Bernie Sanders endorses Hillary Clinton

Ver­mont Sen­a­tor Bernie Sanders made his first joint appear­ance with pre­sump­tive Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Hillary Clin­ton in Portsmouth, New Hamp­shire today, declar­ing that he intends to do every­thing he can to help Clin­ton win in Novem­ber, and ensure that Don­ald Trump is defeated.

Sanders used his endorse­ment speech to draw as many con­trasts between Clin­ton and Trump as he could, point­ing out that Trump, who is unpre­pared and unqual­i­fied to be Com­man­der-in-Chief, would drag the coun­try back­ward if he were elect­ed. Trump “would be a dis­as­ter for our coun­try and our plan­et,” Sanders said.

He tout­ed the areas where he and Clin­ton are in agree­ment, from edu­ca­tion to health­care to fight­ing the cli­mate cri­sis to reduc­ing big mon­ey in politics.

“It is no secret that Hlil­lary Clin­ton and I dis­agree on a num­ber of issues… that is what democ­ra­cy about,” Sanders said, going on to praise his del­e­gates and Clin­ton’s del­e­gates for work­ing hard togeth­er recent­ly to pro­duce “the most pro­gres­sive plat­form” the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty has ever seen.

“Our job now is to see that plat­form imple­ment­ed by a Demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly-con­trolled Sen­ate, a Demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly-con­trolled House, and a Hillary Clin­ton pres­i­den­cy.… I intend to be in every cor­ner of this coun­try to make cer­tain this happens.”

Clin­ton nod­ded and occa­sion­al­ly clapped as Sanders spoke.

“Hillary Clin­ton will make an out­stand­ing Pres­i­dent, and I am proud to stand with her today,” Sanders said, con­clud­ing his speech.

UPDATE: Hillary Clin­ton has now spo­ken as well. She deliv­ered a pow­er­ful speech prais­ing Sanders’ cam­paign, thank­ing his sup­port­ers for their efforts to go all out for Bernie, and embrac­ing many of the caus­es that Sanders’ cam­paign was about.

This speech showed just how effec­tive and impor­tant Sanders’ cam­paign has been. Bernie Sanders and the mil­lions of peo­ple who sup­port­ed him have made Hillary Clin­ton’s cam­paign bold­er, more pro­gres­sive, and more attuned to the needs of the peo­ple. Today’s uni­ty event was proof that Sanders’ influ­ence is being felt in a big way. Clin­ton did an effec­tive job of link­ing arms with Sanders and call­ing for uni­ty in her speech, again and again pro­mot­ing and rein­forc­ing ideas root­ed in the core pro­gres­sive val­ues of empa­thy and responsibility.

The fol­low­ing is the text of Bernie Sanders’ pre­pared remarks.

Let me begin by thank­ing the 13 mil­lion Amer­i­cans who vot­ed for me dur­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic primaries.

Let me also thank the peo­ple here in New Hamp­shire who gave us our first big win and a spe­cial thanks to the peo­ple of Ver­mont whose sup­port for so many years has sus­tained me.

Let me also thank the hun­dreds of thou­sands of vol­un­teers in every state in our coun­try who worked so hard on our cam­paign and the mil­lions of our con­trib­u­tors who showed the world that we could run a suc­cess­ful nation­al cam­paign based on small indi­vid­ual con­tri­bu­tions – 2 ¹⁄₂ mil­lion of them.

Togeth­er, we have begun a polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion to trans­form Amer­i­ca and that rev­o­lu­tion con­tin­ues. Togeth­er, we con­tin­ue the fight to cre­ate a gov­ern­ment which rep­re­sents all of us, and not just the one per­cent – a gov­ern­ment based on the prin­ci­ples of eco­nom­ic, social, racial and envi­ron­men­tal justice.

I am proud of the cam­paign we ran here in New Hamp­shire and across the coun­try. Our cam­paign won the pri­maries and cau­cus­es in 22 states, and when the roll call at the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion in Philadel­phia is announced it will show that we won almost 1,900 del­e­gates. That is a lot of del­e­gates, far more than almost any­one thought we could win. But it is not enough to win the nomination.

Sec­re­tary Clin­ton goes into the con­ven­tion with 389 more pledged del­e­gates than we have and a lot more super delegates.

Sec­re­tary Clin­ton has won the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nat­ing process, and I con­grat­u­late her for that. She will be the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee for pres­i­dent and I intend to do every­thing I can to make cer­tain she will be the next pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States.

I have come here today not to talk about the past but to focus on the future. That future will be shaped more by what hap­pens on Novem­ber 8 in vot­ing booths across our nation than by any oth­er event in the world. I have come here to make it as clear as pos­si­ble as to why I am endors­ing Hillary Clin­ton and why she must become our next president.

Dur­ing the last year I had the extra­or­di­nary oppor­tu­ni­ty to speak to more than 1.4 mil­lion Amer­i­cans at ral­lies in almost every state in this coun­try. I was also able to meet with many thou­sands of oth­er peo­ple at small­er gatherings.

And the pro­found les­son that I have learned from all of that is that this cam­paign is not real­ly about Hillary Clin­ton, or Don­ald Trump or Bernie Sanders, or any oth­er can­di­date who sought the pres­i­den­cy. This cam­paign is about the needs of the Amer­i­can peo­ple and address­ing the very seri­ous crises that we face.

And there is no doubt in my mind that, as we head into Novem­ber, Hillary Clin­ton is far and away the best can­di­date to do that.

It is easy to for­get where we were sev­en and a half years ago when Pres­i­dent Oba­ma came into office. As a result of the greed, reck­less­ness and ille­gal behav­ior on Wall Street, our econ­o­my was in the worst eco­nom­ic down­turn since the Great Depres­sion. Some 800,000 peo­ple a month were los­ing their jobs, we were run­ning up a record-break­ing deficit of $1.4 tril­lion dol­lars and the world’s finan­cial sys­tem was on the verge of col­lapse. We have come a long way in the last sev­en and a half years and I thank Pres­i­dent Oba­ma and Vice Pres­i­dent Biden for their lead­er­ship in pulling us out of that ter­ri­ble recession.

But, I think we can all agree, much, much more needs to be done. Too many peo­ple in Amer­i­ca are still being left out, left behind and ignored. In the rich­est coun­try in the his­to­ry of the world there is too much pover­ty, and too much despair.

This elec­tion is about the sin­gle mom I saw in Neva­da who, with tears in her eyes, told me that she was scared to death about the future because she and her young daugh­ter were not mak­ing it on the $10.45 cents an hour she was earn­ing. This elec­tion is about that woman, and the mil­lions of oth­er work­ers in this coun­try who are falling fur­ther and fur­ther behind as they try to sur­vive on total­ly inad­e­quate wages.

Hillary Clin­ton under­stands that we must fix an econ­o­my in Amer­i­ca that is rigged and that sends almost all new wealth and income to the top one per­cent. Hillary Clin­ton under­stands that if some­one in Amer­i­ca works 40 hours a week, that per­son should not be liv­ing in pover­ty. She believes that we should raise the min­i­mum wage to a liv­ing wage. And she wants to cre­ate mil­lions of new jobs by rebuild­ing our crum­bling infra­struc­ture. – our roads, bridges, water sys­tems and waste­water plants.

But her oppo­nent – Don­ald Trump – well, he has a very dif­fer­ent view. He believes that states should have the right to low­er the min­i­mum wage or even abol­ish the con­cept of the min­i­mum wage alto­geth­er. If Don­ald Trump is elect­ed, we will see no increase in the fed­er­al min­i­mum wage of $7.25 per hour – a star­va­tion wage.

This elec­tion is about which can­di­date will nom­i­nate Supreme Court jus­tices who are pre­pared to over­turn the dis­as­trous Cit­i­zens Unit­ed deci­sion which allows bil­lion­aires to buy elec­tions and under­mine our democ­ra­cy; about who will appoint new jus­tices on the Supreme Court who will defend a woman’s right to choose, the rights of the LGBT com­mu­ni­ty, work­ers’ rights, the needs of minori­ties and immi­grants, and the government’s abil­i­ty to pro­tect the environment.

If you don’t believe this elec­tion is impor­tant, take a moment to think about the Supreme Court jus­tices that Don­ald Trump will nom­i­nate, and what that means to civ­il lib­er­ties, equal rights and the future of our country.

This cam­paign is about mov­ing the Unit­ed States toward uni­ver­sal health care and reduc­ing the num­ber of peo­ple who are unin­sured or under-insured. Hillary Clin­ton wants to see that all Amer­i­cans have the right to choose a pub­lic option in their health care exchange, which will low­er the cost of health care.

She also believes that any­one 55 years or old­er should be able to opt in to Medicare and she wants to see mil­lions more Amer­i­cans gain access to pri­ma­ry health care, den­tal care, men­tal health coun­sel­ing and low-cost pre­scrip­tion drugs through a major expan­sion of com­mu­ni­ty health cen­ters through­out this country.

Hillary is com­mit­ted to see­ing thou­sands of young doc­tors, nurs­es, psy­chol­o­gists, den­tists and oth­er med­ical pro­fes­sion­als prac­tice in under­served areas as we fol­low through on Pres­i­dent Obama’s idea of tripling fund­ing for the Nation­al Health Ser­vice Corps.

In New Hamp­shire, in Ver­mont and across the coun­try we have a major epi­dem­ic of opi­ate and hero­in addiction.

Peo­ple are dying every day from over­dos­es. Hillary Clin­ton under­stands that if we are seri­ous about address­ing this cri­sis we need major changes in the way we deliv­er men­tal health treat­ment. That’s what expand­ing com­mu­ni­ty health cen­ters will do and that is what get­ting med­ical per­son­nel into the areas we need them most will do.

And what is Don­ald Trump’s posi­tion on health care? No sur­prise there. Same old, same old Repub­li­can con­tempt for work­ing fam­i­lies. He wants to abol­ish the Afford­able Care Act, throw 20 mil­lion peo­ple off of the health insur­ance they cur­rent­ly have and cut Med­ic­aid for low­er-income Americans.

The last thing we need today in Amer­i­ca is a pres­i­dent who doesn’t care about whether mil­lions will lose access to the health care cov­er­age that they des­per­ate­ly need. We need more peo­ple with access to qual­i­ty health care, not fewer.

Hillary Clin­ton also under­stands that mil­lions of seniors, dis­abled vets and oth­ers are strug­gling with the out­ra­geous­ly high cost of pre­scrip­tion drugs. She and I are in agree­ment that Medicare must nego­ti­ate drug prices with the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try and that we must expand the use of gener­ic medicine.

Drug com­pa­nies should not be mak­ing bil­lions in prof­its while one in five Amer­i­cans are unable to afford the med­i­cine they need. The greed of the drug com­pa­nies must end.

This elec­tion is about the grotesque lev­el of income and wealth inequal­i­ty that cur­rent­ly exists, the worst it has been since 1928.

Hillary Clin­ton knows that some­thing is very wrong when the very rich become rich­er while many oth­ers are work­ing longer hours for low­er wages. She knows that it is absurd that mid­dle-class Amer­i­cans are pay­ing an effec­tive tax rate high­er than hedge fund mil­lion­aires, and that there are cor­po­ra­tions in this coun­try mak­ing bil­lions in prof­it while they pay no fed­er­al income tax­es in a giv­en year because of loop­holes their lob­by­ists created.

While Hillary Clin­ton sup­ports mak­ing our tax code fair­er, Don­ald Trump wants to give hun­dreds of bil­lions of dol­lars in tax breaks to the very wealth­i­est peo­ple in this coun­try. His reck­less eco­nom­ic poli­cies will not only exac­er­bate income and wealth inequal­i­ty, they would increase our nation­al debt by tril­lions of dollars.

This elec­tion is about the thou­sands of young peo­ple I have met who have left col­lege deeply in debt, the many oth­ers who can­not afford to go to col­lege and the need for this coun­try to have the best edu­cat­ed work­force in the world if we are to com­pete effec­tive­ly in a high­ly com­pet­i­tive glob­al economy.

Hillary Clin­ton believes that we must sub­stan­tial­ly low­er stu­dent debt, and that we must make pub­lic col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties tuition free for the mid­dle class and work­ing fam­i­lies of this country.

This is a major ini­tia­tive that will rev­o­lu­tion­ize high­er edu­ca­tion in this coun­try and improve the lives of millions.

Think of what it will mean when every child in this coun­try, regard­less of the income of their fam­i­ly, knows that if they study hard and do well in school – yes, they will be able to get a col­lege edu­ca­tion and leave school with­out debt.

This elec­tion is about cli­mate change, the great­est envi­ron­men­tal cri­sis fac­ing our plan­et, and the need to leave this world in a way that is healthy and hab­it­able for our kids and future gen­er­a­tions. Hillary Clin­ton is lis­ten­ing to the sci­en­tists who tell us that if we do not act bold­ly in the very near future there will be more drought, more floods, more acid­i­fi­ca­tion of the oceans, more ris­ing sea levels.

She under­stands that we must work with coun­tries around the world in trans­form­ing our ener­gy sys­tem away from fos­sil fuels and into ener­gy effi­cien­cy and sus­tain­able ener­gy – and that when we do that we can cre­ate a whole lot of good pay­ing jobs.

Don­ald Trump: Well, like most Repub­li­cans, he choos­es to reject sci­ence – some­thing no pres­i­den­tial can­di­date should do.He believes that cli­mate change is a hoax. In fact, he wants to expand the use of fos­sil fuel. That would be a dis­as­ter for our coun­try and our planet.

This elec­tion is about the lead­er­ship we need to pass com­pre­hen­sive immi­gra­tion reform and repair a bro­ken crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. It’s about mak­ing sure that young peo­ple in this coun­try are in good schools or at good jobs, not in jail cells. Sec­re­tary Clin­ton under­stands that we don’t need to have more peo­ple in jail than any oth­er coun­try on earth, at an expense of $80 bil­lion a year.

In these stress­ful times for our coun­try, this elec­tion must be about bring­ing our peo­ple togeth­er, not divid­ing us up.

While Don­ald Trump is busy insult­ing Mex­i­cans, Mus­lims, women, African Amer­i­cans and vet­er­ans, Hillary Clin­ton under­stands that our diver­si­ty is one of our great­est strengths.

Yes. We become stronger when black and white, Lati­no, Asian Amer­i­can, Native Amer­i­can – all of us – stand together.

Yes. We become stronger when men and women, young and old, gay and straight, native born and immi­grant fight to rid this coun­try of all forms of bigotry.

It is no secret that Hillary Clin­ton and I dis­agree on a num­ber of issues. That’s what this cam­paign has been about. That’s what democ­ra­cy is about.

But I am hap­py to tell you that at the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Plat­form Com­mit­tee which end­ed Sun­day night in Orlan­do, there was a sig­nif­i­cant com­ing togeth­er between the two cam­paigns and we pro­duced, by far, the most pro­gres­sive plat­form in the his­to­ry of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. Our job now is to see that plat­form imple­ment­ed by a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­ate, a Demo­c­ra­t­ic House and a Hillary Clin­ton pres­i­dent – and I am going to do every­thing I can to make that happen.

I have known Hillary Clin­ton for 25 years. I remem­ber her as a great first lady who broke prece­dent in terms of the role that a first lady was sup­posed to play as she helped lead the fight for uni­ver­sal health care. I served with her in the Unit­ed States Sen­ate and know her as a fierce advo­cate for the rights of chil­dren. Hillary Clin­ton will make an out­stand­ing pres­i­dent and I am proud to stand with her here today.

POSTSCRIPT: In a note on Face­book, Sanders pledged to trans­form his cam­paign into some­thing more per­ma­nent, telling supporters:

In the com­ing weeks, I will be announc­ing the cre­ation of suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tions to car­ry on the strug­gle that we have been a part of these past 15 months. I hope you will con­tin­ue to be involved in fight­ing to trans­form Amer­i­ca. Our goal will be to advance the pro­gres­sive agen­da that we believe in and to elect like-mind­ed can­di­dates at the fed­er­al, state and local lev­els who are com­mit­ted to accom­plish­ing our goals.

Note the use of the word orga­ni­za­tions, plur­al, which sug­gests Sanders and his strate­gists want to build a fam­i­ly of orga­ni­za­tions, as opposed to just one.