While acknowledging his deficit in the Democratic race, US Senator Bernie Sanders on Wednesday said that he was pressing ahead with his presidential campaign at least long enough to debate former US vice president Joe Biden this weekend, and try to force him to answer questions about economic inequality and the nation’s fraying social safety net.
The Vermont senator offered no further details on what his campaign might look like before or after he and Biden — the last two major candidates left in the Democratic presidential nomination — spar on Sunday night on stage in Arizona.
That would continue to raise questions — as unlikely as it might seem less than two weeks after losing his front-runner status — about how long Sanders would persist against increasingly daunting odds.
Photo: AFP
Sanders addressed reporters after offering no public statements on Tuesday night, when he suffered a devastating primary defeat in Michigan, and losses in Missouri, Idaho and Mississippi at the hands of Biden.
He said that he won North Dakota and the continuing count in Washington state remained close, but admitted that he was trailing badly, perhaps prohibitively, in the race to secure enough delegates to secure the nomination before the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee.
“While our campaign has won the ideological debate, we are losing the debate over electability,” Sanders said, meaning Democrats think Biden has a better chance of beating US President Donald Trump in the fall. “That is what millions of Democrats and independents today believe.”
Sanders was quick to add that he believes he is the stronger Democrat candidate.
He promised to question Biden about millions of Americans who do not have health insurance, a criminal justice system he said unfairly targets and punishes minorities, and raising the federal minimum wage.
Sanders also struck his typical, defiant tone, saying he has won a greater percentage of young voters while Biden continues to be favored by older ones.
“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,” he said.
Sanders has indeed been widely favored over Biden by voters under 30, but he has not delivered on his strategy of getting them to the polls in great numbers, according to AP VoteCast surveys of voters in the Democratic primaries.
Moreover, he had shown no overwhelming strength with voters aged 30 to 44, typically a larger share of the vote than the very young, in Michigan and Missouri on Tuesday night.
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