US election: Bernie Sanders exits Democratic presidential race, handing Joe Biden a clear run
Bernie Sanders has dropped out of the contest for the Democratic nomination, leaving Joe Biden the presumptive nominee.
Bernie Sanders has quit the US presidential race, leaving former Vice President Joe Biden as the presumptive Democratic nominee to challenge Donald Trump in November’s presidential election.
Senator Sanders, 78, announced he was suspending his campaign after coming to the “difficult and painful decision’’ that his path to victory against the 77-year-old Mr Biden was now “virtually impossible’’.
“I wish I could give you better news, but I think you know the truth, and that is that we are now some 300 delegates behind Vice President Biden, and the path toward victory is virtually impossible,” Senator Sanders said in a video address from his home in Burlington Vermont.
“Over the past few weeks Jane and I, in consultation with top staff, and many of our prominent supporters, have made an honest assessment of the prospects for victory. If I believed we had a feasible path to the nomination, I would certainly continue the campaign. But it’s just not there,” he said.
Let us go forward together. The struggle continues.
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) April 8, 2020
Senator Sanders said he could not “in good conscience’’ continue to mount a campaign he could not win.
“But as I see the crisis gripping the nation, exacerbated by a President unwilling or unable to provide any kind of credible leadership, and the work that needs to be done to protect people in this most desperate hour, I cannot in good conscience continue to mount a campaign that cannot win, and which would interfere with the important work required of all of us in this difficult hour,” he said.
Mr Biden paid tribute to the campaign of his democratic socialist rival and thanked him for putting “the interest of the nation — and the need to defeat Donald Trump — above all else.’
He called Senator Sanders a “powerful voice for a fairer and more just America” and called on the Vermont Senator’s young army of supporters to join his campaign.
“And to (Sanders’) supporters I make the same commitment: I see you, I hear you, and I understand the urgency of what it is we have to get done in this country. I hope you will join us. You are more than welcome. You’re needed,” Mr Biden said.
I know Bernie well. He’s a good man, a great leader, and one of the most powerful voices for change in our country. And it’s hard to sum up his contributions to our politics in one, single tweet. So I won’t try to. https://t.co/Z6OkCDWFNm
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) April 8, 2020
Mr Trump also made a cheeky pitch for Senator Sanders’ supporters to join the Republicans, blaming Senator Sanders’ fellow liberal Elizabeth Warren for his defeat.
“Bernie Sanders is OUT! Thank you to Elizabeth Warren. If not for her, Bernie would have won almost every state on Super Tuesday! This ended just like the Democrats & the DNC wanted, same as the Crooked Hillary fiasco. The Bernie people should come to the Republican Party, TRADE!,’ Mr Trump tweeted.
Bernie Sanders is OUT! Thank you to Elizabeth Warren. If not for her, Bernie would have won almost every state on Super Tuesday! This ended just like the Democrats & the DNC wanted, same as the Crooked Hillary fiasco. The Bernie people should come to the Republican Party, TRADE!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 8, 2020
Despite quitting the presidential race, Senator Sanders said his name would remain on the ballot in the remaining Democratic primaries and that any delegates he won would give him leverage to influence Democrat policies at the Democratic National Convention in August.
“While this campaign is coming to an end, our movement is not,” said Senator Sanders, who helped move the party to the left with his platform of medicare-for-all, higher taxes, free college tuition and aggressive climate change policies.
Senator Sanders, the one-time frontrunner in the Democrat race lost all realistic chance of victory, after losing heavily in a series of primaries on March 17 in Florida, Illinois and Arizona.
Senator Sanders was the favourite to win the nomination as recently as late February after winning the popular vote in Iowa and then winning primary contests in New Hampshire and Nevada.
But Mr Biden launched a stunning comeback in the South Carolina primary on February 29 and carried the momentum into a series of sweeping victories on Super Tuesday on March 3.
Mr Biden’s moderate rivals including Pete Buttigieg, Michael Bloomberg and Amy Klobuchar then withdrew from the race and backed Mr Biden in a major victory for the party’s moderates over its left wing.
From that point Senator Sanders was never able to make up the ground on Mr Biden who will finally become the party’s presidential nominee in his third attempt.
In a tweet after Mr Sanders announced his exit, Ms Warren said his “fight for progressive ideas moved the conversation and charted a path for candidates and activists that will change the course of our country and party.”
Thank you @BernieSanders, for fighting so relentlessly for America’s working families during this campaign. Your fight for progressive ideas moved the conversation and charted a path for candidates and activists that will change the course of our country and party.
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) April 8, 2020
While versions of Mr Sanders’s liberal policies were broadly popular with the Democratic electorate — a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll from March found 67 per cent of Democratic primary voters supported a Medicare for All system — Mr Sanders faced voters who prioritised getting Mr Trump out of office and voted on what they viewed as electability rather than policy. Many of them worried that a self-described democratic socialist would be easier for the president to beat in a general election.
The senator’s campaign was further hampered when he was no longer able to hold his signature large rallies or other public events because of the coronavirus pandemic. The Vermont senator livestreamed events instead.
The Sanders campaign deactivated its digital ads on Facebook as of March 18 and hadn’t booked television ads since the week before. With his path to the nomination near non-existent, Mr Sanders also stopped soliciting donations for his campaign that same week, instead using the operation to fundraise for and organise around the crisis.
Mr Sanders campaigned on the promise of a revolution that would change major sectors of the U.S. economy, with proposals to eliminate student and medical debt, make public colleges and universities free, and overhaul the economy to combat climate change. He proposed paying for his ambitious proposals by increasing taxes on corporations, the wealthy and the middle class.
His 2016 presidential candidacy popularised many of his ideas in the Democratic Party, and his 2020 bid forced every rival candidate to take a position on his signature issue, Medicare for All. Mr Sanders — along with Ms Warren — also denounced money in politics, proving that you don’t need big donors to fuel their campaigns.
Mr Sanders’s candidacy stumbled after he had a heart attack in October 2019. He spent a few days in the hospital before taking some time off from the trail. He resumed campaigning in mid-October.
Mr Sanders used his heart attack to highlight the push for Medicare for All, arguing that he was lucky to have healthcare coverage for an emergency procedure when many Americans don’t. He said that a government-run coverage system would make sure everyone was able to receive care.
At the same time, he brought in high-profile endorsements, including that of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the popular New York politician who became a draw at his campaign events.
Mr Sanders also appeared to benefit from a drop in Ms Warren’s polling that came as she received criticism of her position on Medicare for All, which included a transition period and an expectation that the plan wouldn’t be passed until her third year in office. Mr Sanders said a bill would be put out in his first week in office.
Despite being the oldest candidate in the 2020 Democratic field, the Vermont senator had a fervent base of young supporters. But he struggled with older voters, and he was unable to rival Mr Biden’s support among black Democrats, a major constituency in states that voted in March and are yet to vote.
His political career began in 1981 when he became mayor of Burlington, Vt., winning by just 10 votes. He went on to lead the city for four terms, at times adopting a pragmatic approach to governing by working with Republicans and the business community.
He was elected to the House of Representatives in 1990 and to the Senate in 2006. Mr. Sanders has always identified as an independent but caucused with Democrats during his tenure in Washington.
Mr Sanders became a prominent national figure during his run for the Democratic nomination against Mrs. Clinton, the former secretary of state, in the 2016 presidential election. Mr Sanders started in that race as a long shot, but rose to be considered a real threat to Mrs Clinton.
She ultimately secured the nomination, but his 2016 run gave him a national profile that helped him launch his 2020 campaign as a frontrunner. And many voters cited his consistency in pushing for liberal priorities, including a single-payer health system, as a reason to back his second White House bid.
(Cameron Stewart is also US Contributor for Sky News Australia)
With Aaron Zitner, Alexa Corse and Chad Day
The Wall Street Journal
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