The trouble is, a presidential campaign isn't capable of making good on a promise like that. By definition, an electoral campaign has a finite life span, and it ends when the candidate wins or loses. When Bernie lost and that end arrived, the unselfing we felt so powerfully on the campaign trail seemed to end right along with it. Shut in our homes by the first wave of strict lockdowns, severed from the movement that had held us together, so many of us who had been overcome by the power of “us” felt as if we had just been summarily dropped into a deep sea of “me.”

XREF: Connects to literature on the psychology of mass movements and collective effervescence (Durkheim), and the inherent temporariness of political mobilization.

Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, loc. 1093