Sen. Bernie Sanders faced a lot of pressure to end his campaign when one primary loss after another stacked up in March, but he refused. Now, he’s turned up on “Late Night with Seth Meyers” to explain why he's staying in the race.
“We’re about 300 delegates behind—Biden has 1,200 and we have 900,” Sanders told host Seth Meyers. “There is a path. It is admittedly a narrow path.
“But I would tell you, Seth, that there are a lot of people who are supporting me,” he continued. “We have a strong grassroots movement who believe that we have got to stay in, in order to continue the fight, to make the world know that we need ‘Medicare for All,’ that we need to raise the minimum wage to a living wage, that we need paid family and medical leave. One of the crises that we’re dealing with right now that we must address, climate change and education, all the issues that we have been talking about.
Sanders went on to say he’s staying in the race because having a campaign is one of the best ways to raise public awareness about the issues he’s championed, which is why he said he’s interested in having at least one more debate with Biden.
“What a good debate is about is giving the candidates the time they need to go after each other [and] discuss their differences in an amount of time that allows for serious discussion. That has not taken place up to now. The last debate I think gave us a little bit more time. I would loosen up the structure of it a little bit to allow for more interchange,” he said.
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Biden, for his part, isn’t interested in having any more debates, saying last week he believes “we should get on with this.”
When asked on Tuesday to respond to the senator’s remarks about staying in the race, Biden said it’s Sanders’s decision to make but that he feels “confident about being the nominee. I don’t see much that’s going to make it, be able to change that.”
Biden says his campaign has been in close contact with Sanders’s people.
“I have respect for them. And I think there ought to be a way we could accommodate his concerns on other matters in terms of everything from people being engaged, to his organization,” Biden said. “I think there’s a lot of things that can be done, but that’s a decision for Bernie to make.”
Sanders said Monday if he is not the nominee, he will do “everything I can to see that Joe Biden is elected president.”
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