Political scientist: Bernie isn't the future of the Democratic Party. Barack Obama is. [View all]

Bernie Sanders may have lost the current battle for the Democratic nomination. But he's winning the war for the party's future.

That, at least, is the conventional wisdom about Sanders's campaign — that while the Vermont senator may go down to defeat in this presidential cycle, his young supporters can expect sweeping victory within a generation or two.

US News, for instance, declares that "The Future is Bernie's."
Sanders himself certainly thinks so.
Vox's Matt Yglesias has argued that Sanders's "brand of politics is the future of the Democratic Party," citing his runaway support among young voters.
"Whatever Sanders’s fate as a presidential candidate ... his campaign is the harbinger of a deep change in the Democratic Party," wrote the New Republic's Jeet Heer after Sanders won New Hampshire. "In coming years, Democratic politicians will have to echo Sanders’s slashing critique of Wall Street and his call for a far more robust welfare state if they want to hold on to the rising generation in their party."

But Dave Hopkins, a political scientist at Boston College, thinks these kinds of interpretations may be overstating the long-term significance of Sanders's insurgency.