‘We are winning progressives & young people’: Sanders NOT dropping out, eager to debate Biden even after disappointing primaries

The defiant Senator Bernie Sanders is staying in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, saying that his campaign is winning on issues and among younger voters even if it’s losing to Joe Biden on delegate count.

“Last night, obviously, was not a good night for our campaign, from a delegate point of view,” Sanders told reporters in Burlington, Vermont on Wednesday. He acknowledged that Biden came ahead in Mississippi, Missouri, Idaho and Michigan, but pointed out that North Dakota went to him and that he was leading the count in Washington state.

Sanders insisted that his campaign was nonetheless winning on issues and among the younger voters – the 20s, 30s and 40s cohorts – while the older Democrats backed Biden.

“We are winning the generational debate,” he said, urging the party to “win the voters who represent the future of our country.”

As for the issues, Sanders argued that poll after poll showed the American people backed his progressive agenda of free education, higher taxes for the wealthy, higher minimum wages, Medicare for All, green energy to combat climate change, and reforming the “broken and racist criminal justice system” and a “cruel” immigration system denying citizenship to millions of “undocumented” people.

“I very much look forward to the debate in Arizona with my friend Joe Biden,” he said, adding that he intends to press Biden on his proposed solutions to these issues, in order to resolve the electability argument once and for all.

President Donald Trump is a “racist, sexist, homophobe, xenophobe and a religious bigot and he must be defeated,” Sanders said, vowing he will do everything in his power to make that happen.

Biden, 77, spent 36 years in the Senate and served as Barack Obama’s vice-president 2009-2017. After an initial disappointing showing, he came back to win large numbers of delegates in Super Tuesday primaries, backed by the party establishment that swiftly fell in line behind him. He now has 857 pledged delegates, while Sanders is trailing with 709. Neither has the 1,991 needed to lock down the nomination at this time.

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