we are entitled to live in a world of justice,…

20/ …democracy and fairness, without racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia or religious bigotry, we will continue to have massive income and wealth inequality, prejudice and hatred, mass incarceration, terrified immigrants, and hundreds of thousands of Americans sleeping out…

21/ …on the streets in the richest country on Earth. And focusing on that new vision for America is what our campaign has been about and what, in fact, we have accomplished." Treating

22/ these as our standards will also help us make Biden more than what he is, but perhaps not all at once.