Last night, Hillary Clinton won the Democratic nomination. Yes yes yes Feel the Bern, Debbie Wasserman Schultz is evil, Superdelegates are unfair, Hillary must have cheated, etc. etc. etc. Aside from all of that, it s clear Clinton has kept the Obama coalition more or less intact and that s going to land her the nomination. Without the support of the black community and non-millennial voters, Bernie s path to victory is extremely narrow and that s before you factor in the Superdelegates. If you don t believe me, then you should believe Nate Silver s fivethirtyeight.com, which has been the gold standard in political statistical analysis for the last several years.So Sanders should just quit and go home, right? Good lord, no! Even though he s losing the primaries, he s winning the debate and the Democratic Party still needs him. Badly.Love him or kind of like him (no one really hates him on the left), Sanders is correct when he says the Democratic Party is a little too cozy with Big Money. The problem is that while the corporate media loves LOVES to pretend that Democrats are just as far to the left as the GOP is to the right, that s total bullshit. The Democratic Party is comfortably to the left on social issues but center left (and just barely) when it comes to economics. This is a serious issue when it comes to making the necessary compromises with Republicans to get anything done. Any middle ground sits squarely to the right (which, of course, was the entire point of Republicans go so far to the fringe in the first place).What Bernie does, and does brilliantly, is drag the entire process to the left   and the Democratic Party with him. He ll never say it out loud, of course, but Bernie never really intended to win the primaries. His entire campaign is designed to influence politics on the left. This is heresy to the Bernie True Believers but let s be honest, Bernie has kept the Democratic Party at arm s length for decades, constantly poking at them like a gadfly. Winning the Superdelegates necessary to win the nomination was never an achievable goal and he s not even trying. Why? Because winning the election was not the goal, showing the Democratic Party that they can openly embrace Democratic Socialism and not be immediately burned at the stake was.And it s working. Very VERY well.In case you haven t noticed, Bernie Sanders openly advocating Socialism has not sent the country into shock. The corporate media keeps trying (poorly) to attack Sanders over this but he s so persistent and consistent with his message that the media s You re a Commie!  nonsense is getting drowned out. On top of that, the negative connotations of Socialism are completely lost on Millennials, AKA, the group of people that will be controlling politics in a decade or so.Bernie will continue to fight tooth and nail for every state he can because the higher his delegate count, the stronger his message is despite the lead Clinton has and will continue to hold even without the Superdelegates. When he concedes sometime in the summer (and he s got the war chest to go that far with ease), he will urge his followers to support Clinton and the Democratic Party but to continue to hold their feet to the fire. Clinton will have campaigned further to the left that she would have normally and for long enough that moving too far back to the center in the general election will hurt more than help.Like Obama, Sanders is playing a long game. He may not even be around to see the seeds he s planted take root but as long as he pulls Hillary and Democratic politics to the left (and he has), he s already won even if he s not the nominee.Featured image courtesy of Michael Vadon via wikimedia commons.