Sanders: We are in this until last ballot is cast

Bernie Sanders promised to carry his campaign through the last voting contests and blasted the Democratic nomination process at a Friday rally.

{mosads}“Let me tell you also, so there is no mistake about it, we are in this fight until the last ballot is cast,” Sanders said at a rally in Albuquerque, N.M., on Friday. “We acknowledge that it is an uphill fight, but it has been an uphill fight from the first day we were in this campaign.” 

Sanders railed against the Democratic Party’s nominating process, especially the influential role of superdelegates that overwhelmingly support his rival Hillary Clinton. 

Clinton has 525 superdelegates who have said they will support her, while Sanders only has 39, according to the AP delegate tracker.

“That is what the anointment process is about,” Sanders said of the superdelegate system. “It is a bad idea not only because it is undemocratic, but because it leads to a dangerous situation for the Democratic Party in this sense: One would think that the Democratic leadership would want the strongest candidate possible to defeat Donald Trump. 

“Now we all agree that Donald Trump would be a disaster for this country and must be defeated, and I would hope we would all agree that we want the strongest Democratic candidate to go forward and to beat him.” 

Sanders cited general-election polls that show him performing better against Trump than Clinton despite her lead in the primary race. 

Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver said Thursday that the campaign wouldn’t call it quits after the last primary contest in mid-June, saying they would hold out until superdelegates cast their votes at the convention.