The news that Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has dropped out of the race to be the Democratic nominee for president, coming the day after Wisconsin’s chaotic primary election, is a “gut punch,” says Mike McCabe, the head of Our Revolution Wisconsin, the grassroots group that grew out of Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign.
“The last couple of days have been some of the darkest I’ve ever seen in Wisconsin in my lifetime,” says McCabe.
“I cannot in good conscience continue to mount a campaign that cannot win, and which would interfere with the important work required of all of us in this difficult hour.”
McCabe says that state Republicans’ push to have in-person voting despite the pandemic shows the “only thing they cared about was a low-turnout election” and makes him even more convinced that “we need to revolutionize our politics.”
As for Sanders’s decision, he says: “I was disappointed by all the people in the Democratic Party ranks and even in our own organization who reached the conclusion that the race was over and people needed to unify behind the presumptive nominee.”
Pointing out that there are still twenty-six primaries and caucuses that have not yet been held, he adds, “It’s so sad that half the country never gets to weigh in and express their preference and the race is decided and over. That’s no way to nominate a candidate for president. What people think in half the country doesn’t matter.”
In his online speech to supporters, Sanders explained that “we are now some 300 delegates behind Vice President Biden, and the path toward victory is virtually impossible.”
Sanders acknowledged “some in our movement who disagree with this decision, who would like to see us fight on to the last ballot cast at the Democratic Convention.”
“But as I see the crisis gripping the nation, exacerbated by a president unwilling or unable to provide any kind of credible leadership, and the work that needs to be done to protect people in this most desperate hour,” he said, “I cannot in good conscience continue to mount a campaign that cannot win, and which would interfere with the important work required of all of us in this difficult hour.”
Sanders reminded his supporters that he remains on the ballot in states that have not voted yet, and that he will continue to gather delegates so that he has leverage to influence the policy positions in the Democratic Party platform and the Biden campaign.
McCabe says he and other progressives “are going to have to take some time to absorb the gut punch,” of the end of the campaign. But, he adds, “the kind of change America needs cannot be accomplished by one individual. And it can’t be accomplished in one election. It took years to get in the mess we’re in, and it’s gonna take time to get out of that mess.”
Pointing to the country’s woefully inadequate health care system, failure to adapt to climate change, and growing economic injustice and political disenfranchisement, McCabe says: “The kind of politics we need to face these mammoth problems does not currently exist. We have to create those politics. . . . Citizens need to step forward and fill the vacuum.”
This article first appeared in the Wisconsin Examiner.