Finally, after over a year of insanity, the 2016 election is about to reach the general election phase. With Donald Trump finally choosing a running mate in Mike Pence, and with the Republican National Convention nearly upon us and promising to be as much of a trainwreck as the primaries that led up to it, the focus in the media will naturally be on the GOP’s camp this week. Today, however, I’d like to take a step back and look at the Democrats’ side of things. Hillary Clinton might not have a choice for Vice President just yet, nor does she have a terrible logo to go with it, but she does have something just as critical in her corner now that Bernie Sanders has finally endorsed her for President.

Now, to some people, this isn’t an occasion worth celebrating. Particularly, there was the actually-small-but-loud-on-the-Internet contingent of Bernie or Busters, Jill Stein trying to capitalize on said Bernie or Busters and get more votes, and Trump supporters pretending to be Bernie or Busters in order to get the Democrats fighting amongst themselves and hand Trump the White House. (If you think I’m making that second part up, check out this archived thread from 4chan’s /pol/ board, where a bunch of /pol/luters, as they’re so affectionately named, strategize this stuff out in the open.) While it’s hard to tell with 100% certainty who’s who, the message was easy to pick up: by endorsing Hillary, Bernie sold out and ended the political revolution.

Frankly, that attitude is a lie, a narrative no more true than the one where Bernie is a sexist because he waved his hands around while he talked during the debates, or the one where Hillary is literally the devil come for America’s souls--and, more importantly if you’re a Republican, its guns--or the one where Trump is a normal Republican candidate and not a dumpster fire of awfulness only a live-action Transformers movie could ever hope to match. As someone who hoped Bernie would run in 2016 long before he launched his campaign, supported him through the entire primary process, attended his rally in Oakland and wrote an article about it, and cast my first-ever vote in a Presidential campaign for him in June, I feel obligated to dispel with some misconceptions about what just happened before the “if everyone believes it hard enough, it’s true” principle kicks in and those misconceptions join “Howard Dean lost because he screamed” on the list of Presidential election tall tales that were never actually true.

First, let’s talk about the people who are completely shocked that Bernie’s actually endorsing Hillary and conceding the Democratic primaries. If this is you, then you might have forgotten why Bernie joined the Democratic Party and contested for its nomination after decades as a political independent. While Bernie’s idealism and commitment to progressive ideals is no doubt a key part to his appeal and refreshing-ness as a candidate, he’s been in politics too long to not understand how the game works when it’s time to pick a President. Democratic and Republican candidates get major media exposure and a chance to put the issues they care about front and center in the election. Libertarian and Green candidates get mentioned in terms of whether they’ll split the vote for one major party and hand the other the White House. Everyone else gets nothing, except in very rare circumstances. Bernie knew he’d never be able to get America talking about income inequality, raising the minimum wage, or making college tuition free if he ran as an independent. He would never have been able to make his dramatic rise from “fringe candidate who’d be lucky to get on the ballot” to “winner of 22 primaries” if he’d stayed third-party. That’s why he decided to run for the Democratic nomination. That’s why he pledged early on in the campaign to endorse the Democratic nominee when the primaries were over. Bernie wanted to change the conversation in America, and if he’d become the next Ralph Nader, he never would have been able to do that.

“But wait,” you might ask, “what about the convention? He said months ago he would take this all the way to the DNC!” And you’d be right about that. But just because Bernie endorsed Hillary doesn’t mean he won’t take it there. He still has two major speeches to give, one at a Philadelphia rally the night before the convention, and one at the DNC itself, where he’ll be one of the headliners on the first night alongside Michelle Obama. His delegates will still travel to the convention and announce their votes on the convention floor when it’s time for roll call. His delegates have already helped shape the most liberal platform the Democrats have had since the 1992 ascendance of the DLC wing of the party. And let’s not forget, while Bernie may have endorsed Hillary, he hasn’t suspended his own campaign just yet. Hillary will be the nominee when the roll call is over, but Bernie will have fulfilled his promise to go as far as he possibly can. Unless your standard is “Bernie literally refuses to concede until the general election is over,” you have to admit, he did a pretty good job of fulfilling that promise.

Speaking of endorsement timing, this next myth is one I’ve seen from Hillary’s supporters, rather than Bernie’s. This one says that Bernie was at the apex of his political influence right before the New York primary, and his delaying endorsing Hillary for so long shows he’s an egomaniac deliberately dividing the Democratic party. It did make a bit of sense before Bernie endorsed, but if you paid attention to Bernie’s rhetoric in the month between the end of the primaries and his endorsement, you probably noticed he was de-escalating his rhetoric. He refrained from directly attacking Hillary, vowing to work with her to stop Trump. He made sure to emphasize that Trump was a terrible candidate and could not be allowed to win under any circumstances. He even said he would vote for Hillary in November, though he clarified that this didn’t constitute an endorsement--probably so that the big moment where Bernie endorsed her at a Hillary rally wouldn’t be ruined.

Now, I don’t claim to know the inner workings of the Sanders campaign, but I think I can make a reasonable guess here, and say that Bernie waited so long because he was trying to peel the band-aid slowly for his base while his campaign and Clinton’s hammered out the details of how to move forward. No matter what, there were going to be people having meltdowns over Bernie’s campaign coming to an end. If he’d ended it before all the primaries were over, the people who didn’t get to vote yet would have felt cheated--myself included, since California was one of the last states to vote. If he’d ended it right after the primaries ended, the backlash would have been less severe, but there would have been no time to hammer out the details that led to Bernie showing up at a Hillary rally and Hillary incorporating several elements of his platform into her own. It might have seemed like Bernie was pissing away his political capital, but as it turned out, he was making good use of it behind the scenes, and by endorsing when and where he did, he was able to downsize the meltdowns from the Bernie or Bust crowd, create a powerful image of unity, and possibly influence the future direction of the Democratic Party for the future.

That leaves me to my final point: no, the political revolution is not over. Let’s face it, for those of us who felt the Bern from the moment he launched his campaign, this went a little like how rooting for the Seattle SuperSonics in the 1996 NBA Finals must have gone. Sure, Hillary had all the pieces in her favor and was the overwhelming favorite going in, but we knew deep down that if anyone could beat Hillary, or at least make her earn that nomination, it was Bernie. And make her earn it was exactly what he did. But unlike Shawn Kemp, we don’t have to untie the laces of our Reeboks and go home for the offseason. In fact, that’s the opposite of what should happen.

There’s a reason #NotHimUs was a signature hashtag for the Bernie-centric niche of social media; this wasn’t about the man on stage, but about what he had to say. This was about bringing people together, transcending boundaries of age, class, race, religion, gender identity, and sexual identity. This was about identifying the root causes of economic and social injustice and then acting to improve the situation. This was about knowing we won’t get everything we want in one go, but still having the optimism to try and the determination to stick with it. As the political revolution transitions to a long-term movement supporting liberal causes and candidates at all levels of government, I hope we’ll see that vision come to pass. But it can only happen if we fight for it.

And yes, I do think electing Hillary Clinton would give the political revolution its best chance to grow into something major. A Trump win in November would give it an enemy to rally against, but it would also tempt the Democratic Party to shift further to the right, just as it did in response to Reagan in the 1980’s, putting the political revolution’s aims at odds with the party. It would also mean multiple new Republican justices on the Supreme Court, further jeopardizing the American people’s civil liberties and capability to be heard when competing with the top 1 percent for influence on policy. Obviously, Hillary isn’t a perfect candidate--no one is, not even Bernie--but if we want to have a clearer path to a more progressive future, then for 2016, Hillary is, as far as I can tell, our best bet. But that’s beside the point. The point is, the political revolution didn’t end when Bernie endorsed Hillary. It won’t end when the roll call at the DNC is over and Hillary is officially nominated. It won’t end in November. It only ends when we give up on the principles that ignited this movement in the first place.