It’s been a long, hard week. I think we can all agree on that. My first article on the election, a few days after the fact, addresses my full beliefs on it. It’s a good article, and if you want to know how I feel, address it.

But it’s time to move on. President-Elect Trump (it’s never going to be easier, so I embrace it) has already started breaking campaign promises. There are articles circulating from valid sources that he wants to keep parts of Obamacare. That he knows he can’t completely strip 20 million Americans of their health care and then expect re-election. I don’t know how he expects re-election anyhow.

And that’s because of the Democratic Party. Which is, now, a party that needs to get it’s shit together. For the first time in a long time, the party controls none of the House, Senate, White House, and, soon, the Supreme Court. We’ve lost it all. Because we’ve become too middling. Too yellow line in the road. The thing we were warned about.

The Republicans have been moving right. Bush was a moderate Republican. His brother was a copy of him. Trump, however, is the furthest thing from a moderate. There were people genuinely concerned about just how far right Trump is or at least was on the campaign trail. Those people? The GOP establishment. Paul Ryan sought to distance himself from someone he will tell you behind closed doors he is afraid of.

But the Democrats went middle. Obama seemed like a leftist, but he’s not. All the things that Obama passed were supported by tons and tons of moderates on both sides. Clinton was more of the same. Even moderates had gotten their fill.

I firmly believe that the Democratic party is the future. You look at the idealistic millennials, it’s all liberals. The aging population is firmly red, but the future is blue. And the Democratic party needs to seize advantage on that.

The youth of our nation were (I know, I was with them) firmly behind Bernie Sanders. When it was revealed that he was (at least in part) robbed of the nomination, of course our youth got upset. We wanted Bernie to be there because he was a change. That’s what people in this country want. Change. Whether that’s a crack down on Wall Street or college education becoming affordable, people want change.

It is currently my opinion that Bernie Sanders could have won this race. Yes, the elderly would have been scared of his “socialism”. But tell me honestly that the elderly were voting for Hillary. That is firmly Trump’s demographic.

And besides, what Bernie Sanders represents isn’t socialism. He calls it that, he wants to be a socialist, but he’s not. What Bernie Sanders is is a continuation of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Of American liberalism. Of progressivism. He’s an American Progressive. And that’s what the Democrats need.

And they have it. They have younger members like Cory Booker and Chris Murphy. They have older leaders like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. The Democratic Party needs to take away this lesson from this election – America is tired of the middle.

It’s time to move further left. Don’t be a party that doesn’t understand this. The party of Clinton, of Howard Dean, of even Barack Obama, it needs to be no more. The party of Bernie Sanders must now rise in its place.

Because there are changes that the Democratic Party’s base – the younger people in this country – want. We want gun control – at least common sense restrictions. We want affordable education. It can’t be a luxury anymore. We want Wall Street regulations. We want what Bernie promised. We want what FDR focused on. FDR could do well throughout the entire 20th Century. He could do well now.

We want progress. We’ve seen progress our entire lives. We’re far from DOMA, from DADT, we’re not that country anymore. We could be heading back there, but the three women on the bench – Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor – will be fighting back. They’re not going to let Roe v Wade fall. The Democrats have proven capable of filibustering in Congress. Expect to see a lot of that the next few years.

But our party has a future in the left side of the road. AKA the fast side, the best side. We’ll get all those people holding us back out of the way soon, and then it’s off to the races. It’s time for the Democratic Party to realize that.

And the best move is to make the should-be candidate the chief of our party. Put Bernie in charge of it. Let him have the wheel for the next four years. We’ll see how we do, but it’ll be a fair nomination process. And that’s all the youth of the Democratic Party can ask for. Well, that and Cory Booker 2020.

Seriously, Cory, it’s time to run. I understand the hesitance to run against Hillary – it was her “turn”. But that shit needs to be over. It can’t be anyone’s “turn” anymore. People have to earn it. Let’s have our Elizabeth Warrens, our Cory Bookers, our Chris Murphys. Let them run. Let them win.

The progressive side of the Democratic party must take over. We want to win in two years, in four years. We need to be the party that grows tired of winning. We clearly have the better candidates – Cory, Warren, Murphy, hell Biden and Sherrod Brown – all would have beaten Trump, who came from a 17 member Republican race – but they’re to the left of where the Democratic party was this election.

It’s time to move left to accomodate them.