Bernie Sanders setting terms for closing out democratic race

With the last primary done, Bernie Sanders is negotiating an end to his fight with Hillary Clinton and staking a claim on directing the future of the Democratic Party.

After polls closed for the Democratic contest in Washington, DC, Sanders had a private meeting with Clinton that lasted almost two hours. He left without making any remarks and headed back to Vermont. The two campaigns released similar statements saying they talked about their common goals and about the “dangerous threat that Donald Trump poses to our nation.”

At a news conference hours earlier, Sanders made no move to concede the race and a spokesman said he had no plans to do so before the Democratic convention. Instead he set out terms for an eventual concession and for rallying his most fervent supporters behind the presumptive nominee. But the Vermont senator’s insistence on remaining a candidate through the July convention no longer seems to threaten party unity as Democrats once fretted it would.

In public and private remarks and in an email to supporters, Sanders indicated he’s staying in to shape the party’s governing agenda and nominating process, not erode Clinton’s standing, and that he’s committed to defeating Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, in November.

Clinton already has fully engaged in the general election campaign against Trump, which has been re-framed by the mass shooting at an Orlando gay club on Sunday by an American man claiming allegiance to Islamic State.

WASHINGTON WIN
There was little at stake in the District of Columbia’s primary, which Clinton won by a comfortable margin.

With all precincts reporting, Clinton had 78% of the district’s vote to Sanders’s 21%, according to the city’s board of elections. Rather than campaigning, Sanders spent the day checking in with the one constituency that will have the greatest influence on his standing now that the race is over — his peers in the Democratic Party.

In the six weeks remaining until the Democratic convention, Sanders said he intends to keep promoting the tenets of his platform.