One day after refusing to formally suspend his presidential campaign and urging his supporters to “defeat the establishment,” Bernie Sanders said he would vote for Hillary Clinton in the November election.
“I’m going to do everything I can to defeat Donald Trump,” Sanders said on MSNBC, before adding that plans to “fight for the strongest possible platform in the Democratic convention.”
In a speech to supporters in New York City on Thursday, the socialist senator from Vermont ignored calls to suspend his presidential campaign, and pledged to “transform the Democratic Party” by pressuring party leadership to enact changes at next month’s Democratic convention.
“You can beat the establishment,” Sanders told the crowd of supporters. “They’re not quite as powerful as some make them out to be. In every state we had to take on the entire Democratic establishment.”
Sanders reassured his voters, many whom remain skeptical of Hillary Clinton, presumptive Democratic nominee, that the movement for progressive change was “just getting started,” and would continue until victory is achieved.
“I have no doubt that a strong well-organized grassroots movement can take on the establishment and defeat the establishment and that is precisely what we’ve got to do and what the political revolution is all about,” he said.
Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein has criticized Sanders for “trying to have a revolutionary campaign in a counterrevolutionary party.” Stein has also suggested that Hillary Clinton would make a worse president than Donald Trump.