But the Vermont senator meets on Thursday with Barack Obama – perhaps a sign that the United States president will play a role in uniting a deeply divided Democratic party to battle the 69-year-old real estate mogul.
Advertisement
It is also fair to say Sanders elevated those issues and, in a few instances such as trade and the minimum wage, pushed Clinton – and even President Barack Obama – toward his view on them.
Sanders, the runner-up for the Democratic nomination, was heading Thursday to the White House under intense pressure to drop out and clear the way for Clinton.
Sanders will also meet later Thursday with Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, and holds a rally in Washington on Thursday evening, in advance of the Washington, D.C., Democratic primary next Tuesday. Sometime after the meeting, Obama is expected to endorse Clinton.
An ongoing feud with Mr Trump gained steam on social media with a series of posts in which she labelled the celebrity businessman racist, sexist and xenophobic and said she was going to fight to make sure his “toxic stew of hatred and insecurity never reaches the White House”.
Clinton is now counting on the president to help bring those voters on board.
Elizabeth Warren will throw her support behind Hillary Clinton on Thursday.
Martinez has declined to say whether she voted for Trump in New Mexico’s presidential primary on Tuesday.
Some top Democrats, including Senator Dick Durbin of IL, have said Warren is among the people Clinton should consider as a possible running mate. Her late and somewhat sputtering victory set off a fresh round of private phone calls and back-channel negotiations, all aimed at sussing out Sanders’ demands, easing him out of the race without angering his die-hard supporters and putting the full-court press on Trump.
“I don’t know if this is just, you know, political gamesmanship that he thinks plays to the lowest common denominator, but whatever the reason for it is, it’s wrong and it should not be tolerated by anybody”, she said. Obama’s aides have said he’s itching to get off the sidelines and take on Trump, but the key question was whether voters who helped elected him twice would follow his lead now that he’s not on the ballot.
The party’s delicate handling of the Vermont senator reflected Sanders supporters’ deep distrust of the Democratic establishment and its meddling in the primary.
“Donald Trump chose racism as his weapon, but his aim is exactly the same as the rest of the Republicans”, Warren said in prepared remarks released ahead of the speech in Washington. But, Sanders’ only supporter in the senate is singing a different tune. Their record of self-serving hypocrisy extends back to the launching of Bill Clinton’s political career in Arkansas, where he combined empty rhetoric with the closest ties to corporate titans like Walmart and the Perdue chicken empire.
Advertisement
“Why would I feel compelled to support someone who’s positions I kind of fundamentally disagree with?” But she is running in the most unfamiliar of election years.
