After admitting that no, it does not appear that he’ll be the nominee earlier this week, Bernie Sanders dropped by to chat with Stephen Colbert — who noted that as of 4:01 p.m. eastern time, Sanders was still a Democratic candidate for President of the United States — about some sort of announcement he planned to make during a speech Friday night. And that announcement was… drum roll please… He’s not dropping out of the race!
Nope, Bernie is going to Philadelphia with all 1,900 of his delegates. And while he knows that he can’t win, the continuation of his campaign at this point is about compromise, not conflict:
What we’re doing now is marshaling our resources to make sure that A) we defeat Donald Trump, and we defeat him badly. And B) most importantly — and look, campaigns, they are about winning and losing nominations — but what’s more important is the need to transform America. And do to that, what I’ve said from day one, is that we need a political revolution. All of you! And everybody else who’s watching have got to be involved in the political process have to stand up and fight for the kind of America that we know we can become. And I’m never going to give up on that fight.
Friday morning Sanders appeared on MSNBC, where the candidate was asked point blank whether or not he planned to vote for Hillary in November, and his response elaborated on his first point to Colbert the night before:
Yes. The issue right here is I’m going to do everything I can to defeat Donald Trump. I think Trump in so many ways will be a disaster for this country if he were to be elected president. We do not need a president whose cornerstone of his campaign is bigotry, is insulting Mexicans and Latinos and Muslims and women, who does not believe in the reality of climate change when virtually every scientist who has studied this issue understand we have a global crisis. This is not somebody who should become president.
What Sanders is doing now could pay off. Many Democrats expressed frustration when he didn’t concede after Hillary won the number of delegates needed to clinch the nomination, however by refusing to drop out he’s actually forcing his party to work together, while emphasizing that the biggest threat they face now is Donald Trump. By dropping out and not endorsing Hillary, the party would have lost a good number of Sanders supporters. And if he took a hard left turn and endorsed Hillary immediately, his supporters would have felt disillusioned.
By all appearances Sanders is on board with the thinking that the best case scenario for Democrats to defeat Trump is collectively pushing a progressive agenda heading into November.