I’d already known Bernie Sanders for 25 years when I backed him in 2016. This time round, I actually feel like we can win

Bernie 2020 is not a protest campaign. It is a campaign which generated $3.3m in its first 12 hours. In 2016, Bernie told me he didn’t expect to become president – now everything is different

Bernie 2020 is quite different from Bernie 2016. Bernie 2016 began as a campaign to offer alternatives to Hilary Clinton and a continuation of Obama White House policies. It was a campaign for healthcare, not access to insurance; for free higher education and not simply a kinder student debt programme; in short, a campaign to create a vision of economic, racial, climate and social justice much deeper than the vision offered by centrist Democrats.

It was also a campaign for democracy, a campaign to get “big money” out and voters in.

During 2015-16, Secretary Clinton and most well-known Democrats called those policies extreme and unrealistic. Now, four years later, 16 Democratic senators have joined Bernie in calling for Medicare for All. Many others support his policies on climate change and higher education, and a majority joined him in calling for the end of US military aid for Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Yemen.

Bernie 2020 is not a protest campaign: it is a campaign generating 120,000 donors contributing $3.3m (£2.5m) in its first 12 hours. It is a campaign that expects one million volunteers in its first weeks. It is a campaign that is challenging powerful and entrenched corporate interests, but fundamentally a campaign that believes we can win.

I had known Bernie well, during his 25 years in congress, when I decided to support his presidential campaign for 2016. When we met to discuss my role, I told him that my commitment was based on building a movement during and after the campaign. He put his hand on my arm and told me that was his purpose and that he did not expect to be president. The movement, which ended up being called Our Revolution and whose board I chair, emerged from that campaign. We now have several million supporters and more than 600 affiliated groups.

But in 2019 Bernie, and those of us supporting him, believe that this campaign is all about winning the Democratic nomination, defeating Trump, and entering the White House as a president who believes that this is a transformational time, and that real change is necessary.

Our Revolution will not merge with the campaign despite the huge support for Bernie within our membership. Like many other grassroots groups likely to support Bernie we will also be building the political revolution in local and state elections, mobilising on key issues like Medicare for All and criminal justice and democracy reform.

While Bernie will be running for president in 2020 believing that he can and will win and then help chart a fundamentally new direction in US politics, he fully understands that without a political revolution across the nation, change will not be possible. Our democracy, rooted in an 18th century response to feudalism, and rooted in slavery, must be updated to reflect 21st century realities.

Our path forward is hard but not hopeless. Bernie 2020 is critical for America’s road ahead. Yes, we believe that we can win, not only the White House but the changes we need for the pursuit of our happiness, the happiness of the many, not just the few.

We are working-class voters, black, brown and white, all genders, immigrant and native-born, all sexual orientations – and we believe that we can win.

Larry Cohen chairs the board of Our Revolution, the successor to Bernie 2016, and is the past president of the labour union Communications Workers of America