Monday's announcement that Hillary Clinton had won enough delegates to become the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee was unwelcome news for Bernie Sanders. Though the persistent Vermont Senator has promised to keep fighting, Sanders' recent tweets about Donald Trump signal that he may be having a slight change of heart. It's possible that the #StopTrump effort superseded what has become an idealistic resolve to swipe Clinton's pending nomination.
Clinton's presumptive nomination relied on a handful of superdelegates that pushed her count over the 2,383 threshold at the last minute. The role of unpledged delegates in this scenario stoked a long-standing fire within Sanders and his supporters. And because the announcement was made less than 24 hours before the last round of primaries took place, Sanders's campaign communications director, Michael Briggs, denounced the nominee selection process as unfair:
It is unfortunate that the media, in a rush to judgment, are ignoring the Democratic National Committee’s clear statement that it is wrong to count the votes of superdelegates before they actually vote at the convention this summer.
Though a "rush to judgment" is a fair characterization, Clinton went on to win Tuesday's primaries by large margins. In California, she headed the vote by 13 points, and came out on top by over 26 points in New Jersey. When the primary round was said and done, the candidate's final pledged delegate count was 2,203. Still, Sanders didn't admit defeat, though he did congratulate his opponent on her victories. As the scale tipped toward Clinton in California, the Vermont senator spoke to a Santa Monica crowd late Tuesday night. "Thank you all," he said, "The struggle continues."
A day later, Sanders took to Twitter to remind his supporters how influential their "fringe" movement had become, as well as how important young people will be in the general election. On Wednesday evening, however, the candidate turned his attention towards Republican presumptive nominee, and found common ground with Clinton. At first, the independent-turned-begrudgingly Democrat spoke out against the Republican party as a whole.
Two hours later, he decried Trump's "bigotry" in what appeared to be an attempt to mobilize Democrats against what they would characterize as the greatest political evil.
Another two hours after that statement was published, he made his followers second-guess whether he was really going to support Clinton just yet.
Since Clinton was presumed the nominee, she has tried to bring Sanders to her side of the arena. On Monday, Politico reported, she stressed the importance of uniting as a party:
I certainly am going to be reaching out to Sen. Sanders and hope he will join me in that, because we've got to be unified going into the convention and coming out of the convention to take on Donald Trump.
Though Sanders indicated he's not willing to throw in the towel, it's only a matter of time before he concedes to the Democrats' plan to unite and stop Trump.
