Sanders faces growing pressure to back Clinton
By Mark Z. Barabak and Chris Megerian, Los Angeles Times Today at 3:32 p.m.
  Democratic presidential candidate and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders speaks about his attempts to influence the Democratic party's platform in Albany, New York, U.S. June 24, 2016. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
ORLANDO, Fla. — When Bernie Sanders appeared last week before an audience of 100 or so Democratic House members, the closed-door reception in a basement hearing room on Capitol Hill was distinctly cool.
Lawmakers shouted, “Timeline! Timeline!” — pressing him to hurry up and endorse the party’s presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton — and there were boos when the Vermont senator said his goal was “not to win elections” but “to transform America.”
After pulling Clinton leftward in the fight for the party’s nomination and pushing their contest to the very last day of voting— long after it was effectively decided — Sanders now faces calls for him to stand down, step aside and fall in line.
“Every other progressive Democratic leader in the Democratic Party has gotten behind Hillary Clinton,” said Geoff Garin, who helped lead Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign and cited her endorsement of Barack Obama, four days after their fiercely fought contest ended, as a model of political comportment.
In contrast, he recalled 1980, when Ted Kennedy sulked over his primary season loss to President Jimmy Carter and did little to hide his abiding contempt.
“That left the Democratic Party less united than it could and needed to be,” said Garin, who now conducts polling for a pro-Clinton political action committee.
Sanders, whose influence wanes the longer he waits, suggests he will get around to endorsing Clinton before too much longer. He already has said he would vote for her over Donald Trump and would do everything he can to defeat the presumptive Republican nominee.
“Am I fighting to make sure that a Democrat is elected president? You bet your bottom dollar,” he said Wednesday on CNN.
The same day as his less-than-wild Capitol Hill reception, Sanders praised Clinton for a plan she announced to make higher education more affordable, calling it “a result of the work of both campaigns.”
On Saturday, he embraced another new Clinton proposal, to double federal support for primary care at community health centers serving low-income patients.
“It’s fair to say that the Clinton campaign and I are coming closer and closer together,” Sanders said.
Top aides to Clinton and Sanders have been in frequent contact, and an endorsement at a joint appearance in New Hampshire — where Sanders beat Clinton in the first primary contest — could take place on Tuesday.
But before Sanders offers a full-hearted, unqualified and unequivocal embrace of Clinton, there are still concessions he’s trying to win.
His chief focus has been the Democratic platform, an issue-by-issue statement of party principles, to be adopted when Democrats meet for their national convention at the end of the month. Members of the platform committee gathered Friday and Saturday in Orlando, Fla., to complete a final draft to be presented for approval on the convention floor.
The Clinton campaign, through its proxies on the platform committee, already had moved considerably in Sanders’ direction before the meeting started.
The document calls for abolishing the death penalty and expanding Social Security. Both were positions Sanders took during his campaign, in contrast to Clinton’s more moderate stance.
More changes were made this weekend after hours of negotiations, including support for a $15-per-hour federal minimum wage indexed to rise with inflation.
However, Sanders suffered a defeat Saturday when his campaign failed to persuade delegates to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal between the United States and 11 Pacific Rim nations.
Clinton, who supported the deal during negotiations as Obama’s secretary of state and once called it the “gold standard” for international trade, reversed herself during the primary and announced her opposition.
But opposing the deal would have been a slap at Obama, and the vote was one of the most heated moments of the drafting session. Afterward, some Sanders supporters stormed out.
“You don’t care about the people. You only care about profit,” one of them shouted.
Since officially clinching the nomination in early June, Clinton has sought a balance between accommodating Sanders, the better to draw his left-leaning supporters to her candidacy, and avoiding any positions that could make it harder to attract more moderate voters in November.
While aides privately express their annoyance at Sanders and his refusal to capitulate, Clinton has publicly maintained a respectful silence.
The closest she has come to a poke at her old rival was a statement Tuesday, during her first joint campaign appearance with Obama, when she noted once their primary fight ended, “I was proud to endorse him and campaign for him.”
Political clout is a perishable thing, though, and there are signs that Clinton no longer needs Sanders’ support as much as she once did.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., a favorite of the left, has enthusiastically endorsed Clinton and appeared alongside her in the battleground state of Ohio, where she enunciated many of Sanders’ economic populist themes.
Even without his prompting, Sanders backers appear to be rallying behind the Democrats’ presumed nominee.
Clinton already has more support from Sanders backers than Obama did from Clinton voters in 2008, according to a recent Pew Research poll. Among Democrats and people who lean toward the party, 85 percent of those who supported Sanders in the primary said they planned to vote for Clinton.
Eight years ago, Obama had the support of 69 percent of Clinton backers.
“With each passing day,” Garin said of a Sanders endorsement, “it gets a little bit more anti-climactic.”
It is, however, the last little bit of leverage he holds over Clinton, though Sanders — who never had an especially warm relationship with her — has sought to make one thing clear.
“No, I do not hate Secretary Clinton,” he said recently on MSNBC, responding after Trump made assertions to the contrary. “I’ve known her for 25 years. I have a lot of respect for her.” |
