All of this will be different in 2020. Sanders will not have the benefit of running against Clinton, and he will have to compete with multiple rivals. Maybe Sanders really has popularized his message and platform enough to win on his own merits. Maybe his popularity will fizzle out as he becomes just another face in a crowded primary field. But then, there is the third, most unpleasant scenario: Maybe Sanders will decide that his success depends on manufacturing another villain.

This brings us — with much dread and weariness — to Beto. Over the 2018 midterms, O’Rourke became the internet’s dreamy indie-rock boyfriend. He had a skateboard! He was in a band with Cedric from At the Drive-In! O’Rourke also received record campaign donations, nearly defeated Ted Cruz in a deep-red state, and, after his defeat, took a meeting with Barack Obama. The buzz O’Rourke created and the places his support came from — media, social media, young people — was reminiscent of Obama. It was also reminiscent of Bernie Sanders. Which probably explains why, shortly after news of the Obama meeting broke, high-profile Sanders supporters began denouncing Beto O’Rourke in the press. Most infamously, David Sirota misleadingly framed a screenshot about O’Rourke’s campaign contributions (0.62 percent of which came from individual workers in the oil and gas industry) to imply he was in the pocket of Big Oil.

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The problem is not the reporting on these politicians’ individual sins, some of which is correct, and some of which, like Sirota’s freakout, is wildly exaggerated. It’s not even the “boy who cried wolf” quality of hearing so many similar denunciations in a row, though it is increasingly tough to take any one hit piece seriously. It’s the implication that these errors are unilaterally disqualifying and should outweigh any good the candidates might do. There is no acknowledgment, after 2016, of just how dangerous that attitude might be or of what other forces might be arrayed against the candidates in question. The decision to tie Gillibrand to the fact that she represented tobacco companies as a young lawyer, for example, took place before she called for Al Franken’s resignation and her candidacy was nuked from orbit by powerful donors. Sanders’ core supporters went for Gillibrand as hard as possible, right out of the gate, not realizing that institutional sexism would eventually do their work for them. Again.

The lingering anger many Clinton supporters feel at Sanders isn’t because he ran against her or because he ran with the goal of pushing her to the left. Again, many of the ideas Sanders has nudged into the American mainstream are good ones. That mistrust stems from how reckless Sanders was with the anger he riled up. Long after he knew he’d lost, he continued to call Clinton “unqualified” or insist she was the head of a massive conspiracy. He knew it could do no good, and he should have seen that the dangerous toll of his negative messaging — the death threats to Democratic Party officials and reporters, the demolished coalitions and names dragged through the mud, the ever-increasing threat that if there was no Bernie, the nation itself would bust — was rising. Yet he appeared shocked that he could not undo the damage; even Bernie Sanders got booed for not supporting Bernie Sanders.”