A lot of my far-left leaning friends are confused about why media talking heads keep saying that Bernie Sanders lost the debate. A lot of the media is in Hillary Clinton’s camp, true, but a lot of them are openly pro-Sanders. And members of both camps say that Sanders lost.

Many journalists on both sides think socialism has never received a fair shake in the United States. They don’t seem to understand that socialism—especially the so-called Democratic Socialism that Sanders espouses, in which private industry remains free, mainly, to assist government—inevitably leads to cronyism and corruption. Socialism practically means cronyism and corruption.

They, the media, believe in a kind of magical socialism run by an angelic political elite, and that if socialism just received a fair hearing voters would approve it. That open hearing is what the pro-Sanders crowd—and a lot of the pro-Clinton crowd—hoped for in Bernie Sanders.

To an extent, I agree with them. Up to the debate, I thought it would be good for Sanders to be the Democrats’ nominee because Sanders could articulate an argument for socialism, it would receive a fair hearing, and one of the pro-freedom candidates in the Republican Party—Fiorina, Cruz, Carson—would provide an articulate argument in favor of freedom.

But the debate changed that. There were two ways for Hillary Clinton to win the debate: she could have provided a clear contrast between her progressive politics and Sanders’s socialism, or Sanders could fail to provide a contrast between Hillary and himself. That’s why his refusal to distance himself from her corruption was interpreted as a loss. The media talking heads are claiming that they think Sanders lost because he didn’t “bring the fight” to Clinton. That his compassionate absolution of the Clinton Foundation and State Department email scandal lost him the debate. But that narrative is lipstick on a pig. The pro-Clinton side doesn’t want to acknowledge her corruption, and the pro-Socialism side (which of course overlaps) doesn’t want to acknowledge the truth that Sanders spoke about their ideology. Because Sanders spoke an important and inconvenient truth when he condoned Clinton’s corruption and cronyism—that this is socialism.

There is no question that the Clinton Foundation/State Department records/emails scandal paints a picture of a cronyist and corrupt politician. While it is possible to dispute how extreme the corruption went, this is only because Hillary Clinton destroyed so many of the records, tens of thousands of emails at least. But there is no question that the Foundation/emails scandal shows cronyism and corruption on Clinton’s part, it’s just a question of how much.

There is a general rule of thumb about political campaigns that rarely fails. When a politician tells you they’re going to do great things, take it with a grain of salt. When a politician tells you they’re going to do bad things, believe it and then some. Bernie Sanders looked corruption straight in the eye and said you’re good, corruption is not a real issue worth fighting.

When Sanders condoned this behavior, he made it clear that he does understand where socialism leads, and he’s okay with it. It might still be reasonable, sort of, to believe in a magical socialism that doesn’t lead to cronyism and corruption. But after the debate, it is no longer reasonable to believe that Bernie Sanders agrees with you. That’s why media talking heads declared Clinton the winner. Partly because he failed to differentiate himself from Clinton, but in large part because they don’t want to acknowledge Sanders’s truth about socialism.