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Vermont Senator, Bernie Sanders, on Wednesday ended his presidential campaign, clearing Joe Biden’s path to the Democratic nomination and a showdown with President Donald Trump in November.
According to media reports in the United States, Sanders campaign said he made the announcement in a call with his campaign staff.
Sanders’ exit caps a stunning reversal in fortune, following a strong performance in the first three states that voted in February. The nomination appeared to be within his grasp until Biden surged to a blowout victory in South Carolina that set off a consolidation of moderate voters around the former vice president.
The contest comes to an end as the country continues to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic, which halted in-person campaigning for both Sanders and Biden and has led many states to delay their primary elections.
Sanders’ departure from the race is a sharp blow to progressives, who rose up during and after the 2016 campaign and commanded the Democratic Party’s debates over issues like health care, climate change and the effects of growing economic inequality.But even as his policies grew more popular over the years and into the primary season, Sanders struggled to broaden his own support and galvanize a winning coalition. Now, as he did after leaving the 2016 primary, Sanders will seek to influence the presumptive nominee through the means he knows best, from the outside.
Biden has already made gestures toward Sanders’ populist base, which formed a movement over the past five years that could be critical to defeating Trump in November.
The Sanders campaign held its final live public event on March 9, transitioning from packed, raucous rallies to an entirely digital operation. He communicated almost exclusively through virtual town halls and livestreams focused on the coronavirus crisis and how his progressive agenda, headlined by “Medicare for All,” might have prevented it or helped cushion the blow.
In February, Sanders appeared poised to run away with the nomination after a strong showing in Iowa and victories in New Hampshire and Nevada, the latter by more than 25 percentage points, on the strength of his popularity with Latino voters, which had been courted relentlessly by his campaign.
But Sanders’ momentum was stopped in South Carolina after Biden routed the field . The anti-Sanders vote rallied around him a put Biden in the driver’s seat on Super Tuesday.The wind at his back, the former vice president duplicated the feat a week later, delivering the hammer blow in Michigan, a state Sanders won in 2016 and viewed as crucial to his prospects in 2020.
According to his campaign, Sanders would return to Vermont, where he has spent most of his time since the coronavirus outbreak, while Biden will set up headquarters at his home in Delaware.