Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders neither announced the end of his campaign nor endorsed his rival Hillary Clinton during a live-stream address on Thursday night, but told supporters his call for political revolution will live beyond his campaign and this election.
“When we talk about transforming America, it is not just about transforming elections,” he said during the approximately 20-minute speech.
Though he said it was “no secret” he has “strong disagreements on some very important issues” with Clinton, Sanders said he looks forward to working with the presumptive Democratic nominee in the future. He also re-iterated his commitment to making sure that Donald Trump is soundly defeated in November.
“The major political task that we face in the next five months is to make certain that Donald Trump is defeated and defeated badly,” Sanders said. “And I personally intend to begin my role in that process in a very short period of time.”
However, he added, the defeat of Donald Trump cannot be the “only goal” for voters this year and he vowed to fight vigorously on behalf of his supporters for the progressive ideals that drew so much passion and energy across the country over the past year.
“We must continue our grass-roots efforts to create the America that we know we can become” he said. “And we must take that energy into the Democratic National Convention on July 25 in Philadelphia where we will have more than 1,900 delegates.”
Sanders said he hopes people who believe in the core tenets of his campaign—including raising the minimum wage, securing a Medicare For All program, fighting runaway climate change and economic inequality, bringing a halt to endless wars, and battling for racial justice and social equity—will pick up the mantle of his campaign by sustaining populist pressure on lawmakers and institutions or by running for local, state, and national office themselves.
“We have begun the long and arduous process of transforming America – a fight that will continue tomorrow, next week, next year, and into the future,” Sanders said. “My hope is that when future historians look back and described how our country moved forward—into reversing the drift towards oligarchy and how we moved forward in creating a government which represents all of the people not just a few—that they will note that to a significant degree, that that effort began with the political revolution of 2016.”
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