By Max McAuliff, Opinion Editor
On Tuesday, April 8th, Bernie Sanders officially suspended his campaign for the 2020 Democratic nomination. Coming off of strong performances in Iowa and New Hampshire it looked like Bernie Sanders was in serious contention to win the nomination. Joe Biden, however, began to pick up steam in South Carolina and made a big leap in front of Sanders on Super Tuesday.
In a Democratic Primary that has had 27 candidates enter and drop out of the race, Sanders was one of the few that had serious potential to win. Several debates involved ten candidates and the debate qualifications had to be raised to try and limit the number of people on stage. Sanders was one of the consistent faces on stage and his mannerisms during debates were one of the highlights. Sanders even overcame a heart attack in October of last year in what many thought would surely end his campaign. Through all the challenges of the Democratic Primary, Sanders kept fighting for the people and what he thought was right.
While Sanders had to make the tough decision to suspend his campaign, it was the right one. Sanders sits roughly 300 delegates behind Biden and with a lot of states suspending their primaries due to the Coronavirus, a path of victory was not feasible for Sanders.
Sanders knows that the Democratic Party needs to be united in order to defeat Donald Trump come November, and he has taken the first step in this direction. Sanders now needs to take the next step in uniting the Democratic Party and endorse Joe Biden. One of the mistakes that Sanders made in the 2016 Democratic Primary was waiting until July to endorse Hillary Clinton, only two weeks before the Democratic National Convention.
Sander’s policies appealed to a lot of younger voters but the problem is that they don’t vote nearly as much as older voters do. This has always been a trend because young people don’t believe that politics affect them nearly as much as older voters do and therefore, they don’t vote.
The goal that Sanders now needs to accomplish is convincing his supporters to stand behind Joe Biden. All of the Democratic nominees preached during the campaign that the number one objective was defeating Donald Trump. The path is now clear as to how that can be accomplished, and it will involve Sanders and all of his supporters backing Joe Biden. Biden needs to do something to gain the support of Sanders supporters and he can do that in the form of adopting some of his policies.
Sanders put up a valiant fight throughout his entire campaign, and he realized that 2020 was not his year. No matter how hard it was, Sanders undoubtedly did the right thing. Now the stage is set for a showdown between Biden and Trump. A showdown that will undoubtedly entertain, and hopefully return some normalcy to American lives.
mcaulimr18@bonaventure.edu
