Senator Bernie Sanders is imploring his supporters to vote for Joe Biden, suggesting that without a unified Democratic Party, years of gains by the progressive movement could be lost and that the country may not even survive four more years of President Donald Trump, The Associated Press reported.
“At its most basic, this election is about preserving our democracy,” the Vermont senator said Monday night, in his opening night speech at the virtual Democratic National Convention. “During this president’s term, the unthinkable has become normal.”
Sanders said Trump “has tried to prevent people from voting, undermined the U.S. Postal Service, deployed the military and federal agents against peaceful protesters, threatened to delay the election and suggested that he will not leave office if he loses.”
Sanders twice finished as runner-up in his party’s presidential party, but was perhaps at the height of his power as he addressed the convention. He was the last primary challenger standing against Biden and retains the party’s largest cohesive constituency in a progressive base unwavering in its support. His signature ideas on single-payer health care, tuition-free college and remaking the economy to combat climate change have become part of the mainstream debate.
Sanders used his speech to acknowledge that, telling supporters, “Together we have moved this country in a bold new direction.”
“Our movement continues and is getting stronger every day,” he said. “But, let us be clear, if Donald Trump is reelected, all the progress we have made will be in jeopardy.”
While the opening night’s other headline speaker, Michelle Obama, mentioned Trump by name just once, Sanders blistered the President nearly a dozen times and said, “Under this administration authoritarianism has taken root in our country.”
Trump has repeatedly dismissed Sanders as “Crazy Bernie,” but Sanders even conjured images of his own Jewish heritage and Nazi Germany in saying of the President, “I, and my family — and many of yours — know the insidious way authoritarianism destroys democracy, decency and humanity.”
“By rejecting science, he has put our lives and health in jeopardy,” Sanders added of the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus outbreak. “Nero fiddled while Rome burned; Trump golfs.”
The only solution, Sanders said, was to unify around Biden, even though some of his own supporters aren’t enamored with the former vice president’s mostly centrist views.
“To everyone who supported other candidates in the primary and to those who may have voted for Donald Trump in the last election: The future of our democracy is at stake,” he said. “The price of failure is just too great to imagine.”
The 78-year-old Sanders almost certainly won’t mount another White House bid. But he’s solidifying a legacy as he helps Biden build ties with the left to prevent the type of internal divisions that helped Trump win in 2016. And he’s basking in victories that progressives have recently notched in Democratic congressional primaries around the country.
“Electorally we are doing very well,” Sanders said in an interview before the convention. “Most importantly, young people in this country, whether they’re Black or white or Latino, Native American, Asian American, young people strongly support the progressive agenda.”
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