For Bernie Sanders, the end of the road is near. But he insists it will still run all the way through the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.
“We will continue to fight for every vote and every delegate,” Sanders declared after arriving at a Santa Monica, Calif., campaign rally more than a half an hour late. He will at least continue through next Tuesday’s Democratic primary in Washington, D.C.
It would not have been a surprise if Sanders ended his presidential campaign. He had been counting on a win in California but was trailing there by a much bigger margin than the polls predicted. On Tuesday he won North Dakota and Montana but the biggest prized eluded him.
Sanders seemed to be getting ready to rally his supporters to the Democratic ticket in November.
“We’ll never support a candidate who’s major theme is bigotry,” he said. “We will not allow Donald Trump to become president of the United States.”
“But we understand that our mission is not just defeating Donald Trump,” Sanders continued. “It is transforming our country.”
Sanders ran against the “millionaires and billionaires” he argues buy our elections and don’t pay their fair share of taxes throughout the campaign. He promised to make college affordable and break up the big banks.
The senator and his supporters were angry that the Associated Press declared Clinton the winner of a majority of Democratic delegates on the eve of the final batch of primaries. A win in California was central to his longshot big to convince superdelegates to switch their allegiances from Clinton to him.
It seemed like the latest indignity at the hands of the corporate media and the Democratic establishment, which Sanders and his most ardent backers believed favored Clinton at every phase of the race.
The Democratic National Committee originally sanctioned only six debates and scheduled them at times when few people would be watching. The Sanders campaign has frequently clashed with DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Sanders has endorsed Schultz’s Democratic primary challenger.
Even Trump called attention to the “rigged” Democratic system during his speech Tuesday night.
But Sanders is trailing in superdelegates, pledged delegates and the popular vote. The democratic socialist’s hopes are now pinned on winning over the very party establishment he campaigned against throughout the primaries and asking them to overturn the will of the voters based on hypothetical general election polling. Big layoffs are ahead for his campaign staff.
Sanders’ contested convention scenario has grown increasingly implausible. Campaign insiders complained to Politico about campaign aides and the candidate himself, claiming it was Sanders’ decision to become more aggressive against Clinton after she ran so hard against him on guns.
The outlet received a leaked memo from the Sanders rapid response director to campaign manager Jeff Weaver complaining about the widely publicized fight between the senator’s forces and other Democrats in Nevada.
“I don’t know who advised him that this was the right route to take, but we are now actively destroying what Bernie worked so hard to build over the last year just to pick up two f—king delegates in a state he lost,” the memo reportedly stated.
Nevertheless, Sanders made it further in the Democratic primaries than many anticipated at the beginning of the race. He had never actually run as a Democrat before. Despite caucusing with the party in the Senate and receiving its tacit support in his most recent races, Sanders was elected to both houses of Congress as an independent. He has also campaigned as the nominee of tiny third parties, sometimes winning just low single-digit percentages of the vote.
Challenging the runner-up from the 2008 Democratic primaries, former secretary of state for President Obama and the former first lady of the United States, Sanders beat Clinton badly in New Hampshire, the first of many improbable wins.
Sanders attracted huge crowds filled with young people attracted by his attacks on money in politics and calls for free public education. Like Obama, he ran against Clinton’s vote for the Iraq war. Unlike the current president, he wanted to scrap Obamacare and replace it with single payer.
In most Democratic contests, Sanders beat Clinton among younger voters. “Bernie has galvanized a whole new generation of political activists,” Democratic strategist Brad Bannon told the Washington Examiner. “That is going to be his lasting legacy.”
White Democratic voters were very closely divided between Sanders and Clinton. Where things went wrong for the Vermont lawmaker was he didn’t cope well with the increasingly diverse Democratic electorate. She rolled up big margins among black and Latino Democrats, although Sanders did a bit better with younger voters in both blocs.
Similar to Ron Paul in 2008 and 2012, however, Sanders was first reaching a large mainstream audience with a frequently marginalized ideology in his 70s. The Democratic debates were a major platform for his ideas. Now he is in a position to influence the party’s official platform at the convention in Philadelphia.
The only question is whether he does so as someone still actively fighting Clinton come Philadelphia or as someone who has by then endorsed her as the nominee.
