Sen. Bernie Sanders received applause and praise from Senate Democrats at a closed-door lunch in which he made no promises to quit his presidential campaign, but urged the party to move to the left.
“It was a long one, and it was a good one,” Senate Minority Whip Richard Durbin, D-Ill., said of Sanders’ message to Democrats. “He believes that there is a basic feeling in America that politicians don’t understand the problems Americans are facing, like income inequality and the power of the banks, big money in politics and so on. And he really challenged us and said the question is whether the Democratic Party is going to be responsive to those issues.”
Sanders has pledged to remain in the Democratic primary until the July party convention, even though Hillary Clinton has won the nomination outright by securing enough pledged delegates and superdelegates. Sanders is a self-declared socialist who represents Vermont in the U.S. Senate as an independent but caucuses with Democrats.
“He said he’s going to take his message to the convention from progressive values and party reform,” Durbin said. “And I’m open to that. I think we all should be open to that. It’s not a surprise that people are skeptical of all of us in political life and we ought to step back and reassess why, and what we can do about it.”
