On Wednesday, Bernie Sanders held a speech to address his poor performance in Tuesday’s primary contests, where he told the Democratic establishment that it cannot win without his supporters and that he still intends to face off against Joe Biden in Sunday’s debate.
While many observers thought Sanders might be announcing that he was dropping out of the race, his speech in Burlington, Vermont was anything but.
Bernie Sanders isn’t dropping out just yet. “On Sunday, I very much look forward to the debate in Arizona with my friend Joe Biden,” Sanders says. pic.twitter.com/tmZq4JUnxP
— Gary Grumbach (@GaryGrumbach) March 11, 2020
Bernie Marches On
“Last night obviously was not a good night for our campaign from a delegate point of view,” Sanders said, admitting he lost in votes but that his campaign was winning the “generational debate.”
Sanders conceded that Biden does well with older voters, but younger Americans “continue… to support our campaign.”
Bernie Sanders could be a hero if he dropped out, endorsed Joe Biden, and used it to get some of his agenda adopted. Instead he's staying in the race for no reason, because he's a stubborn idiot. He'll lose the primary race badly, and he'll be hated. Damn fool. #berniedropout
— Palmer Report (@PalmerReport) March 11, 2020
Then Bernie issued a warning to the Democratic establishment.
“Today I say to the Democratic establishment, in order to win in the future, you need to win the voters who represent the future of our country, and you must speak to the issues of concern to them,” he said.
“You cannot simply be satisfied by winning the votes of people who are older,” Sanders stressed.
Exit poll after exit poll has shown Bernie Sanders winning young voters by a large margin — but youth turnout has been either flat or down in many states.https://t.co/dt9BQaWgAs
— NPR (@NPR) March 11, 2020
Sanders Said He’s Eager to Debate Biden
“While our campaign has won the ideological debate, we are losing the debate over electability,” Sanders continued, adding that he “very much” looks forward to debating his “friend” Biden on Sunday.
Sanders said he still disagrees “strongly” with the idea that Biden is more electable than he is. Bernie also laid out questions he intended to pose to Biden and proceeded by listing out the questions he plans to ask to Biden at the CNN debate, including medical debt, health care, student debt, mass incarceration, childhood poverty, and billionaire influence in elections.
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“On Sunday night, in the first one-on-one debate in this campaign, the American people will have the opportunity to see which candidate is best positioned” to defeat Trump, Sanders said.
.@BernieSanders knows he can't win and that the longer he stays in, the more he divides the party–a tactic that helped Trump in 2016. This to me shows his candidacy is about himself and raising his image, not about helping the country. Sometimes helping means dropping out.
— Dr. DaShanne Stokes (@DaShanneStokes) March 11, 2020