Even if you don’t win, filing for candidacy and getting media attention is a great way to put some fear in centrists and take back your own political participation power. Corporate Democrats are often cowards. Fear works on them. For many, fear seems to be the only thing they respond to. We just need them to be afraid of us.

Some will argue it could have been worse, that the Democratic senators who voted yes only did so after getting something from their Republican colleagues. But it also could have been so much better, and 11 Democratic senators voted no because they knew that was the case, and recognized that their constituents deserved better.