Last updated on July 18th, 2023 at 11:59 am
Sen. Bernie Sanders told supporters that he couldn’t win the Democratic nomination, and given the current coronavirus crisis, he was uniting with Joe Biden to beat Trump.
Sen. Sanders said in a message to supporters:
This reality makes clear that Congress must address this unprecedented crisis in an unprecedented way that protects the health and economic well being of the working families of our country, not just powerful special interests. As a member of the Democratic leadership and the United States Senate, and as a senator from the state of Vermont, this is something that I intend to intensely be involved in over the next number of months, and that will require an enormous amount of work. Which takes me to the state of our presidential campaign.
I wish I could give you better news, but I think you know the truth. And that is we are now some 300 delegates behind vice president Biden and the path toward victory is virtually impossible. So while we are winning the ideological battle, and while we are winning the support of so many young people and working people throughout the country, I have concluded that this battle for the Democratic nomination will not be successful. So today I’m announcing the suspension of my campaign.
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Video:
Bernie Sanders calls Joe Biden a very decent man and says that we all stand together to beat Donald Trump. Sanders said he is staying on the ballot in remaining states, but given the coronavirus, it might have been impossible to remove his name anyway. pic.twitter.com/RD4wGX2t7N
— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) April 8, 2020
Sanders later congratulated Biden, and said, “Today I congratulate Joe Biden, a very decent man who I will work with to move our Progressive ideas forward. On a practical note, let me also say this, I will stay on the ballot in all remaining states and continue to gather delegates. While vice president Biden will be the nominee. We must continue working to assemble as many delegates as possible at the democratic convention, where we will be able to exert significant influence over the party platform and other functions. Then together standing united we will go forward to defeat Donald Trump, the most dangerous president in modern American history.”
The writing was on the wall for the Sanders campaign as Joe Biden flipped states that Sanders won in 2016, and swept all of the counties in several states. Sanders had stopped addressing his supporters in election nights weeks ago, and the coronavirus essentially shut the race for the Democratic nomination down.
Sen. Sanders is already sounding more of a unified tone than he did in 2016.
Except for a few Bernie or Busters, the left is going to unify behind Biden, and deliver the most powerful electorate since Barack Obama in 2008.
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Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
