Bernie Sanders reminds us what’s at stake this election

Bernie Sanders reluctantly refused to drop out of the race, he half-heartedly gave Hillary Clinton his endorsement, and has now given his belated first post-convention campaign pitch for Clinton in New Hampshire.

He gave his usual spiel, discussing how Clinton will help create an economy that “works for all of us”, do more to fight against climate change, and will fight to turn over Citizens United.

Although his support for Clinton may be lukewarm, his disliking, even hatred, of Trump could not be more zealous, saying Trump is a “pathological liar”, has “no core sense of values”, and has a campaign built upon bigotry.

But is his campaign pitch for Clinton really that important? It’s debatable.

Besides the fact his passion for Clinton appears almost forced, there is probably not much Sanders can do to turn Bernie or Busters to Clinton at this point anyways. But he does not need to. Roughly 90 percent of his supporters have vowed to vote for Clinton, and she is safely polling ahead of Trump in several key states and nationally anyways. Even a sizeable amount of Republicans are supporting Clinton, including Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO, Meg Whitman, Representative Richard Hanna, and senior advisor to Jeb Bush, Sally Bradshaw. All he needs to do is reassert that Trump would be a tragic mistake, which he did quite convincingly.

As a former Sanders supporter, and short-lived Bernie-or-Buster, seeing him campaign for her reminds me of the awful primary and the scandals it entailed, reigniting bitterness. However on the flip side, his pitch for Clinton is a persuasive reminder for not only what is at stake in this election, but also a reassurance to make a decision not out of bitterness but based on the reality of the state of our nation. Like Sanders, I realize there are only two realistic options (as much as I wish a third-party candidate stood a chance) and that the choice is not even close.

Sanders’s call to action to pull support behind Clinton is ultimately a good thing. It may not turn Bernie-or-Busters into Clinton supporters, and it surely will not convince many Clinton is even close to ideal, but his pitch is constructive for the re-building of the divided Democratic Party as well as strengthening the support she already has to defeat Trump. As the campaign slogan goes, we are “stronger together”, and that’s exactly the sentiment that he reinforced.