Clinton wins Democratic bid, but Sanders not out

Bernie Sanders has refused to concede defeat in the Democratic Party nomination for the US presidential race, even after Hillary Clinton was confirmed to have won several crucial primaries on Wednesday. Whatever the outcome, Sanders has built a powerful movement that will continue to shape the Democratic bid for the presidency.

Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders with his wife Jane in Santa Monica, California, 7 June 2016. Scott Olson/Getty Images/AFP

As Hillary Clinton declared victory in the Democratic Party nomination – notably celebrating her triumph as the first woman to lead a major party in a race for the White House – she also acknowledged the support Sanders’s campaign has drawn to the party.

“He has spent his long career in public service fighting for progressive causes and principles, and has excited millions of voters, especially young people,” Clinton told supporters late Tuesday. “Senator Sanders, his campaign, and the vigorous debate that we’ve had about to raise incomes, reduce inequality, increase upward mobility, have been very good for the Democratic Party and for America.”

Sanders responded to Clinton’s victory declaration not so much with any illusions that he might win the nomination as with a vow to keep pushing his progressive economic and social platform.

“What this movement is about is millions of people from coast to coast standing up and looking around them and knowing we can do much, much better as a nation,” Sanders said. “I am pretty good in arithmetic, and I know that the fight in front of us is a very, very steep fight. But we will continue to fight for every vote and every delegate we can get.”

Party members suggest Sanders’s campaign has drummed up support that Clinton may not have been able to manage alone.

“There were a lot of frustrated Democrats, and there have been for a while, and I think Bernie has been able to capture them and bring them back,” says Constance Borde, a member of the Democratic National Committee and vice chair of Democrats Abroad in France.

“Not only was he able to do that, but he was able to formulate a new discourse for Hillary, and she now seems to be talking a lot more about inequality, about trade policies for America, and many of the things that the public in general maybe didn’t like about Hillary. Maybe he’s helped her to rectify those.”

Sanders supporters also view the vow to continue as a way to maintain influence in the presidential bid.

“Certainly it could mean a fight for the nomination, but it could also mean a fight on the party platform, which is formed at the convention, or a battle for changes to rules about how future contests operate,” says Neil Sroka of Democracy for America, a political action committee that backed Sanders.

“I think a lot of supporters view the vow to fight on as a belief that the struggle for the things Bernie Sanders has been fighting for in this election is going to go on [and] that the political revolution that Bernie Sanders began with this campaign is just getting started, no matter who ends up being the nominee of the Democratic Party.”

Sanders presented a kind of parallel with Republican candidate Donald Trump, in the sense that both nominee hopefuls tapped into frustration with the country’s political classes and presented themselves as anti-establishment candidates, and Trump wasted no time in making a bid for supporters of Sanders.

“To all of those Bernie Sanders voters who have been left out in the cold by a rigged system of superdelegates: we welcome you with open arms,” Trump said. “And by the way, the terrible trade deals that Bernie was so vehemently against, and he’s right on that, will be taken care of far better than anyone ever thought possible.”

But there is little belief that Trump will succeed in siphoning much support.

“Sanders voters are very distinguishable by their demographics and by their ideology from the Trump voters,” says Gerald Friedman, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

“Trump voters are old white men. The Sanders voters are younger, much more educated, multiracial, with strong opinions on social issues, favour gay rights, marriage equality, civil liberties. […] They won’t vote for Trump. The issue is, will they stay home? And, probably some of them will, but they are so antagonistic to Trump that I think that’s going to drive them.”

On his own request, Sanders is to meet Thursday with current president Barack Obama.

According to a White House memo, they will discuss “how to build on the extraordinary work he has done to engage millions of Democratic voters, and to build on that enthusiasm”.