I want to express to each of you my deep
gratitude for helping to create an unprecedented grassroots political campaign
that has had a profound impact in changing our nation.
I want to thank the hundreds of thousands of
volunteers who knocked on millions of doors in the freezing winters of Iowa and
New Hampshire and in the heat of Nevada and South Carolina – and in states
throughout the country.
I want to thank the 2.1 million Americans who
have contributed to our campaign and showed the world that we can take on a
corrupt campaign finance system and run a major presidential campaign without
being dependent upon the wealthy and the powerful. Thank you for your 10
million contributions – averaging $18.50 per donation.
I want to thank those who phone banked for
our campaign and those of you who came together to send out millions of texts.
I want to thank the many hundreds of thousands of Americans who attended our
rallies, town meetings and house parties from New York to Los Angeles. Some of
these events had over 25,000 people. Some had a few hundred and some had a
dozen. But all were important. Let me thank those who made these many events
possible.
I want to thank our surrogates, too many to
name. I can't imagine that any candidate has ever been blessed with a stronger
and more dedicated group of people who have taken our message to every corner
of the country. And I want to thank all those who made music and art an integral
part of our campaign.
I want to thank all of you who spoke to your
friends and neighbors, posted on social media and worked as hard as you could
to make this a better country.
Together, we have transformed American
consciousness as to what kind of country we can become, and have taken this
country a major step forward in the never-ending struggle for economic justice,
social justice, racial justice and environmental justice.
I also want to thank the many hundreds of
people on our campaign staff. You were willing to move from one state to
another and do all the work that had to be done – no job was too big or too
small for you. You rolled up your sleeves and you did it. You embodied the
words that are at the core of our movement: Not me, us. And I thank each and
every one of you.
WE HAVE WON THE IDEOLOGICAL BATTLE
As many of you will recall Nelson Mandela,
one of the great freedom fighters in modern world history, famously said;
"It always seems impossible until it is done." And what he meant by
that is that the greatest obstacle to real social change has everything to do
with the power of the corporate and political establishment to limit our vision
as to what is possible and what we are entitled to as human beings.
If we don't believe that we are entitled to
health care as a human right, we will never achieve universal health care.
If we don't believe that we are entitled to
decent wages and working conditions, millions of us will continue to live in
poverty.
If we don't believe that we are entitled to
all of the education we require to fulfill our dreams, many of us will leave
school saddled with huge debt, or never get the education we need.
If we don't believe that we are entitled to
live in a world that has a clean environment and is not ravaged by climate
change, we will continue to see more drought, floods, rising sea levels and an
increasingly uninhabitable planet.
If we don't believe that we are entitled to
live in a world of justice, democracy and fairness – without racism, sexism,
homophobia, xenophobia or religious bigotry – we will continue to have massive
income and wealth inequality, prejudice and hatred, mass incarceration,
terrified immigrants and hundreds of thousands of Americans sleeping out on the
streets of the richest country on earth.
Focusing on that new vision for America is
what our campaign has been about and what, in fact, we have accomplished. Few
would deny that over the course of the past 5 years our movement has won the
ideological struggle. In so called "red" states, and "blue"
states and "purple" states, a majority of the American people now
understand that we must raise the minimum wage to at least $15 an hour; that we
must guarantee health care as a right to all of our people; that we must
transform our energy system away from fossil fuel, and that higher education
must be available to all, regardless of income.
It was not long ago that people considered
these ideas radical and fringe. Today, they are mainstream ideas – and many of
them are already being implemented in cities and states across the country.
That's what you accomplished.
In terms of health care, even before the
horrific pandemic we are now experiencing, more and more Americans understood
that we must move to a Medicare for All, single-payer system. During the
primary elections exit polls showed, in state after state, a strong majority of
Democratic primary voters supported a single government health insurance
program to replace private insurance. That was true even in states where our
campaign did not prevail.
And let me just say this: In terms of health
care, this horrific crisis that we are now in has exposed how absurd our
current employer-based health insurance system is. The current economic
downturn we are experiencing has not only led to a massive loss of jobs, but
has also resulted in millions of Americans losing their health insurance. While
Americans have been told, over and over again, how wonderful our employer-based,
private insurance system is, those claims sound very hollow now as a growing
number of unemployed workers struggle with how they can afford to go to the
doctor, or not go bankrupt with a huge hospital bill. We have always believed
that health care must be considered as a human right, not an employee benefit –
and we are right.
Please also appreciate that not only are we
winning the struggle ideologically, we are also winning it generationally. The
future of our country rests with young people and, in state after state,
whether we won or whether we lost the Democratic primaries or caucuses, we
received a significant majority of the votes, sometimes an overwhelming
majority, from people not only 30 or under, but 50 years of age or younger. In
other words, the future of this country is with our ideas.
THE CURRENT CRISIS
As we are all painfully aware, we now face an
unprecedented crisis. Not only are we dealing with the coronavirus pandemic,
which has taken the lives of many thousands of our people, we are also dealing
with an economic meltdown that has resulted in the loss of millions of jobs.
Today, families all across the country face
financial hardship unimaginable only a few months ago. And because of the
unacceptable levels of income and wealth distribution in our economy, many of
our friends and neighbors have little or no savings and are desperately trying
to pay their rent or their mortgage or even to put food on the table. This
reality makes it clear to me that Congress must address this unprecedented
crisis in an unprecedented way that protects the health and economic wellbeing
of the working families of our country, not just powerful special interests. As
a member of the Democratic leadership in the United States Senate, and as a
senator from Vermont, this is something that I intend to be intensely involved
in, and which will require an enormous amount of work.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
That takes me to the state of our
presidential campaign. I wish I could give you better news, but I think you
know the truth. And that is that we are now some 300 delegates behind Vice
President Biden, and the path toward victory is virtually impossible. So while
we are winning the ideological battle, and while we are winning the support of
young people and working people throughout the country, I have concluded that
this battle for the Democratic nomination will not be successful.
And so today I am announcing the suspension
of active campaigning, and congratulate Joe Biden, a very decent man, on his
victory.
Please know that I do not make this decision
lightly. In fact, it has been a very painful decision. Over the past few weeks
Jane and I, in consultation with top staff and many of our prominent
supporters, have made an honest assessment of the prospects for victory. If I
believed we had a feasible path to the nomination I would certainly continue
the campaign. But it's not there.
I know there may be some in our movement who
disagree with this decision, who would like us to fight on to the last ballot
cast at the Democratic convention. I understand that position. But as I see the
crisis gripping the nation – exacerbated by a president unwilling or unable to
provide any kind of credible leadership – and the work that needs to be done to
protect people in this most desperate hour, I cannot in good conscience
continue to mount a campaign that cannot win and which would interfere with the
important work required of all of us in this difficult hour.
But let me say this very emphatically: As you
all know, we have never been just a campaign. We are a grassroots multi-racial,
multi-generational movement which has always believed that real change never
comes from the top on down, but always from the bottom on up. We have taken on
Wall Street, the insurance companies, the drug companies, the fossil fuel
industry, the military industrial complex, the prison industrial complex and
the greed of the entire corporate elite. That struggle continues. While this
campaign is coming to an end, our movement is not.
Martin Luther King, Jr. reminded us that
"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
The fight for justice is what our campaign was about. The fight for justice is
what our movement remains about.
And, on a practical note, let me also say
this: I will stay on the ballot in all remaining states and continue to gather
delegates. While Vice President Biden will be the nominee, we should still work
to assemble as many delegates as possible at the Democratic convention where we
will be able to exert significant influence over the party platform and other
functions.
Then, together, standing united, we will go
forward to defeat Donald Trump, the most dangerous president in modern American
history. And we will fight to elect strong progressives at every level of
government – from Congress to the school board.
As I hope all of you know, this race has
never been about me. I ran for the presidency because I believed as president I
could accelerate and institutionalize the progressive change that we are all
building together. And, if we keep organizing and fighting, I have no doubt
that our victory is inevitable. While the path may be slower now, we WILL
change this country and, with like-minded friends around the globe, the entire
world.
On a very personal note, speaking for Jane,
myself and our entire family, we will always carry in our hearts the memory of
the extraordinary people we have met across the country. We often hear about
the beauty of America. And this is an incredibly beautiful country.
But to me the beauty I will remember most is
in the faces of the people we have met from one corner of this country to the
other. The compassion, love and decency I saw in them makes me so hopeful for
our future. It also makes me more determined than ever to work to create a
country that reflects those values and lifts up all our people.
Please stay in this fight with me. Let us go
forward together. The struggle continues.
In solidarity,
Bernie Sanders
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