Sen. Bernie Sanders may be out of the race for president, but he still wants to continue to influence the discussion.
The fiery Sanders made that clear to Joe Biden when he endorsed the former vice president in a livestreamed event on Monday.
During the event, Sanders said his staff has been working with Biden’s team over the past several weeks developing six task forces to look at “some of the most important issues facing the country” — including the economy, education, climate change, immigration, health care and criminal justice reform.
It won’t necessarily be easy.
“It’s no great secret out there, Joe, that you and I have our differences,” Sanders said. “We’re not going to paper them over, that’s real, but I hope that these task forces will come together, utilizing the best minds and people in your campaign and in my campaign to work out real solutions.”
Not only does Sanders want to work directly with the Biden campaign, he is seeking to push a progressive agenda at the Democratic convention. When he suspended his campaign last week, Sanders said he would continue to be on the ballot in the remaining states, in hopes to continue gathering delegates and enter the Democratic National Convention in a position of power.
“While Vice President Biden will be the nominee, we must continue working to assemble as many delegates as possible at the Democratic Convention where we will be able to exert significant influence over the party platform,” Sanders said last week.
Sanders and Biden have most notably sparred over health care, with the Vermont senator advocating for Medicare for All while the former vice president has argued Democrats should simply add a public option to the Affordable Care Act.
Biden, who in recent weeks has repeatedly thanked and praised Sanders, said he and Sanders “share the same goals” but have had different ideas about how to address the problems in the U.S.
“On some issues we are going to continue to disagree, respectfully, but not in any substantive way,” Biden said. “I believe there is a great opportunity to work together to deploy policy approaches that can take us closer to our shared goals.”
Last month, Biden had already announced he now supports making public colleges and universities tuition-free for students whose parents make less than $125,000 per year — adopting a proposal similar to Sanders’ free university and college debt forgiveness plan.
Sanders’ strategy to continue to push the Democratic Party to the left, through negotiations with Biden and by winning more delegates, is in line with much of the rhetoric coming out of the senator’s camp and from his top surrogates in the run-up to his decision to bow out of the race.
Since early March, as it became clear Sanders would not win the nomination, the Vermont independent, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and others began to say that he was winning the “generational” and “ideological” debate.
“There’s a generational divide within the Democratic Party on health care, on climate change, on foreign policy, pretty much every policy imaginable,” Ocasio-Cortez said during a social media discussion in March, as she called on young people to exercise more influence on the party.
“The younger generations of this country continue in very strong numbers to support our campaign. Today I say to the Democratic establishment, in order to win in the future, you need to win the voters who represent the future of our country and you must speak to the issues of concern to them,” Sanders said after the March 10 primary contests.
The senator currently has 914 pledged delegates while Biden has 1,217, but with 1,719 more up for grabs in 21 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands there is time for Sanders to continue to add to his total, giving him more influence at this summer’s convention.
At the Democratic National Convention, the party establishes committees of 162 members to decide its policy platform, the rules for the next convention and the upcoming election in 2024.
Each committee’s membership is allocated proportionally by how many national delegates a candidate received during the primary, meaning the more pledged delegates Sanders receives the more power he can exert on these committees.
“With all the options on the table, I think it was the right decision to end his campaign but not withdraw completely,” said Patricia Siplon, a professor of political science at Saint Michael’s College.
“I think that the biggest message the mainstream Democrat needs to hear is that its future relies on the people Bernie activated,” she added. “They didn’t have the numbers to pull off the nomination, but they are the future of the party.”
In 2016 in his failed bid against Hillary Clinton, Sanders and his allies went into the Democratic National Convention in a position of power — going so far as to threaten a contested nomination process — and used his influence to shape the party’s agenda.
During that convention, Sanders transformed the party platform — making universal health care, a $15 minimum wage, legalizing marijuana and enforcing stricter environmental regulations the bedrock of Democratic Party policy for the next four years.
“I think if you read the platform right now, you will understand that the political revolution is alive and kicking,” Warren Gunnels, a longtime Sanders policy adviser, told NBC in July 2016, adding the campaign received “at least 80%” of what it wanted.
Matthew Dickinson, professor of political science at Middlebury College, said Sanders’ decision to continue to push the Democratic Party in 2020 is not a surprising move from someone who, except for his two presidential runs, has been a third party candidate.
“He has always put the message above the Democratic Party,” Dickinson said. “And he has never been a member of the Democratic Party all the times he’s run for office in Vermont.”
Dickinson added that it is better for Biden and the Democrats to have Sanders enthusiastically endorsing them because of the passion and excitement he has been able to generate among his core base of support.
“You want Bernie working for you,” he said.