Earlier today, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders announced that he’ll be Hillary Clinton’s first official contender in the Democratic primaries. He’s almost certainly not going to win, of course, but he’s not running to win: He’s running to make Hillary Clinton’s apparently inevitable ascension more interesting.

Sanders, a technical independent (he caucuses with Senate Democrats) and self-declared democratic socialist (think Scandinavia, not Stalin), stands firmly to the left of Clinton, despite Clinton having recently scrambled to the left on social issues like same-sex marriage. It’s Sanders’ financial policies (socialism) that really set him apart. With the Clinton Foundation getting pounded with uncomfortable questions about how its spending its money and where that money’s coming from, and Clinton catching heat for her husband’s economic record, Sanders has taken it upon himself to represent the left-wing opposition to the pro-corporate New Democrat politics that made the Clintons so successful

Sanders also has a proud tendency to shy away from personal attacks. Asked about the Clinton Foundation controversy recently, he took it from the personal to the general, saying, “it tells me what is a very serious problem. It’s not just about Hillary Clinton or Bill Clinton. It is about a political system today that is dominated by big money. It’s about the Koch brothers being prepared to spend nine hundred million dollars in the coming election. … We’re looking at a system where our democracy is being owned by a handful of billionaires.”

Still, as an old white man from an old white state, left-wing Democrats hoping to combine identity with class politics won’t be as excited for Sanders as they were for the (always unlikely) Elizabeth Warren campaign. And no one seriously expects Sanders to win, unlike many proponents of the Draft Warren movement.

Still, it’s nice to finally have a competitor that could put some pressure on Hillary to start speaking about income inequality and labor in specifics instead of generalities, even if that’s about all he’ll do.

Image via AP

Contact the author at ashley@gawker.com.