MORE NEWS: SANDERS WON’T RUSH DECISION; WEINSTEIN MOVED TO STATE PRISON,
WASHINGTON — Bernie Sanders isn’t leaving the presidential race. Instead, the Vermont senator and democratic socialist is back in a familiar place: on the outside looking in.
After being routed in Democratic primary contests for the third consecutive week by former Vice President Joe Biden, Sanders faced the grim calculation on Wednesday that he has virtually no chance of clinching the Democratic nomination. He would need to win a whopping 63% of the remaining delegates to do so.
That left him with a series of wrenching decisions. Sanders could stay in the race and use its national platform to keep pressing for the issues he’s most passionate about, such as a single-payer health care system. He could yield to growing pressure to step aside and let the party coalesce around Biden and focus on defeating President Donald Trump.
Or he could simply stall for more time as the campaign takes an awkward pause with much of the nation’s attention on combating the coronavirus, which has caused states to push back their primaries and left the next major contests weeks away. That would also allow Sanders to try to exact additional policy concessions from Biden, who has already adopted his rival’s free-college tuition plan. He could also shape the Democratic Party platform during the convention.
For a campaign that has inspired millions to activism, the choice of what’s next ultimately falls on a small group: Sanders and his wife, Jane. And he made clear Wednesday he wouldn’t be rushed.
“Stop with this,” Sanders told reporters outside the Senate chamber when pressed on when he might suspend his campaign. “Right now I’m trying to do my best to make sure that we don’t have an economic meltdown and people don’t die.”
He said the country is “in the midst, literally -- I’m not using that word easily — of an unprecedented crisis in our lifetime, and that’s what we have to focus on right now.” But Sanders also implied that the global pandemic might have unfairly skewed Tuesday’s results, in which he was roundly defeated in Florida, Illinois and Arizona.
“You tell me what happened yesterday. Do you think those were orderly elections?” he said. “God willing, please, November, we’re not where we are right now.”
Ohio’s governor ordered polls closed mere hours before voting was supposed to begin Tuesday, and some voters and election officials reported problems in the states that proceeded with casting ballots.
Asked if the numbers would have been different under more normal circumstances, Sanders said: “Who knows? I don’t know.”
Alabama delays GOP runoff
Alabama is postponing a closely watched Republican primary runoff between former U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions and a formidable rival because of the coronavirus, the governor announced Wednesday.
The Senate runoff between Sessions and former football coach Tommy Tuberville will now be held on July 14 instead of on March 31, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey said. The winner of the GOP runoff will face Democratic Sen. Doug Jones in November. The delay also affects primary runoffs for state and local races.
Five other states also have postponed their primaries because of the coronavirus pandemic: Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland and Ohio.