As former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton definitively clinched the presumptive Democratic nomination by winning California in Tuesday’s primary, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders vowed to keep fighting for justice and equality for the 99 percent while laying an early foundation for a lasting movement to continue his campaign’s “political revolution” beyond the election.
Speaking in Santa Monica, California, late Tuesday evening as results showed a strong lead for Clinton before her victory was declared, Sanders praised the groundswell of support that has brought his campaign forward. Despite his defeat, he hailed the movement as the root of political change.
“What we understand and what every one of us has always understood is that real change never occurs from the top down, always from the bottom up,” he said. "That is the history of America, whether it is the creation of the trade union movement, the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the gay movement. And that is what our movement is about."
The Vermont senator continued by saying that the path forward and the significance of his campaign is about much more than him as an upstart presidential candidate.
“What this movement is about is millions of people from coast to coast standing up and looking around them and knowing that we can do much much better as a nation,” he said. “That whether Wall Street likes it, whether corporate America likes it, whether campaign contributors like it, whether corporate media likes it—we know what our job is, and that is to bring the American people together to create a government that works for us and not the 1 percent.”
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Sanders promised to continue fighting for “every vote and every delegate” in next week’s Washington, D.C., primary and take his campaign until the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia from July 25 to 28, despite the steeply uphill battle.
But he also planted the seeds for the movement to continue beyond that, staying firm in his stance on key issues of economic inequality, corporate influence in politics, immigration, criminal justice, and universal health care.
He thanked his supporters for being part of the movement, noting the remarkable upsurge in his campaign since barely registering as a “fringe” element in the early days of the primary race.
Sanders also stressed that he will fight to keep the Republicans and especially Donald Trump from taking over the White House.
"The American people in my view will never support a candidate whose major theme is bigotry, who insults Mexicans, who insults Muslims and women and African Americans. We will not allow Donald Trump to become president of the United States," he said. "But we understand that our mission is more than just defeating trump, it is transforming our country."
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The presidential hopeful also acknowledged just how far his movement of support has come from being considered a "fringe campaign" in the early days, due in large part to surging support among young voters.
"Young people understand that they are the future of America and they intend to help shape that future," he said. "I am enormously optimistic about the future of the country when so many young people have come on board and understand that our vision of social justice, economic justice, racial justice, and environmental justice must be the future of America."
As for the lasting movement, a number of grassroots political initiatives have already emerged in Sanders’ wake. One important issue on the agenda is reforming the electoral system that stacks superdelegates in the establishment’s favor to give independent-supported candidates like Sanders a fighting chance in the future.
But only time will tell if the upstart groups and initiatives can manage to harness the passionate energy of the “political revolution” and “Bernie or Bust” movement to fight for bottom-up political influence leading up to the election and beyond.