This 8 April 2020 video about the USA says about itself:
Bernie Sanders Suspends Campaign, but has Transformed American Politics Forever
Bernie Sanders has suspended his 2020 presidential campaign for President, making Joe Biden the presumptive nominee. While I am sad and disappointed, I am proud of all that Bernie and his movement has accomplished. Bernie has made Medicare for All, a $15 dollar minimum wage, and democratic socialism mainstream ideas, and though he lost, his movement isn’t going away ever again.
The suspension of Sanders’ campaign is bad news at a bad time for democracy in the USA. Yesterday, there was a primary election in Wisconsin in which voters had to choose between their voting rights and their right not to die from coronavirus. How will the rest of the presidential campaign go? Also much coronavirus emergency. Sanders would have been beaten Trump. It is very uncertain whether ‘Trump lite’ Biden will.
Trump moves one step closer to re-election after Sanders drops out of Democrat nomination race. The socialist senator said he could not ‘continue to mount a campaign that cannot win,’ but added that while his campaign is coming to an end ‘our movement is not’: here.
Jews react with sadness to Bernie Sanders dropping out of the presidential race.
Sanders lost the Democratic primary. But he won the moral argument.
PROGRESSIVE GROUPS DEMAND CHANGE FROM BIDEN Eight youth-heavy progressive groups challenged presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden to adopt a host of left-leaning policy stances in order to earn the support of the young voters who overwhelmingly supported Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). The organizations laid out their demands in an open letter to Biden shortly after Sanders withdrew from the Democratic primary on Wednesday. [HuffPost]
Dear Kitty. Some blog 
I want to express to each of you my deep gratitude for helping to create an unprecedented grassroots political campaign that has had a profound impact in changing our nation.
I want to thank the hundreds of thousands of volunteers who knocked on millions of doors in the freezing winters of Iowa and New Hampshire and in the heat of Nevada and South Carolina – and in states throughout the country.
I want to thank the 2.1 million Americans who have contributed to our campaign and showed the world that we can take on a corrupt campaign finance system and run a major presidential campaign without being dependent upon the wealthy and the powerful. Thank you for your 10 million contributions – averaging $18.50 per donation.
I want to thank those who phone banked for our campaign and those of you who came together to send out millions of texts. I want to thank the many hundreds of thousands of Americans who attended our rallies, town meetings and house parties from New York to Los Angeles. Some of these events had over 25,000 people. Some had a few hundred and some had a dozen. But all were important. Let me thank those who made these many events possible.
I want to thank our surrogates, too many to name. I can’t imagine that any candidate has ever been blessed with a stronger and more dedicated group of people who have taken our message to every corner of the country. And I want to thank all those who made music and art an integral part of our campaign.
I want to thank all of you who spoke to your friends and neighbors, posted on social media and worked as hard as you could to make this a better country.
Together, we have transformed American consciousness as to what kind of country we can become, and have taken this country a major step forward in the never-ending struggle for economic justice, social justice, racial justice and environmental justice.
I also want to thank the many hundreds of people on our campaign staff. You were willing to move from one state to another and do all the work that had to be done – no job was too big or too small for you. You rolled up your sleeves and you did it. You embodied the words that are at the core of our movement: Not me, us. And I thank each and every one of you.
WE HAVE WON THE IDEOLOGICAL BATTLE
As many of you will recall Nelson Mandela, one of the great freedom fighters in modern world history, famously said; “It always seems impossible until it is done.” And what he meant by that is that the greatest obstacle to real social change has everything to do with the power of the corporate and political establishment to limit our vision as to what is possible and what we are entitled to as human beings.
If we don’t believe that we are entitled to health care as a human right, we will never achieve universal health care.
If we don’t believe that we are entitled to decent wages and working conditions, millions of us will continue to live in poverty.
If we don’t believe that we are entitled to all of the education we require to fulfill our dreams, many of us will leave school saddled with huge debt, or never get the education we need.
If we don’t believe that we are entitled to live in a world that has a clean environment and is not ravaged by climate change, we will continue to see more drought, floods, rising sea levels and an increasingly uninhabitable planet.
If we don’t believe that we are entitled to live in a world of justice, democracy and fairness – without racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia or religious bigotry – we will continue to have massive income and wealth inequality, prejudice and hatred, mass incarceration, terrified immigrants and hundreds of thousands of Americans sleeping out on the streets of the richest country on earth.
Focusing on that new vision for America is what our campaign has been about and what, in fact, we have accomplished. Few would deny that over the course of the past 5 years our movement has won the ideological struggle. In so called “red” states, and “blue” states and “purple” states, a majority of the American people now understand that we must raise the minimum wage to at least $15 an hour; that we must guarantee health care as a right to all of our people; that we must transform our energy system away from fossil fuel, and that higher education must be available to all, regardless of income.
It was not long ago that people considered these ideas radical and fringe. Today, they are mainstream ideas – and many of them are already being implemented in cities and states across the country. That’s what you accomplished.
In terms of health care, even before the horrific pandemic we are now experiencing, more and more Americans understood that we must move to a Medicare for All, single-payer system. During the primary elections exit polls showed, in state after state, a strong majority of Democratic primary voters supported a single government health insurance program to replace private insurance. That was true even in states where our campaign did not prevail.
And let me just say this: In terms of health care, this horrific crisis that we are now in has exposed how absurd our current employer-based health insurance system is. The current economic downturn we are experiencing has not only led to a massive loss of jobs, but has also resulted in millions of Americans losing their health insurance. While Americans have been told, over and over again, how wonderful our employer-based, private insurance system is, those claims sound very hollow now as a growing number of unemployed workers struggle with how they can afford to go to the doctor, or not go bankrupt with a huge hospital bill. We have always believed that health care must be considered as a human right, not an employee benefit – and we are right.
Please also appreciate that not only are we winning the struggle ideologically, we are also winning it generationally. The future of our country rests with young people and, in state after state, whether we won or whether we lost the Democratic primaries or caucuses, we received a significant majority of the votes, sometimes an overwhelming majority, from people not only 30 or under, but 50 years of age or younger. In other words, the future of this country is with our ideas.
THE CURRENT CRISIS
As we are all painfully aware, we now face an unprecedented crisis. Not only are we dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, which has taken the lives of many thousands of our people, we are also dealing with an economic meltdown that has resulted in the loss of millions of jobs.
Today, families all across the country face financial hardship unimaginable only a few months ago. And because of the unacceptable levels of income and wealth distribution in our economy, many of our friends and neighbors have little or no savings and are desperately trying to pay their rent or their mortgage or even to put food on the table. This reality makes it clear to me that Congress must address this unprecedented crisis in an unprecedented way that protects the health and economic wellbeing of the working families of our country, not just powerful special interests. As a member of the Democratic leadership in the United States Senate, and as a senator from Vermont, this is something that I intend to be intensely involved in, and which will require an enormous amount of work.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
That takes me to the state of our presidential campaign. I wish I could give you better news, but I think you know the truth. And that is that we are now some 300 delegates behind Vice President Biden, and the path toward victory is virtually impossible. So while we are winning the ideological battle, and while we are winning the support of young people and working people throughout the country, I have concluded that this battle for the Democratic nomination will not be successful.
And so today I am announcing the suspension of active campaigning, and congratulate Joe Biden, a very decent man, on his victory.
Please know that I do not make this decision lightly. In fact, it has been a very painful decision. Over the past few weeks Jane and I, in consultation with top staff and many of our prominent supporters, have made an honest assessment of the prospects for victory. If I believed we had a feasible path to the nomination I would certainly continue the campaign. But it’s not there.
I know there may be some in our movement who disagree with this decision, who would like us to fight on to the last ballot cast at the Democratic convention. I understand that position. 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, 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.
But let me say this very emphatically: As you all know, we have never been just a campaign. We are a grassroots multi-racial, multi-generational movement which has always believed that real change never comes from the top on down, but always from the bottom on up. We have taken on Wall Street, the insurance companies, the drug companies, the fossil fuel industry, the military industrial complex, the prison industrial complex and the greed of the entire corporate elite. That struggle continues. While this campaign is coming to an end, our movement is not.
Martin Luther King, Jr. reminded us that “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” The fight for justice is what our campaign was about. The fight for justice is what our movement remains about.
And, on a practical note, let me also say this: I will stay on the ballot in all remaining states and continue to gather delegates. While Vice President Biden will be the nominee, we should still work to assemble as many delegates as possible at the Democratic convention where we will be able to exert significant influence over the party platform and other functions.
Then, together, standing united, we will go forward to defeat Donald Trump, the most dangerous president in modern American history. And we will fight to elect strong progressives at every level of government – from Congress to the school board.
As I hope all of you know, this race has never been about me. I ran for the presidency because I believed as president I could accelerate and institutionalize the progressive change that we are all building together. And, if we keep organizing and fighting, I have no doubt that our victory is inevitable. While the path may be slower now, we WILL change this country and, with like-minded friends around the globe, the entire world.
On a very personal note, speaking for Jane, myself and our entire family, we will always carry in our hearts the memory of the extraordinary people we have met across the country. We often hear about the beauty of America. And this is an incredibly beautiful country.
But to me the beauty I will remember most is in the faces of the people we have met from one corner of this country to the other. The compassion, love and decency I saw in them makes me so hopeful for our future. It also makes me more determined than ever to work to create a country that reflects those values and lifts up all our people.
Please stay in this fight with me. Let us go forward together. The struggle continues.
In solidarity,
Bernie Sanders
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Our Revolution has actively organized to transform the Democratic Party from the local to the national level for nearly four years.
We have won key victories in that time — and now that Bernie Sanders’ 2020 campaign has come to an end and he is supporting Joe Biden, we must continue pushing the political revolution forward by transforming the Democratic Party.
With Bernie staying on the ballot, Our Revolution is organizing to ensure he gets as many votes as possible in the remaining primary states.
If Sanders fails to amass at least 25% of the delegate total, then all the Democratic reforms we have fought for since 2016 — reducing the power of superdelegates and making caucuses more transparent — could be lost. It also means that the progressive priorities we are fighting for — like Medicare for All — may not make it onto the party platform.
That’s why Our Revolution is engaging our army of grassroots members and scaling up our phone bank and texting operations to mobilize progressive voters to make their voice heard in the next round of elections.
Donate here to help Our Revolution ramp up our GOTV operations in the remaining primary states so that we get enough delegates to protect our hard-won reforms and push for a progressive platform that represents the interests of people, not corporate power.
If you’ve stored your payment information with ActBlue Express, your donation will process immediately.
In addition to activating our membership, Our Revolution is also working with progressive state party chairs, like Jane Kleeb in Nebraska, to fight for party reform and progressive policies from the inside.
The continued success of our activism to transform the Democratic Party so that it represents the interests of people instead of just powerful corporations is essential in the struggle to make our democracy represent working women and men.
If you agree that we must continue reforming the Democratic Party at the grassroots level, Our Revolution needs you. Please donate now to help us transform the Democratic Party!
Corporate interests hate the fact that we are demanding the Democratic Party act as something more than just a vehicle for individual candidates seeking a political career. They do not want a party that holds candidates and elected officials accountable to our issues.
This is why our movement must continue to move forward. Our success will determine the long-term viability of critical ideas like Medicare for All, ending student debt, and getting big money out of politics.
Click here to donate now to help us continue to fight to make the Democratic Party more progressive and fair.
A more progressive Democratic Party will allow the next wave of candidates who believe in democracy a real chance to get elected at all levels, and it’s not a fight we can afford to lose.
We’re all in this together,
Larry Cohen
Board Chair
Our Revolution
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Governor Andrew Cuomo is considering a proposal to cancel the New York primary, and New York election officials are meeting next week to discuss the matter.
TAKE ACTION: Sign our petition now demanding that New York does not prevent Bernie Sanders supporters from making their voice heard by canceling the New York primary.
ADD YOUR NAME
Bernie Sanders is keeping his name on the ballot in all remaining primary states in order to accrue enough delegates to fight for critical Democratic Party reforms and ensure that the party platform is progressive enough to meet this moment of national crisis.
Neither Bernie or I want to see a repeat of the tragic crowded polling locations we saw when Republicans overruled Bernie’s desire to delay the Wisconsin primary. However, there is no public safety issue if New York holds a primary by mail.
Linda: if Governor Cuomo were to outright cancel this primary, it would set a terrible precedent that the most dangerous president in modern history, Donald Trump, could then use as an excuse to outright cancel the general election in November.
New York has just weeks to decide whether to cancel the primary. Add your name here to urge the Governor and the Board of Elections not to use this crisis as an excuse to crush democracy, suppress progressive reform, and give President Trump something he can cite to try to cancel the November election!
New York State Democratic Chair Jay Jacobs and State Senate Deputy Majority Leader Mike Gianaris are both on the record supporting the continuation of the primary because Bernie explicitly cited his desire to remain on the ballot in remaining contests. Most NY counties have their congressional primary and/or special elections the same day, eliminating any excuse to cancel.
Governor Cuomo is meeting with President Trump to ask for much-needed resources for New York state. We appreciate all of his efforts to communicate effectively with the people of New York and to get life-saving medical equipment — but we can’t allow him to ignore democracy, even during a moment of crisis.
If such a prominent Democrat is willing to cancel an election, what’s to stop Trump from using that as a precedent to try to cancel the national election in November?
Sign here to urge Governor Cuomo and New York election officials to move forward with holding a safe all mail-in ballot primary election. We can’t give Trump the ammo he needs to exploit this crisis to further erode our democracy!
ADD YOUR NAME
Thank you for protecting our democracy,
Larry Cohen
Board Chair
Our Revolution
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When New York tried to cancel their Democratic presidential primary, kick Bernie off the ballot, and prevent our movement from negotiating a more progressive Democratic platform, Our Revolution immediately fought back.
We knew it was important not to let the New York Democratic establishment get away with using COVID-19 as an excuse to purge progressive delegates — especially because a vote-by-mail primary is NOT a public health concern.
Thanks to all our organizing pressure, we have some great news to share: a federal judge just restored the New York primary!
Rush a donation now to help Our Revolution continue fighting against the corporate establishment’s attempts to crush democracy. We are doing everything in our power to ensure that Democrats adopt the most progressive platform possible and preserve critical party reforms we won in 2016 — and this proves that when we fight, we win!
Thank you for all that you do,
Our Revolution
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Taking advantage of a pandemic to undermine an election sounds like something a Republican would do — but sadly, it was the work of Governor Andrew Cuomo in New York.
That’s why Our Revolution, the New York Progressive Action Network, and other allies worked hard to ensure that Cuomo’s attempt to cancel the election failed.
Last week, we messaged you to say that we prevailed, but Cuomo appointees continued wasting resources with an appeal. Today, we are pleased to let you know that democracy prevailed: The Appellate Court ruled that the primary is on!
Andrew Cuomo’s attempt to exploit COVID-19 to block elected party delegates failed. Donate here to help Our Revolution continue to work for Democratic Party reforms and voting rights inside and outside the party.
We’re in this together,
The whole team at Our Revolution
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