Sanders may not have acknowledged Hillary Clinton’s historic victory yet, but he knows the writing’s on the wall. Slowly but surely, he’s transitioning from “Guy Running for President” to “Guy Leading a Movement.” Sanders has vowed to compete in Washington, D.C.’s primary, but he’s increasingly using his time to signal to his supporters and to the Democratic leadership that he’ll exit the race.
Speaking at a rally in D.C. on Thursday, Sanders didn’t mention Clinton or the convention. Instead he told the crowd that, to have an impact, they need to stick together: “We need real change in this country,” he said. “And what people also understand is that no president, not Bernie Sanders, not anybody else, can do it alone.”
Sanders’s staffers, too, seem eager to work with Clinton. “We’ll all be helping the Hillary team in the general election in one capacity or another,” the CEO of HaystaqDNA, a predictive analysis company that works closely with Sanders, told Politico. “Getting a bunch of kids stoked on the process is very important to ensure a Trump presidency is not possible,” said Sanders videographer Arun Chadhaury. The Clinton camp had made its first hire from Sanders’s team: Kunoor Ojha, who led its student organizing team.
The portion of the race where Bernie Sanders was running for president is over. For all of the stories being kicked around about Sanders’s bitterness and vanity, he’s doing exactly what he should be doing right now: transitioning out of the race in a way that should help him bring his supporters into the fold by November.