Sen. Bernie Sanders spoke in front of roughly 2,500 campaign supporters outside RFK stadium in Washington, D.C. Thursday night.
Sanders held the campaign event in a last-ditch effort to amass the needed delegates to secure the nomination. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has already reached the delegate threshold, but Sanders supporters gathered in D.C. were adamant the Vermont senator still has a shot at the White House.
“Clinton is awful, but marginally less so than Donald Trump, but there is no real difference between the two,” David Gilkey, a young Sanders supporter told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Obama is no different from Hillary or even Donald Trump. Bernie Sanders represents real change, and I am here to make sure this movement stays alive in the future”
Sanders ally and activist Cornel West warmed up the crowd, exclaiming Donald Trump is a “narcissist neofascist,” while Clinton is a “milquetoast neo-liberal.”
Sanders later took the stage, going through his usual stump speech, discussing income inequality and the “rigged economy.” He did not mention, however, presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton or his earlier meeting with President Barack Obama.
At numerous points during the rally, the phrase “Bernie or Bust” was chanted.
“Lets not get ahead of ourselves,” Joel Lopez, a Bernie-Bro wearing a rainbow-colored Bernie 2016 shirt, told TheDCNF about Clinton being the presumptive nominee.”The primary here in DC is yet to happen, and we will be going to Philadelphia for a contested convention.”
Lopez and fellow Sanders supporters, Ken Hopso and Zack Everett, expressed their anger with media outlets declaring Clinton the presumptive nominee a day before California and five other states hosted their primaries. “It was so inappropriate for the AP and others to come out and do that, which just shows how the corporate media is in the bag for Hillary,” Lopez told TheDCNF.
Other supporters hoped Sanders would make a third-party run.
“I am hoping we can convince Bernie to run with the Green Party, and if not I will probably be voting for Jill Stein,” a Sanders supporter who previously only voted for third-party candidates, told TheDCNF. Stein has actually even reached out to Sanders publicly, hoping to cooperate on a “political revolution.”
Very few attendees accepted Clinton as the presumptive nominee, though a few did concede if it came down to Trump or Clinton, the former secretary of state would win their vote.
“If it comes down to Hillary and Trump, I guess I will vote for Hillary … most likely,” college student Melanie Schneider said. “Maybe we can’t get it done this cycle, but we want to allow future generations at change and hope,” she added.
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