Editorial: Bernie Sanders owes it to his supporters to back Hillary Clinton

When Bernie Sanders joins Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail in New Hampshire on Tuesday, he will be doing more than bowing to the inevitable. If, as expected, the senator from Vermont offers full-throated support to Clinton, he will also be serving the interests of his supporters and making good on his promise to do his utmost to defeat presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.

The race for the Democratic nomination was effectively over a month ago after Clinton’s convincing victory in the California primary. Outpolling Sanders by more than 3 million votes nationally, Clinton ended the primary season with a lead in both pledged delegates and so-called superdelegates, the party insiders the Sanders campaign alternately condemned and coveted.

Yet Sanders’ acceptance of that reality has been painfully protracted. Defenders of his slow-motion surrender argued that he had to be careful not to rush his most devoted supporters, many of them young people involved in their first campaign, and that procrastination increased his leverage on both Clinton and the party’s platform-writing committee.

Despite all the talk of “Bernie or Bust,” however, Sanders’ supporters already have been moving to Clinton as the general-election campaign nears. According to a recent Pew Research poll, 85% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters who supported Sanders in the primary plan to vote for Clinton in November.

As for the platform, Sanders’ victories hardly seem worth the effort. It’s not clear that the concessions the Sanders campaign obtained — such as an endorsement of a $15-an-hour minimum wage and a statement opposing the death penalty — wouldn’t have been won in any event. And besides, non-binding party platforms don’t seem to matter much to voters, or to candidates once they take office.

Sanders can still take satisfaction from the fact that his unexpectedly strong campaign has moved Clinton and the party to the left. That achievement should make it easier for him to do what runners-up in presidential primaries traditionally do: back the winner and acknowledge that the fight was a fair one.

Even at this late date, a Sanders endorsement of Clinton could sway two groups of supporters. One group comprises voters who might be beguiled by Trump’s suggestion that he and Sanders are soulmates because they both opposed free-trade agreements and took on their respective parties’ establishments. Then there are the young people who might never support Trump but who disdain Clinton as a business-as-usual politician with no vision. Sanders needs to tell both that, on an array of issues, he and Clinton see eye to eye.

Late last month, as he was still edging toward an official endorsement of Clinton, Sanders insisted that “I’m going to do everything I can to defeat Donald Trump.” Better late than never, he seems to have recognized that “everything” includes ungrudging support for the candidate who defeated him in the primaries.

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