Why, why, why, are people saying that we should prepare to hold Hillary Clinton accountable once she is in office? Why on Earth isn’t everybody doing that right now? Are we seriously going to gift her the White House and then expect her to listen to us?

If she is elected on her current platform, she will have a mandate to remain moderate for the next four years. The people will have given their approval of her ideas, and handed her permission to act on them throughout her term. Should she be moved to the left before election day, she would have a more progressive mandate to govern. Electing Hillary Clinton after she agreed to offer free pre-K classes to all children would let the people hold her accountable for actually doing so. It would be ridiculous to vote for her platform in November then kick and scream for something different in February.

Hillary Clinton has given us copious amounts of evidence that she has no intention of moving to the left once she is in office. Almost immediately after handing herself the Democratic nomination, she invited Tim Kaine to be her running mate. Kaine is a pro-life, free trade advocate who presided over eleven executions while governor of Virginia. He is also a middle-aged white male. Was his selection a nod to the voters who had supported Sanders? No. It was a showing of exactly who Clinton will be as president, and who she will be putting in charge of the country.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz stepped down from her position as head of the DNC after it was revealed she had tipped the scales against Bernie Sanders. She was forced out for unethical, not to mention possibly illegal, campaign practices. What was the first thing Hillary Clinton did? Hired her as the chair of the campaign’s 50 state program. It certainly looks as though Wasserman Schultz fell on the sword to end the media interest, and was then rewarded (and her silence bought) with a position on the campaign and assistance in beating Tim Canova. Wasserman Schultz was replaced at the DNC by Donna Brazile, a Clinton family insider. Brazile’s selection continued the narrative of Clinton putting allies into high places and refusing to hire anyone even remotely progressive.

The platform decided upon at the convention was another slap in the face to progressives. Bernie Sanders and his supporters were literally in the building as the Democratic Party wrote a centrist, unimaginative platform on which to run for office. In the section on healthcare, there is no promise of a single-payer system, but Donald Trump is mentioned. Elsewhere, we are promised that the hackable voting machines will still be used, there will be no access to college for everyone, and the military will continue to attack foreign nations. There was no success in moving her or the party to the left, and there will be no success in future attempts.

Putting pressure on Democrats before election day is worth the effort, but if progressives want to see genuine progress, they have to move away from the Democratic Party. They can join the Socialists or the Greens, start a new political party, or steer clear of politics altogether and create an action group.

No matter what progressives want and believe in, they are not going to get it from Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party.