
Bernie Sanders Says He’ll Continue Campaign, But Opens a Path Toward an Exit

WASHINGTON — Sen. Bernie Sanders announced Wednesday that he is staying in the 2020 presidential race, but gone is the swagger of an insurgent candidate who for months defiantly projected that the nomination was within his grasp.
Chastened by multiple defeats over the last two weeks, several in states that he won in primaries four years ago, Sanders acknowledged at a news conference Wednesday that the potential path he once had to the nomination is rapidly closing as voters he expected to be in his coalition have grown doubtful over his ability to beat President Donald Trump and are aligning with former Vice President Joe Biden.
“While our campaign has won the ideological debate, we are losing the debate over electability,” he said.
Speaking to reporters in his home state of Vermont, Sanders signaled a new role for himself in the race: using the energy and momentum of his grass-roots movement to push Biden into embracing a more progressive platform.
He rattled off a litany of policy challenges he plans to confront Biden with during the next presidential debate in Arizona on Sunday, offering a road map of sorts to concessions that he hopes to gain. But he expressed regret that so many change-hungry Americans — mistakenly, Sanders argued — see Biden as a safer bet for Democrats in November.
“Donald Trump must be defeated, and I will do everything in my power to make that happen,” Sanders said during a 10-minute statement, after which he took no questions. “On Sunday night, in the first one-on-one debate of this campaign, the American people will have the opportunity to see which candidate is best positioned to accomplish that goal.”
His aides and allies had been saying he should not drop out, despite Biden’s growing lead in convention delegates and a primary calendar that is moving into states even more unfriendly to Sanders in the coming weeks.
Sanders focused squarely and soberly on his policy differences with Biden — “Medicare for All,” climate change, immigration and more — and said he would press Biden in the debate: “Joe, what are you going to do?”
Addressing those issues, he said, would allow Democrats to beat Trump by appealing to the younger voters who have flocked to Sanders in droves.
“Today I say to the Democratic establishment, in order to win in the future, you need to win the voters who represent the future of our country,” he said. “And you must speak to the issues of concern to them. You cannot simply be satisfied by winning the votes of older people.”
The tone was a remarkable shift for Sanders, scarcely resembling the candidate who remained defiant to the last in his 2016 race against Hillary Clinton.
Gone was the vow that “we are in till the last ballot is cast,” as he declared four years ago. He did not accuse Democratic officials of rigging the primary against him, as he did then. He did not rail against a corrupt party establishment, as he did then and has at some points earlier in the current campaign.
The more conciliatory approach reflects the very different circumstances of 2020. In the short stretch since voting began a month ago, Sanders has plummeted from the race’s front-runner — a position he never held in 2016 — to severe underdog. His prospects for recovery in this race are much bleaker than they were at this point in his last run, a reflection of the primary calendar as well as the extent to which the party has coalesced around Biden.
Democrats are exhausted from three years of Trump and horrified by the prospect he could win another term. Facing that, Sanders appears unwilling to inflict the kind of damage on the front-runner that he did in 2016.
He and Biden also do not display the kind of personal animosity he and Clinton did. Biden and Sanders have long had a cordial relationship, and the former vice president was complimentary of Sanders throughout the Vermonter’s last presidential bid.
“I am not a populist. But Bernie Sanders, he’s doing a helluva job,” Biden remarked at one point in 2015.
Some Biden supporters were, nonetheless, blunt in their calls for Sanders to quit after Tuesday’s election results.
“I think it is time for us to shut this primary down. It is time for us to cancel the rest of these debates,” Rep. James E. Clyburn, an influential South Carolina Democrat, said Tuesday night on NPR.
Others were more patient. Marlon Kimpson, a South Carolina state senator who backed Biden, said Sanders should not be pressured.
“He has earned enough votes and represents a significant number of people and deserves to stay in until he sees fit to withdraw from the race,” Kimpson said Wednesday.
“It is very important that we have a big tent to include the progressives.”
And Sanders’ supporters argued that continuing competition would strengthen Biden’s candidacy.
“Primaries should be explicit contrasts — and tough primaries don’t weaken general election nominees, they strengthen them,” David Sirota, a Sanders adviser, said on Twitter. “Establishment demands for silence in the name of unity — or for the end of a contested primary — don’t serve the cause of defeating Trump. They weaken that cause.”
Biden himself, in a speech to supporters in Philadelphia on Tuesday night as his victories unfolded, was measured. He was careful to say he was not taking the nomination for granted and offered an olive branch to Sanders supporters, emphasizing their “common goal” of beating Trump.
Biden still has a long way to go for the 1,991 pledged delegates he needs to win the nomination, and 26 states plus the District of Columbia and some U.S. territories remain to hold primaries. But barring unforeseen and dramatic developments, he is on track to quickly establish an insurmountable lead.
According to the delegate count maintained by The Associated Press, Biden had accrued 864 delegates to Sanders’ 710. That means Biden needs to win just half the remaining delegates to lock down the nomination; Sanders would need about 57%.
That task for Sanders is even harder than it might seem, since Biden is almost sure to win heavy victories in some of the big states voting later this month. All four of the states to vote next Tuesday — Florida, Ohio, Illinois and Arizona — are places where Sanders lost to Clinton in 2016. They offer gigantic caches of delegates, and polls show all of them favoring Biden.
If the contest continues into next week, Florida will loom especially large. The state has 219 delegates at stake, and Democrats hope to flip it back to their column in the general election. President Barack Obama carried the state in both of his elections, but Trump won it in 2016.
Recent Florida polls show Biden crushing Sanders with support from more than 60% of likely primary voters.
Biden has a demographic advantage there because he does well among voters older than 45 and black voters, who made up 64% and 28%, respectively, of the state’s primary electorate in 2016, according to exit polls. While Sanders has done well among Latino voters in other states, Sanders’ recent defense of the accomplishments of Fidel Castro’s government inflamed Florida’s strongly anti-Castro Cuban American population.
Even with Sanders still in the race, Biden is beginning to focus more on how to unify the party and begin to prosecute the case against Trump in the fall. Some of that effort may go into finding a running mate to bridge party divides, but that choice is probably months away.
Jane Kleeb, chairman of the Nebraska Democratic Party, said Biden will have to offer more than olive-branch words to Sanders and his allies, and embrace a more progressive platform on issues like climate change.
“When we talk about unity, I think that usually means shut up and get on board,” said Kleeb, who has been neutral in the primary but is on the board of Our Revolution, a political group aligned with Sanders. “If we are truly going to unify the party — where all shades of blue are welcome — you make space for bright progressive turquoise and moderate navy blue.”
———
©2020 Los Angeles Times
Visit the Los Angeles Times at www.latimes.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
In The News
Health
Voting
2020 Elections
ATLANTA (AP) — A judge is set to hear arguments Tuesday on whether to release a report by a special grand... Read More
ATLANTA (AP) — A judge is set to hear arguments Tuesday on whether to release a report by a special grand jury tasked with investigating whether then-President Donald Trump and his allies broke any laws as they sought to overturn his narrow 2020 election loss in Georgia. Fulton County... Read More
AUSTIN, Texas — Texas’ top election official, Secretary of State John Scott, resigned from that post on Monday, saying he... Read More
AUSTIN, Texas — Texas’ top election official, Secretary of State John Scott, resigned from that post on Monday, saying he will relinquish the office at the end of the year. As a result, on Tuesday, Gov. Greg Abbott announced he will appoint Republican State Sen. Jane... Read More
WASHINGTON — Just hours after Chief Justice John Roberts handed former President Donald Trump a temporary victory in one of... Read More
WASHINGTON — Just hours after Chief Justice John Roberts handed former President Donald Trump a temporary victory in one of his legal battles, a member of Trump’s inner circle on Tuesday found the high court far less accommodating. In an unsigned, two-paragraph order, the Supreme Court... Read More
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Jan. 6 committee is set to unveil “surprising” details including evidence from Donald Trump’s Secret Service about... Read More
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Jan. 6 committee is set to unveil “surprising” details including evidence from Donald Trump’s Secret Service about the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol in what is likely to be its last public hearing before the November midterm elections. The hearing Thursday afternoon, the 10th public... Read More
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s mounting legal problems are spreading this week to pull in state attorneys general who supported him... Read More
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s mounting legal problems are spreading this week to pull in state attorneys general who supported him in his failed effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The legal watchdog group The 65 Project filed complaints against 15 state attorneys general Wednesday to... Read More
CONCORD, N.H. — State Attorney General John Formella announced Tuesday that he will appoint an election monitor to oversee the... Read More
CONCORD, N.H. — State Attorney General John Formella announced Tuesday that he will appoint an election monitor to oversee the state’s Sept. 13 primary elections after an investigation revealed a pattern of apparent mistakes made in past contests. The events that led to the decision mostly... Read More