Joe Biden was never Bernie Sanders’s first choice. Bernie Sanders was Bernie Sanders’s first choice—that’s why he ran for president. But with Donald Trump as the alternative, the choice for Sanders isn’t a choice at all. “My message to people is you cannot sit this out. You have got to vote, you have got to be involved, you’ve got to do everything that you can to defeat Trump and elect Biden,” he told me, speaking from his home in Burlington, Vermont. This year’s election “is not only the most important election in our lifetimes, it is the most important election in the modern history of this country. What we are fighting for is not only for the needs of working families and the children and the elderly and the sick and the poor, we are literally fighting to retain a democratic form of society.”
As little as five months ago, there was anxious talk of a contested Democratic convention as Sanders racked up delegates, which now total more than 1,000. Chants of “Bernie! Bernie!” interrupting Hillary Clinton’s coronation during 2016’s proceedings still hung heavy in the air. Then, COVID-19 hit the U.S. and the senator himself, who had never done much to entertain the speculation, made it clear where he stood, endorsing Biden within a week of suspending his presidential campaign. Those familiar with his thinking say this was always part of the plan. Even before he entered the race, and certainly while he was in it, many of Sanders’s conversations with Barack Obama revolved around how to bring the Berners on board if another candidate won out. “The two of them spent a not insignificant amount of time figuring out how best to do that,” a source briefed on the conversations told me. “Bernie didn’t need convincing.”
It helps that Sanders’s backing for Biden runs deeper than political necessity. At a base level, there’s a collegiality between the two rooted in their time serving together in the Senate. “Biden has, despite differences of opinion with Bernie, a fundamental respect for him as a person of conviction who advocates for issues that he cares deeply about,” said Faiz Shakir, who served as manager of the 2020 Sanders campaign. Speaking with Sanders, it’s clear that respect runs both ways—that he sees Biden as prepared to meet the moment.
“Look, I can’t predict to you what’s going to happen tomorrow, let alone in the next four years. Politics is strange in that with somebody like Joe Biden—who I know fairly well—you have a person who has been, as he will tell you, throughout his political career, a moderate. But I think that what he has told me and he has told the American people is that he understands the enormous crises we are facing today,” Sanders said. “At this moment we have a president who’s trying to undermine democracy and move us into an authoritarian form of society. Those are huge issues. Unbelievable. And I think Joe understands that. I think if you talk to Barack Obama, he will tell you the same thing. That what we did yesterday is not good enough.” If elected, Biden will likely be the most progressive president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Sanders believes.
In the era of coronavirus, Biden’s approach to politics—never at the vanguard per se, but amenable to moving leftward, as with his positions on women’s reproductive rights and criminal justice—presents an opportunity. His platform, which essentially boils down to name recognition, appeals to his supporters at a fundamental level, giving him the freedom to adopt policies that may bring progressives into the fold. And those policies feel more relevant than ever as Americans face record levels of unemployment and a national crisis over health insurance. “Biden tends to be a politician who sees the politics of what’s possible, whereas Bernie tends to just say, What are the politics of what’s just?” Shakir said. “Sometimes they’re aligned.”