On Tuesday, March 17, three states turned in primary results that overwhelmingly awarded delegates to moderate former Vice President Joe Biden. As a result, progressive senator Bernie Sanders has questions about his campaign. He is far behind where he needs to be in order to secure the Democratic Party’s nomination for president.
As a result, according to Sanders’ campaign manager Faiz Shakir, the Vermont Senator will be having conversations with supporters in order to assess his campaign.
Biden now has 1,173 pledged delegates to Sanders’ 881. This puts the progressive candidate 292 delegates behind the moderate frontrunner.
The next primary contests will be in roughly three weeks.
Shakir says Sanders is all about the COVID-19 pandemic. He wants to help the government solve the issue.
“Sen. Sanders is going to be having conversations with supporters to assess his campaign,” he noted, before adding, “In the immediate term, however, he is focused on the government response to the coronavirus outbreak and ensuring we will take care of the working people and the most vulnerable.”
For the time being, it seems Sanders’ critics are calling on him to drop out of the race. This is to stop polling from bringing crowds together. This bizarre criticism has come from numerous sources, including former candidate Andrew Yang. Yang dropped out of the race early after failing to draw many voters in the primary.
“At this point it’s not wise to encourage people to head to the polls,” Yang told reporters early on Wednesday. “This race is essentially frozen where it is. Everyone can see where it’s heading and I certainly don’t think Bernie and his supporters want to endanger anyone, but that’s the situation we’re in,” Yang continued.
This argument is strange, many of Sanders’ supporters have noted. It seems to suggest that democracy and voting are less important during a crisis. And that they’re impossible to achieve without physical polling places being open.
To address these concerns, numerous states have pushed their primaries back. This renders critiques like Yang’s moot.
Other critics, like moderate Pete Buttigieg’s press secretary Chris Meagher, have called on Sanders to drop in order to “unify the party.”
“There was a lot of grumbling in 2016 that he stayed in the race too long, so that’s something he’s going to have to think about,” referencing the particularly brutal primary between Hillary Clinton and Sanders.
