In his first speech to supporters since losing the District of Columbia primary and meeting with Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders said that his campaign was continuing at the same time that he vowed to help defeat Donald Trump in the fall:
BURLINGTON, Vt. — The primaries are officially over. Hillary Clinton andDonald J. Trump are attacking each other over the Orlando tragedy. Final touches are being made to convention plans. Running mates are being vetted.
But on Thursday night, Senator Bernie Sanders stood at a podium in a small, chilly television studio here pointing his index finger at a camera and insisting to his supporters that his campaign was fighting on. With five bright lights illuminating him, Mr. Sanders delivered a shortened version of his stump speech via livestream to his supporters, saying his “political revolution” was just beginning and reeling off the many injustices it would set about to end.
Although it covered a lot of ground, from the influence of money to poverty wages to fracking to the cost of college, the speech did not include the one thing some Democratic leaders have awaited: an endorsement of Mrs. Clinton, who last week became the presumptive nominee.
“The major political task that we face in the next five months is to make certain that Donald Trump is defeated and defeated badly,” Mr. Sanders said. “I personally intend to begin my role in that process in a very short period of time.”
“The major political task that we face in the next five months is to make certain that Donald Trump is defeated and defeated badly,” Mr. Sanders said. “I personally intend to begin my role in that process in a very short period of time.”
But if that sounded like a hint he would get behind Mrs. Clinton, in his next breath he made clear that helping her was not necessarily his top priority.
“Defeating Donald Trump cannot be our only goal,” he said. “We must continue our grass-roots efforts to create the America that we know we can become. And we must take that energy into the Democratic National Convention on July 25 in Philadelphia.”
Mr. Sanders’s advisers say he wants assurances Mrs. Clinton will fight for his ideals before he throws his support — and potentially the support of millions of his voters — behind her. Throughout the speech, Mr. Sanders seemed defiant as he repeated his critiques of economic, racial and environmental inequalities in the country, this time with the spotlight a bit dimmed.
As Mr. Sanders spoke of continuing his political revolution, much of the mainstream media that he regularly bemoans had moved on. CNN dedicated its coverage to the Orlando massacre, while Fox News hosts discussed the scourge of terrorism. MSNBC aired the beginning of his remarks live and then cut away.
But Mr. Sanders’s core supporters, who have given his cause voice on Twitter for more than a year, were still there for him. The hashtag #OurRevolution became the fourth-most popular in the United States as he spoke. Some of his fans quoted his every word; others expressed nervousness that he might formally drop out of the race.
One die-hard supporter of Mr. Sanders summed up his feelings for the candidate by invoking the Batman movie “The Dark Knight”: “The president we needed but didn’t deserve.”
The Sanders campaign said the speech was streamed to at least 218,000 people. Some were gathered at Bernie-watching parties, like one in the East Village of Manhattan, where 20 supporters in the upstairs dining room of the Bareburger restaurant broke into raucous applause when he said his 12 million votes proved that his was not a radical campaign, but rather “mainstream.”
Jessica Stokey, 43, a television editor, shed tears when Mr. Sanders suggested he might eventually endorse Mrs. Clinton to help beat Mr. Trump.
“I don’t know if it’s just my imagination, but it looked to me like the bags under his eyes got bigger and his face grew more thin,” she said. “That’s when I started crying.”
“It’s like knowing the zombies are here and you have to save your child; that’s how heartbreaking it is,” she added.
Despite not endorsing Mrs. Clinton on Thursday night, Mr. Sanders showed signs that he was pivoting to other races, imploring supporters to run for “school boards, city councils, county commissions, state legislatures and governorships.” He kept his feud with the Democratic Party leadership on a low boil, criticizing it for letting Republicans dominate state legislatures.
Notwithstanding the fact that Sanders has yet to formally endorse Clinton, it seems clear that at least he realizes that the end is at hand. As The Washington Post notes, Sanders does not appear to be following through on threats he made during the final weeks of the campaign to try to wrest Superdelegates from Hillary Clinton in an effort to basically steal the nomination from her on the convention floor. That plan, of course, was always something of a fantasy to begin with since it has always been unlikely that he would be able to persuade any high level Democrats to switch their loyalty to him from Clinton given the fact that Clinton won far more delegates and a far bigger share of the popular vote than Sanders did. Additionally, the fact that polling is now showing Clinton seemingly pull ahead of Donald Trump as Democrats rally around her while Trump continues to stick his foot in his mouth means that the race is essentially set and that it’s essential for the Democratic Party to unite behind its nominee. To a large degree then, Bernie Sanders is irrelevant to the race at this point except to the extent that he and his supporters could potentially disrupt what seems as though it will be an otherwise smooth Democratic National Convention that will likely contrast significantly that looks more and more like what could become a Republican Party that meets for a convention amid what is arguably its biggest split since the 1912 election when Teddy Roosevelt led the progressive wing of the party into what become a third-party run for under the “Bull Moose” banner that eventually cost the GOP control of the White House for the first time since the election of 1892.
Taking all of this into account, it seems likely that Sanders is risking losing whatever leverage he may still have the longer he waits to get behind Clinton in a formal way. Whether Sanders or his supporters have noticed it or not, the 2016 campaign has already moved past him and on to the General Election match-up between Clinton and Trump, as has the vast majority of the media coverage. The longer Sanders waits to strike whatever kind of deal he wants to make with Clinton and the DNC, the less he’s likely to get on the bargain. For example, we’re still at the point now where Sanders and his delegates could have a real influence over the party platform, the makeup of the Democratic National Committee going forward, and the general themes of the convention itself. As it happens, these are largely the issues Sanders has said that he wants to influence. The longer he insists he’s “staying in the race,” though, the less influence he’s going to have over any of it, especially as attention shifts to the General Election. One would think he’d be smart enough to realize that.
Or, as one Twitter user put it:
This is like those Japanese officers who hid in the jungles and didn't surrender until the 1950s. https://t.co/0vcI33VuVV
— Steven Metz (@steven_metz) June 17, 2016
In all honesty, this analogy could apply to Sanders, his supporters, or both.
