For someone who barely advertised on Super Tuesday, and has minimal grassroots infrastructure or youth support, Joe Biden pulled off a surprising win over my preferred candidate, Bernie Sanders.

There will be with an asterisk next to his name. He was not elected in a landslide; instead, it was a close election constituting a minority of Democrats.

Moving beyond the speculation of how Elizabeth Warren influenced the outcome or debating the good faith of Democratic National Committee leadership toward Bernie, let’s talk about party unification.

It should be emphasized that my generation hates Donald Trump, but we do not owe Joe Biden our vote. Hopefully, Joe will recognize what Hillary Clinton did not: He needs us and our mobilizing energy to win, and guess what, we know this.

It is not our duty to rally around Joe, but for Joe to inspire us by prioritizing legitimate progressive policies: specifically, reversing income inequality, realizing racial justice and aggressively implementing policies to reverse climate change by any means possible. I don’t care if Joe has to plagiarize Warren’s plans to accomplish these tasks, but he needs to address them in his first year. That is how he brings “us,” the millennials, into his fold, or else the Democrats will lose again with the uninspiring voice of moderate politics.

Rather than bringing us back to the Obama era, Joe needs to bring us forward. That’s the definition of progress.

Kyle Forest

Tamworth, N.H.

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